Today I met Professor Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Throughout the summit, you could always tell where Professor Yunus was. Just look for a crowd of people trying to get their picture taken with a small, unassuming man in a vest and there he would be. The man exudes friendliness, and treats everyone with respect, suffering to have his picture taken with all comers. At one of the plenary sessions, I noticed Professor Yunus sitting in the front row. I went up and introduced myself and explained that I was volunteering with the Grameen Technology Center in the United States. He talked amiably with me for a few minutes about my project. It was a rush to finally meet the man who was at the epicenter of the micro-finance movement and who I had heard and read so much about!

That night, I went out to dinner with Sandy, a Texan woman who is involved in a micro-credit program in that state and who imports textiles from the subcontinent. We took a rickshaw to the restaurant not far from our hotel. This was a proper rickshaw, not an auto-rickshaw. That is to say that it was an open carriage seat pulled by a man on a bicycle. It produces an interesting if not too fast ride. Getting to the restaurant was no problem. It was getting back that was the problem! I already knew that the rickshaw drivers had no idea where our guesthouse was. The day before I had been taken all over creation before I finally arrived home. That time I only knew the name of the hotel and not the address. Never one to make the same mistake twice, this time I had brought the hotel’s business card which had the address in both Bangla and English. That did not help. The driver still couldn’t find the place. We drove around and around the area, past numerous signs for Grameen Phone, and down side street after side street. The driver would periodically stop and ask people how to get to our guesthouse. There happened to be a military base near out hotel, and the driver stopped there to get directions. Several heavily armed soldiers came to the gate and talked with him, making me very nervous. We had been warned to have nothing to do with the military or the police if we could at all help it. The soldiers were quite friendly however, and were curious about where we were from. We left the gate safely, and eventually, after over an hour in the rickshaw, we finally found our way home.