Back Stateside

dear friends,
I have returned safely to the land of apple pie and red, white, and blue! I confess I have missed my homeland in many ways, and in many other ways I long to be back in my adopted land. One month in Bangladesh is like living six. So much has happened, so many decisions have been made, so many adventures had.
Returning home always takes on a surreal quality to me. I drive down roads empty of carts, animals, pedestrians, and even cars! I live surrounded by air conditioning, hot water in the shower, and cold water in the frig. I have a car at my disposal, and I can fix anything my heart desires to eat. Sometimes I feel like I move through the day like a stranger in a strange land.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. On saturday, I took the chance to shadow a friend in the pediatric intensive care unit at a local hospital. I drove up to a parking space, and strolled casually into the lobby of the hospital. surrounding me was a kindly receptionist, a gift shop, and even mood lighting. In the pediatric ward, each child had an individual, climate controlled room, and the halls were decorated with colorful paintings of wild animals. For 6 patients there were perhaps 4 nurses, a doctor, and a respiratory therapist. The workers sat and chatted casually as I sat at the desk.
I am reminded of Dhaka Children's Hospital, the single rooms filled with twenty or thirty children, the short-staffed nurses scurrying from patient to patient, the doctors working with next to no technology in order to treat their charges. And I am reminded of the dying child with end stage tuberculosis, laying motionless in one of these beds with vomited blood caking her face. Her disease was highly contagious, and I feared for all the other children sitting around her. When I asked the Bangladeshi doctor about this, he told me that they have no way to isolate the child. When I asked the American doc, he told me that he would be breaking the law for not isolating this child!
What are we to do? Are we to blame the Bangladeshi system? Are we to villify the americans for being fat cats with too much money to spend on fancy health care, and for not helping their poor neighbors? the truth is that there is no single finger to point, no single factor to blame. Poverty is an incredibly complex entity, full of moral ambiguities. All we can do, as individuals and as organizations, is to try to help where we can, and to leave the rest to the work of God. At least this is how I get through my days. I have enjoyed writing these posts. Thanks to all who have read them, and I hope you all are blessed.
Signing off
Richie

Leaving on a Jet Plane

dear friends,
It is with truly mixed emotions that I prepare to leave Bangladesh. But when I reflect on it, my experience of this nation always involves deeply complex emotions. It is a mixture of anger at how terrible life can be, inspiration at the joy and knowledge we are able to put in our children, fatigue at having constantly to be "on," frustration in a nation of frequent power outages, intense heat, and terrible corruption, and pride in our accomplishments. Nothing in this life is simple, especially in a place like Bangladesh. Sometimes people tell me, "oh, you must be so proud of the work you do." To them, I respond, "mostly I'm just tired all the time!" Sometimes that tired is the deep, satisfied tired at a job well done. At other times, it is the lonely tired of those who just wanna sit down and let their burdens down for a while.
You might ask where this more somber tone is coming from. Recently, I met a businessman who invited me to his office because he said he wanted to help me out with my project. So I took the time to come to his office, although I was working on next to no sleep the night before (another story for another time). Anyway, over the course of the next 5 hours, I was first tantalized by the possibility of a major donor prospect, then utterly infuriated by the fact that this man seemed simply to want to show me (a white man) off to his rich friends. I drove home that night, and hit major traffic. Breathing in exhaust fumes while I sat in the motorized taxi, I felt like screaming or breaking something with my bare hands.
When I got home, I called an American friend who is living in Bangladesh and asked, "do you ever [when you are in Bangladesh] just wanna hit somebody?" To that, she responded, "actually yeah, I feel that way right now." She went on to describe a frustration with her roommates, and I felt more at peace, realizing that is was ok to feel this way from time to time.
But enough with melancholy. I'm gonna go play some soccer with my kids before I have to say goodbye to them.

