Kolkata and the Solar Eclipse

A number of different experiences today at our first stop in India...seeing orphans and children at a Mother Teresa's Missions of Charity home, enjoying lunch with the Maharani of Burdwan at the Kolkata Ladies Golf Club, and seeing Mother Teresa's tomb at the Mother House...all during a solar eclipse! We ended the day trying on sarees and participating in a cooking demonstration at a local restaurant.

Prime Minister's Question Time

Our tour operator, Janet Moore, was able to arrange a meeting with Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. We met her at the Parliament building and were shown into a room where her handlers waited with us. She was joined by her son, Joy, who is working in Washington, DC to strengthen ties between Bangladesh and the U.S. She met with us for about 30 minutes, and I think I asked the best question! Other members of our group met with the opposition leader in the evening. As a result, our group was mentioned not once but twice in the Daily Star, the local paper!

Micro-Finance at the Village Level

One of the highlights of our stay in Bangladesh was a visit to a village north of Dhaka where the Grameen Bank had made loans to women. We drove on narrow roads through small village towns whose markets teemed with produce, cigarettes, and spices. Joining a group of women at the centre meeting, a weekly occurence when the women make their loan installments and talk amongst themselves, we heard the stories of their successes. We toured the village and several people would show us into their homes.


The children loved seeing us!

When we returned to Dhaka, we visited with the top two women of Grameen Bank who have worked there with Dr. Yunus since the bank's inception. To provide a sense of the other end of the spectrum of entrepreneurship, we had dinner with a group of entrepreneurs at a private home, where we connected with an incredible group of women who are passionate about their country and have worked hard to improve the role of women in Bangladeshi society. And their sarees were to die for! We saw many of the women the next day at a roundtable where we talked about women's issues.

Live Feed

A fellow traveler is keeping a blog with more up-to-the-minute information on our trip on her i-phone. You can read it at cheswilson.blogspot.com.

Street Signs

Faces of Bangladesh

Day One in Bangladesh

I arrived in Dhaka, Bangladesh a little over 24 hours ago, and we've had a very busy day today. Leaving Paris on Sunday evening on an Air India flight, I arrived in Delhi at 8 am and connected with 14 women on our tour who had flown from either Chicago or New York. Our flight to Dhaka was late, and we spent about five hours in Delhi listening to easy listening Christmas music coming over the PA system. After arrival in Dhaka, we experienced the traffic problems that pervade this county...cars, trucks, motorcycles and rickshaws that use the same roads - one has to be aggressive to get anywhere.

Today was a Smith day - we started with a Smith graduate discussing her work in setting up the Asian University for Women and ended with dinner at the home of a mother of two Smithies. During the day we met with many women lawyers and women's rights activists as well as shopped for Bangladeshi textiles. We paid a special visit to the National Assembly building, where we viewed the building designed by Louis Kahn and sat in the assembly during a session.

This evening we visited the studio of artist Kuhu Plamondon, who showed us her work and invited several of her friends to join us for dinner. It was a wonderful way to meet with and talk to women who are doing amazing things in Bangladesh.