Visit to a handloom village

In the handloom village we saw building after building filled with looms and men weaving saris, gamchas, and lungis. They can make 120 taka a day, but they receive their wages on how fast they work. For each completed sari they receive 60 taka (around $1). They said that they are pretty happy to have this job as they can weave when they aren't busy working in the rice field.

This woman prepares the thread to be sewn into a beautiful sari as her child plays nearby.



These children are quite curious with the foreigner who has wandered into their home. They don't seem to be too cold in their bare feet, despite the fact that the said foreigner is wearing long underwear, jeans, shawl, winter coat, shirt, and sweater.

When I agreed to join my co-workers to go to Tangail to see a handloom factory, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. They said we were going to Tangail, which is a city of similar size to Mymensingh. Actually we went to a village, but it was in the Tangail district. In the village we wandered around the handloom factory asking questions and learning how we can expand job creation's handloom section. We also visit the market to purchase some mechanical parts for a loom.

Lunch was at a village hotel, only those who have been to a village in Bangladesh can know what this means. (I had a fried 8 inch whole fish - head, fins, tail, skin, everything - and I was expected to eat every bit). As we got the bill for what we thought would be a cheap meal we were shocked at the price. Asking a man beside us how much he was charged for his fish, we discovered that ours was 6 taka more. We asked the waiter why this was, and he said it was because of a different quality of fish. When we asked if they had three pots of the same fish of different qualities he was silent. We did manage to get our bill a bit less, but all this was because a foreigner was present.

We left the area by van-gari, and our van driver was extremely excited to be pulling a foreigner. Once he took the van over a bump and I exclaimed, "Ah!" He smilingly said, "I only let the van go over a bump once." He was peddling five heavy people over a bumpy road for several miles, and I immediately felt bad for making a noise.