Some Thoughts

dear friends,
I first have to apologize for my absence in the past days. I came down with a touch of food poisoning last week, which, as my brother who experienced it last year in Bangladesh can attest, is not an enjoyable experience. Also, we have been having some major internet connectivity problems, which are now fixed (fingers crossed).
I have been thinking a lot about my life here in this country. Like most places in the world, being successful in Bangladesh is about who you know and who wants to help you out. So I spend a lot of my time talking with wealthy, important people, trying to build relationships that may be useful in the work of Basic Needs. At the same time, I spend a large part of my time with the most poor sectors of society, slum dwellers, village children, and orphans. Life here can take on a surreal, schizophrenic quality.
Let me give an example. The other day I took a trip to Bashundhara City, a towering structure of glass and steel which claims to be the largest shopping mall in all of South Asia. Here you can eat foreign food, buy fancy electronics, or catch an American movie in the cinema. Contrast this with the young girl I met on my way home. She was standing unprotected in the rain, weaving between cars so that she could sell little flowers to the people inside. I asked her name and gave her the typical greetings in Bangla, to which she reacted with a broad, beautiful smile. Before the motorcycle taxi moved on, I clicked a couple pictures of her through the metal gate.
That picture is, to me, emblematic of the problem. I am on the inside, protected and dry, and she is on the outside, soaking wet. It seems that, in this country, both sides accept this reality as par for the course. They seem not even to consider it a problem. But, as an outsider, I have a special position in that I can move between these worlds, and see them both intimately.
You know, I once heard a saying that the only logical response to the realities of life is insanity. Life can be vicious and absurd, and the moment we come to accept this is the moment we can work against this. One Bengali man recently heard about my project and called me an "ambassador of God." This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a while, but it also makes me think. Perhaps part of our role in Basic Needs is to help remind Bengalis themselves of their inherent power to change their system, to get out from behind their gates and to spend time with normal people. If they did, they might discover what a treasure Bangladesh has in its citizens.

At a Tea Stall

Dear friends,
there are certain events which drive us in a certain direction, which push us to set new goals and to pursue new dreams. But often we struggle so hard to realize those dreams that we forget why we started on these paths to begin with! We work very hard to make Basic Needs a reality, but if I don't take time to reconnect with why we do our work, then I quickly lose my motivation and my effectiveness.
Fortunately, today provided a keen reminder of why we do what we do. I was sitting in a tea stall with some friends, enjoying some refreshments. The boy who served us was quite young, and so I asked him his age. 9 he said. Why do you work here, I asked. He said his mother had been dead for a long time and his father couldn't care for him, so he was taken under the employ of the tea stall owner. I asked him how much he works, and he told me all day long. I asked him if he went to school, and he said he wanted to, but his boss said no. He made for about $8 a month plus room and board, which I can only imagine to be meager at best. As he and his little friend were talking to me, one of the older employees came up behind them and smacked them in the back of the head, telling them to get back to work. They meekly did as they were told. The lives lead by these two boys is exactly why Basic Needs exists.

A Day in the Sun

Dear friends,
We have all enjoyed our special visit from Leah Harris, an old classmate of mine from high school, who is now doing her masters in agricultural economics at Virginia Tech. She is in Bangladesh for her thesis research, so it has been fun to show her around. She and I got to take the children on a special trip to see the national memorial to the 1971 War of Independence. This is quite an impressive structure, a series of concrete towers culminating in a grand spire flying high into the sky. Around the memorial are the mass graves of hundreds of people massacred during the revolution. It is a quiet, peaceful place, and is surprisingly uplifting in it its beauty, and in the beauty of the acres of gardens which surround it. The kids absolutely loved it. Many of them had probably never ridden in a private car before, so just the chance to get out and see a bit of their country was really thrilling for them. There is nothing more magical than the eyes of a child who has seen something for the first time. They also got the chance to run around when they got to the memorial. After seeing the sites, we ended up playing tag on the lawn, and I found myself thoroughly soaked with sweat by the end! After a couple hours, we piled into the car for the ride home, the kids intently enjoying a cup of ice cream.

Lessons Learned

Dear friends,
It has been a couple days since I last posted, and man, so much has happened! Our health camp in the village took place on Friday without a major snag, thank God. We arrived after the harrowing journey through the roads and byways of northern Bangladesh, and began the process of setting up the health camp. We only had two doctors, so we did our best to have all the personal and basic health information filled out before we put the children in the exam room. I was the only non-doctor who knew about vital signs, so I found myself taking about 100 pulse rates while my intrepid American friend Leah (now Dr. Leah to the villagers) took respiratory rates. The whole experience was exciting, but the temperature was excruciatingly hot and humid so that large beads of sweat formed on your arms and dripped down your face. The fact that dozens of children and parents were crowding around you made for a further increase in the temperature.
The results of the health survey were astounding. Of 95 children surveyed, over one third of all children(both sick and healthy) demonstrated clinical signs of malnutrition. 18% of children suffered from gastrointestinal disease, while another 22% had upper respiratory infections. One child had a preliminary case of pneumonia, while another had a possible case of TB.
The worst thing I saw that day was a tiny child, maybe 4 years old, who had a huge abscess in her groin region. For the sake of the non-medicos among us, I will not go into details, but needless to say it was one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. On her tiny legs were multiple scars of previous abscesses. This child needed to go to a hospital urgently to prevent systemic infection and possible death, but her caretaker refused, saying that she had had them before and had been fine.
This is the hard reality of charitable work. Sometimes you are completely inspired by the contribution your are able to make, and you feel on top of the world. At other times, like this one, you feel utterly frustrated, angry, and helpless to do anything. The key is to pick your battles, win the ones you can, and move on, never forgetting to learn from your mistakes.

