A week ago Tuesday an MCC trip was planned to visit Agailjara. However, the opposition party in Bangladesh was holding a big rally in Dhaka on Tuesday, so the government shut down the transportation systems in the country in order to prevent people from coming to Dhaka to attend the rally. Patrick was in Mymensingh and trying to come to Dhaka on Monday night so that he could go with us on Tuesday. However, the buses had already been stopped on Monday night, so Patrick was stuck in Mymensingh. Our trip was postponed until Wednesday as we couldn’t leave on Tuesday. Philip, Rebecca, and Hannah bid us goodbye when we left early Wednesday morning from Dhaka. They were leaving later that night for home leave, and they will be in North America for three months.
In the van headed to Agailjara were Carolyn, Patrick, Swapan, Shinjita, Rebecka, Farzana, and Nadine. Nadine is from Canada, and she left Bangladesh about a year ago after four years in the agriculture program. She lived in the house that I now live in, and she will be visiting for a month. Farzana started working with MCC the day that I did in the beginning of November. She has been hired as a human resources coordinator. Rebecka is the third MCC Rebekah: she has been working with MCC’s arsenic program for about five months. Shinjita is my boss and is the administrator for the Job Creation Program. Swapan is the financial and support services administrator.
Agailjara is about 6 hours south of Dhaka. To arrive in Agailjara you have to drive out of the way and then take a ferry over a river. The roads were really bumpy and constructed of dirt in a few places – a few of our members suffered severe car sickness. This was my first trip south of Dhaka, and the scenery was different. The houses had a third world Swiss Alps kind of look.
Agailjara is home to another MCC office, which like Muktagatcha is a Job Creation office. In February this office will be closing and its staff and activities will be moved to Muktagatcha. Then all of MCC’s Job Creation activities will be together. (The Job Creation program has five partners: only one is in Agailjara and the rest are in the Muktagatcha area.) The reason for our visit for the majority of us was to see the office as part of our orientation to MCC. Prokritee has four enterprises in the Agailjara region that we also visited.
On Wednesday after our long journey and arrival at the Agailjara office, we visited Job Creation partner Charity Foundation. The women who worked at this NGO took a break to greet us with songs and flower necklaces. As we chatted with the staff and learned about Charity (all in Bangla) we were served tons of food. We observed the women making placemats out of red, orange, blue, and yellow fibers, and then we were given some placemats as gifts. We spent our night at the MCC office guesthouse, watching Bangla movies, chatting, and swatting mosquitoes.