Sunday was the last day before the Micro-Credit Summit was scheduled to start. Fortunately we were not plagued with a hartal that day, although one had been called for the following day, the first day of the summit. As part of the summit, the Grameen Bank had organized a series of trips to some of the villages in which they have centers. All the people who were going to go on these field trips gathered in a large room at the Grameen Bank offices early in the day. There was general confusion about the arrangements, but after a delay the various groups were formed and we set out for the villages. Barb and I were in one group with a few other people. It quickly became apparent that translation was going to be a problem. We had been assigned a Grameen Bank staff member who spoke only a little English. Consequently, every question we asked had to be repeated several times before our guide understood us, and then the answer had to be repeated several times before we understood the answer. It then often turned out that the wrong question had been asked anyway, and we had to repeat the entire procedure. Fortunately Barb speaks fluent Bangla, and she was able to help us to get our questions across.

After a long drive, we arrived at Nagori village. Our first stop was at a center meeting conducted in a small, rectangular metal roofed building that was open on one side. At the front of the building there was a table where we sat along with the Grameen Bank staff. In front of us were rows and rows of women colorfully dressed in saris. One by one the group leaders got up to speak. These were noble looking women, but some wore sad expressions as well. One of the women was a widow dressed in the traditional white sari. The business of the meeting was conducted by the Grameen field worker. Afterwards, we attempted to ask the women some questions with some success.

I was particularly interested in talking with the Village Phone lady. I had been working on a project with the Grameen Foundation USA to extend the range of the village phones, and wanted to ask the phone lady some questions. Dressed in a blue sari, the phone lady pulled out her cell phone to show me when I started to ask her about her business. It was strange to see such a high- tech device in use in such a low-tech village! One of the businesses that Grameen Bank has created for its borrowers are the village phones. Most of Bangladesh outside of the capital has virtually no land-line phones, but large parts of the country - including many rural areas - do have cellular telephone coverage. The problem is that very few people can afford cell phones. Seeing an opportunity to vastly increase telephone coverage in rural Bangladesh while at the same time providing new business opportunities for some of its members, Grameen Bank partnered with Grameen Phone, the country's largest mobile telecommunications company, to create Grameen Telecom. These companies administer the Village Phone Project as well as a cell phone service for other Bangladeshis. Through the Village Phone Project, Grameen borrowers are given micro-loans to purchase cell phones which they then use as village pay phones. Villagers pay to make and receive calls, and telephone access is brought to rural areas.

As we walked through the village, I wanted to talk with the phone lady, but our guide was unable to provide the necessary translation. In frustration, I asked Barb to help, and she introduced me to Mukta, one of the few young woman in the village who was attending university. Her English was pretty good, and she was able to ask the phone lady a few questions for me. It turned out that the woman’s son did most of the work, and that she knew few of the details herself!

As the group walked through the village, we passed women cooking food on the ground around a fire, a group of three women sorting and preparing white rice in big conical baskets under an overhang in front of one of their houses, and endless green rice paddies bordered by raised levies on top of which were the dirt paths through the village. When the floods come, the fields are completely submerged in the water, and only the high levies are above the water line. The roads are raised so that during these floods the villagers can still move around the village and get to the neighboring areas. I saw this pattern of low-lying fields surrounded by these high levies everywhere I went in the rural areas of Bangladesh.

From Nagori, we drove to another village. On the way, the van passed over a river, and I saw a number of small fishing boats on the shores of the water. Shortly after entering the village, we came to a small store on the side of the road that housed the village phone. I went in and sat down at a table that took up much of the room, and talked with the phone lady for a few minutes. Then I used the cell phone, which was attached to an antenna on the roof of the building by a thick wire, to call Susan in California. The call was remarkably clear. It was great to talk with her! It was interesting to see the village phones actually in use.

We walked further along the dirt road into the heart of the village and passed many houses. Most had people working in front preparing food or making crafts. The group was heading toward a clearing where many craft items were displayed for us to see and buy. As we neared the area, however, we heard a fight raging nearby between a man and his wife. Other villagers were joining in as well. They were all quite loud and angry. It was the first domestic strife I had seen on the trip. Later we got conflicting reports on what the fight was about. We asked our Grameen Bank guide why he didn’t intervene, and he said that since they were not members it wasn’t appropriate for him to get involved.

On that sour note, we headed back to Dhaka. The hartal was starting early, and this caused a massive traffic jam. Dozens of vehicles of every description were stopped on the main road of a town. We were told that it was unsafe to proceed, that if we did the van would be pelted with rocks and perhaps even shot at. We waited for a while, but eventually our driver got fed up and sped down the road. We were not assaulted, and made it to the conference center several hours late. From there we got a cab to our hotel. Trust your driver!