Preparations

Dear Friends,
well, its just 24 hours until our big health camp gets started up in the village. We are actually doing examinations on each child in our village and hoping to use that data to monitor our progress in helping these children over time. This sounds simple, but it actually takes a great deal of logistical work, like making out the forms, finding the doctors, providing food, transportation, and lodging to the staff, etc. Its quite an undertaking!
Anyway, I got a great deal of help from an unexpected source today. There is a doctor at the children's hospital who I called up last night to see if he might help me make a form for examining the children. Dr. Nayeem is a big, bearded Muslim man who wears very traditional, flowing clothes, and a prayer cap. He is as orthodox as they come, and I admit that he can strike a fairly intimidating pose for a person who comes from a country at war with people in similar attire! But, Dr. Nayeem is in fact an incredibly gentle, kind man who took a great deal of time and effort to help me help these children. not only did he help me design the form, but he also helped me purchase all the necessary drugs and gave me some really solid advice. In addition, he made me lunch! So once again, my assumptions are proven wrong. This is certainly no new thing.

Off to School!

dear friends,
I apologize for leaving you all in the lurch for a few days. I recently returned from a trip to our village project in the district of Mymensingh. Only about 150 miles away from Dhaka, it is an arduous journey involving hot, crowded, dirty public buses and a road system choked with cars, trucks, motorcycle rickshaws, rickshaws, human and animal powered vehicles of various kinds, and pedestrians. Once off the road and moving along the dirt track that leads to our village,however, you come to realize the beauty of this country. Green fields of rice paddies are broken intermittently with stands of trees where simple clusters of houses are laid out as little courtyards. From these trees hangs fruits of various types, mangos, papayas, coconut, and the large, spiky jackfruit.
After about 10 minutes on this road, a large, white, concrete structure with red trim comes into view. It stands as the largest building in the village and juts into the rice paddies. This is the Susan Hubbard School and Children's Home, a project of The Basic Needs Program. For those who don't know, early in 2009 a village donated land in order for us to build this primary school for its children. In the space of that year, a 3,0000 square foot structure was constructed, containing 4 classrooms and 2 rooms for orphans (which we hope to adopt in the near future). In march of this year, we opened our doors to 34 primary school students from the village with no other access to education.
All this I knew, but I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Upon entering the school, however, I saw rows of students sitting at neat desks, in red and khaki uniforms each drawing some figures in their notebooks (I had interrupted art class). Upon my entrance, all the kids stood up, and I was overjoyed to see them perform the Bangladesh National Anthem and a small dance for me. So it was for real, we had actually built a school!
There is so much we want to do with this building. So far, we are only using 2 classrooms, so there is tons of space available for a clinic, the orphanage, and various agricultural and economic promotion programs. We are in our infancy, but it feels like we have at last made a first step towards improving the lives of the people of this poor village.

Realities

MCV Hospital, the institution connected to my medical school in Richmond, is known affectionately as a "knife and gun club." In medical lingo, this means that our hospital is where all the worst cases and worst patients come to be treated, where medicine is at its most raw. I have heard life at MCV described as being like a MASH episode, and there are certainly lots of challenges to be faced in a place like this. But the stuff I saw in just two hours at Dhaka Children's Hospital today was like nothing I have ever seen before. I will warn our readers that the stories I am about to relate may be considered graphic.

I met my attending physician at the entrance to the "new" wing of the hospital, which served as a general pediatric ward. In this room were 20 beds, each filled with a child, a mother, and various relatives. A few nurses in white outfits milled around. The children ranged in age from newborns to perhaps 10, there being no good facilities to care specifically for any age group. Our first patient was a quiet girl at the end of the hall. She recently had been given a provisional diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. I asked the attending what her chances would be, and he told me that they should be good, but that in these conditions the risk of nosocomial (hospital-derived) infection was high and that facilities were limited to treat her. Thus, her survival chances would drop significantly.

