Thursday dawned and a hartal had been called, so we couldn’t travel by MCC van. Instead we hired three vangaris to pedal us around all day. Travel by motorized vehicles wasn’t safe, but man-powered vehicles were safe. (All day I looked for cars being burned and rioting crowds but I didn’t see anything.) The vangaris did give us a nice view of the countryside, but they were really bumpy. We saw four different Prokritee enterprises who made different products ranging from handmade paper to bath mitts.

Each of the four visits had a similar program. As we slid off the vangari, women would come out to greet us with singing and flowers. After we had been properly welcomed, we would sit and learn about the organization. As we chatted more and more food would arrive until the tables were overflowing. At each partner we had no less than six of the following: apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, green coconut water, soda, chanachur, crackers, biscuits, cake, and other non-describable things. At every place we had tea and mishty – which was so much sugar that a few of us felt a bit sick. After our snack, we would go out and see the women at work performing their different jobs. As we left we were always given a gift of the handicrafts that they were producing. These enterprises had many orders and the handicrafts were quite developed - in contrast to the job creation program and its new partners. In the photo Swapan is trying out the bath mitts ordered by The Body Shop. I tried to explain to him the purpose of a bath mitt, but I don’t think he was too convinced.