Another child, an adorable nine year old girl named Munni, who looked to be in good health, came in with the same condition. After we examined her and moved on, her caretaker came up to me, and in very limited English told me that he wasn't her father but her uncle. Her parents were very poor, he explained, and could not pay for her treatments. All I could say was "dookidoh (sorry)."

A similar situation occurred when a man came up to our attending physician with a clear plastic envelope containing the health records of his son. I assumed that he was trying to confirm his treatment regiment, but after he left, the attending told me that the man's son had died a number of months back, and that he was trying to figure out payment of his bills.

But beyond the overcrowded conditions, the lack of clean floors or proper sanitation, the thing which most affected me was the story of a dying child. I was standing in the ward when a mother came rushing in, carrying her child. The child was obviously in distress and had already been intubated (a tube placed in the trachea to promote clear breathing). The problem was that no ventilator was attached to the tube, and the mother was feeding the child oxygen only through a mask. Blood smeared the child's face. The nurse came and adjusted a few things. The doctor came and made a few hurried directives. The mother sobbed hysterically. When he seemed to have a moment, I asked the doctor, "shouldn't the intubated child be in the ICU (intensive care unit)?" Yes, he explained, it should, but there was no facilities for a child this size and no beds in the ICU. There were no monitors, no ventilator, no way to accurately monitor vital signs. "This child will die," the doctor told me. I asked the diagnosis, and he replied "Tuberculosis." TB is a highly contagious disease, and so I asked him, "shouldn't this child be isolated?" "Yes," he responded, "but we have no facilities." So a dying child would be left in an open ward with twenty other children which might also become infected.

I write these things without trying to implicate anyone. In the two short hours I spent in this ward, I came to deeply respect the doctors who treated these children. They work incredibly hard against nearly impossible odds. But they have few facilities and next to no support. In the end, children die needlessly. Perhaps the situation can be summed up in the tired eyes of a young doctor just coming off a long night shift in which he had sole care of 80 children (no, that is not a typo). It was a good night, he explained, "only one child died."

Humanity Throughout

Dear friends,
VCU School of Medicine (shoutout!!) was kind enough to lend me a video camera for my travels to Bangladesh this summer, and I have been trying to take full advantage of it by shooting some documentary-style clips from the slums here in Dhaka. So today I went to the slums to interview some people about life in this crowded, dirty, impoverished place. What I found was a love story! I randomly knocked on someone's door (not surprising to anyone who knows me) and asked if I could interview them. In this tiny, cramped room were a young couple. Despite their poverty, their room was decorated with pictures of some of the seven wonders of the world, as well as a color wedding photo showing a young bride in a bright red sari (the traditional color of marriage). Both were about my age, and had been married for two years. Most Bengali marriages are arranged, but this pair had both been residents of this slum, and both worked at the same garments factory. they had undertaken what is referred to in Bangladesh as a "love marriage." Their story reminds me, that despite poverty and material want, there is always humanity, and rarely are human beings are rarely without love.

Areas of Light

Dear Friends,
Today I saw a real reason to hope for the future of Bangladesh. In the past, I have often criticized the Bangladeshi medical system. Medical practitioners are overworked, and underpaid, faced with huge shortfalls in funding and materials while having to deal with an ever-increasing population. The strain on physicians and nurses can often come out in ways that hurt patients, directly or indirectly. However, today, as I toured the pediatric clinic at BIRDEM Hospital in the city, I saw something which I didn't expect: hope and humanity in the face of pain and suffering. Dr. Lisa, an attending pediatrician, introduced me to her brand-new clinic, meant to serve the needs of pediatric diabetes patients. Each patient referred to this new clinic gets free access to a range of services, including lab tests, consultations with doctors, and even diabetic counseling from especially trained educators! I watched as the doctors sat down with each child, reviewed their health histories, and discussed treatment plans with them. I was amazed at how gentle and kind these overworked physicans and counselors were. When I expressed my sentiments to Dr. Lisa, she said simply "I tell them that when they treat children, they must become like children." God Bless you doctor Lisa, not least of all for reminding me never to make generalizations until I know all the facts!
The pictures above are from the in-patient pediatric ward of the hospital. I believe every one of these kids suffers from diabetes. Enjoy!

Reminders

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Dear Friends,
I have found that its always a good idea to reconnect with our reasons for doing what we do. The lion's share of my time with Basic Needs is taken up by fundraising, meetings, events, and administrative issues. I am happy to do these things because they are important and necessary, but they are not the reason why I started Basic Needs. Basic Needs was born out of passion and is sustained by that passion. Today I decided that it would be a good idea to pay a visit to the slum that most of our children in Dhaka are from. Its relatively small, perhaps a thousand people, and sits over a kind of marsh. The houses are of tin and bamboo, and are raised to prevent flooding. Water sources are from an open pipe, and latrines are unhygenic and shared by several families. Paradoxically, these conditions are actually much better than what many of these families faced in the rural areas, where food and work are scarce in the face of massive overpopulation. The issues in the slums are issues of public health (too many people in too small a space with too few resources), but more importantly, they are issues of social fracture. Unlike in the villages, where families are very close-knit, once one enters the big city, much of the social support system is lost. Many of these homes are run by single mothers, either widowed, abandoned, or separated from their husbands for reasons of work.

However important these overarching issues are, it is impossible not to be inspired by the spirit of the children that swarm about you, wanting a picture or to say hello. These children could be the next doctors, lawyers, engineers, politicians, and teachers of their nation, if given the chance. I don't believe in the myth of the "happy poor," (Gandhi rightly stated that "poverty is the worst form of violence"), but I do believe in the strength of the human spirit to survive despite hardship. I hope you enjoy the pictures I have posted above, and that they give some glimpse into the inner beauty of these kids.

P.S. This post is dedicated to a little boy named Babi (or Babu). When I was running this morning, I passed by a child on the street. His clothes were in tatters and he had a begging bowl under his arm. This is not uncommon, but I noticed tears streaming down his face. I stopped and tried to find out what was the matter, but my incredibly poor Bangla (the local language) prevented me from finding out the problem. He walked away, and I ran on. When I went back later with a Bengali friend, we couldn't find him.

Comparisons

Dear friends,
well, I'm just finishing my third day in Dhaka. I apologize for missing you yesterday, but jet lag has been catching up with me at weird times and I haven't quite gotten myself on a set schedule. All is well here in Dhaka. The thing you learn in life (and this is especially true in Bangladesh), is that success is about connections. If you know the right people, you can accomplish amazing things. I have been blessed to know some incredible people in this country who have a wealth of experience, knowledge, and resources to help me in my work. Actually, most of what I do in Bangladesh involves sitting around with people, sharing tea or a meal, and figuring out how we can work together for a certain purpose. In that spirit, the last couple of days has been taken up mostly with reconnecting with these people.

An interesting experience happened to me on my first day back in-country. I saw a child, no more than 10, pushing a rickshaw towards its destination. Child labor is something which I have seen countless times in this country, but to see it for the first time after my return was a sobering experience. We, as members of a "developed" society, often think of such a reality as a foreign problem. There are no children in America working in sweatshops or on the streets, thank God. But I'm reminded of the stories my grandfather used to tell of growing up with a widowed mother during the depression. He, like the child I saw the other day, labored in order to survive. That was only two generations back. We are not so far away from these problems as we might think.

P.S. this post is dedicated to Sujan, a little boy I met while driving on the road today. The car was stopped, and he and his little friend came up, weaving through traffic, to sell me some flowers. I gave them each a little money, and refused the flowers. He seemed to want me to take it anyway. I then asked them there names and spoke to them briefly in what little Bangla I know. They smiled broadly and seemed happy to get the attention from a foreigner. The the car drove on, pushing through traffic.

here at last!

dear friends,
I have to apologize in advance for the brevity and disorganization of this post. I've been working off an average of 3-4 hours sleep for several days, and just travelled 10,000 miles, so please forgive me for that! anyway, I have arrived in dhaka, and its absolutely great to be here. My bangladeshi host mother cried when I arrived. She always talks to her friends about her "son in America who is studying to be a doctor," without mentioning that I am a 6 foot 3 inch white man and she is less than 5 feet tall and of quite different stock! I asked her is she was so sad to see me, but the joke kinda fell flat!
anyway, I have gotten to see some of the kids as they were on their way to school. They all look great in their little uniforms and backpacks, just brimming with confidence. A lot of them are at the top of their class, and are making great strides. One amazing thing was to see the change in Rozi. Rozi is a girl of about 13 who has been with Basic Needs since the beginning. In 2007, she was this scrawny little girl who helped out around our apartment. Today, I looked at the face of a vibrant young adolescent, with curves and even a bit of fat! Its great to see her develop into such a nice young woman.
Anyway friends, I will depart for now. Meetings, events, and a bit of rest are in the works!
peace,
richard

Baselines

dear friends,
I am in transit! I spent my afternoon and evening in the hallowed halls of JFK international, waiting for my connecting flight across the ocean. It actually wasn't as boring as one might think. A large TV was broadcasting the world cup, and it was a lot of fun to be a part of a truly international, bound together by an enjoyment of sport. By the way, england plays the US tomorrow (saturday) at 2:30pm. USA!! USA!!
I wanted to take this chance to set a framework from which to understand the situation of disenfranchised children in Bangladesh. Whenever I take friends to Bangladesh, I make a point to first take them to the slums, the hot, dirty, diseased, and crowded squatter settlements where most of our children lived before Basic Needs. It is only after one gains a perspective of the extremity of poverty from which are children are derived that one gains a realistic understanding of how far these kids have come. Indeed, in the next few weeks, I will be relating a lot of stories about miraculous transformations, of the little ones being brought from despair to joy, from deprivation to prosperity. As humans, we love these kinds of stories. It is exactly why Slumdog Millionaire was such a smash hit. We got to see a deserving young person transform his fortunes, and in the process, gain wealth, and the girl. What could be better?!
Though inspirational, these stories can leave us with a certain degree of complacency. Sure, things are bad for these "slumdogs," but look at how happy it ends up for them! Things can't be so bad! In fact, dear friends, things are worse than bad. For every child that is helped by Basic Needs, hundreds and even thousands of children in Bangladesh are falling through the cracks. One estimate puts the number of street children living in the city of Dhaka alone at 250,000, a population roughly the size of Richmond, Virginia. And this is one city in one country in the developing world. Every day, the malnutrition ward of Dhaka Shishu (Children's) hospital is packed with children dying from no other disease than a lack of food. Every night around my apartment in Dhaka, children huddle under buildings or sleep in the open air, with no one to care for them. Each day for these children is a day lost securing both their future and the future of their struggling nation. Most of these children will face a future little brighter than those of their parents before them, and perhaps worse.
This is the situation. We have identified the problem. But how do we find a solution? What's more, where do we even begin to tackle such a massive issue? What I hope to communicate in future posts, is that the secret to doing great things is to start by doing something, anything. By thinking small and acting small, we can do our part to change the sometimes vicious world in which we live.
peace friends

About to leave!

dear friends,
Its now T-23 hours till I leave from Norfolk airport on my journey. I do feel the need to recommend NOT flying on delta airlines, as the extra $25 I am spending on a single checked bag has reminded me! Other than discovering hidden fees, yesterday proved highly productive and even refreshing. I met with Doug Smith, head of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, who happens also to be chairman of Heifer International, one of the largest agricultural charities in the world. Who knew such large players in the development world live right here in Richmond? I must say that our conversation was enlightening in that he asked piercing, pointed questions meant to challenge me and my approach to the Work of Basic Needs. So often in the past three years, we have taken on projects because they arrived at our doorstep. A child needs a home, we provide one. A village needs a school, we build one. These are great, but as we grow and mature as an organization, we need to start creating a strategic plan, setting goals, and monitoring our progress. In Doug's words, I "need to decide if this is a hobby" or my calling in life. No beating around the bush here! But that is exactly what we need to hear sometimes.

Right after our meeting, I walked the few blocks from Shockoe Bottom to Capital Ale House, a favorite hang-out of medical students. There I met up with Bill Loman, a reporter from the Times Dispatch who had heard about our project through a connection at VCU School of Medicine (Shoutout!). He is doing a feature piece on Basic Needs, as well as the current push to involve medical students in our work. We had a long and surprisingly deep conversation about the origins of Basic Needs. Typically, reporters want nuts and bolts, dates, facts, timetables. Bill wanted to know what drives me, what makes me want to go around the world and do those things, what pushes me forward. I have to take my hat off to him for that!
anyway, the next time I write you dear friends, I will either be in Bangladesh or in transit. see you on the other side!
P.S. please allow me to apologize in advance for my spelling and grammer. In the world of instant messenger, I have learned some very bad habits. If I have the time and energy, I will try to go back and correct my mistakes! thanks again for reading!

Preparations

Good morning friends,
These last few days have been somewhat surreal, packing up the necessities of life in order to embark on a now well-worn path. As most of you know, this is not my first trip to Bangladesh (in fact, its my 5th), and it feels more like going to visit relatives and old friends than going to visit a foreign country. Even so, the prospect of a 10,000 mile journey over three continents is nothing to take lightly, so I have been gradually collecting electronics, clothes, shoes, meds, presents, etc, in order to avoid a mad rush the night before.
I hope that those reading this blog can get a glimpse into my experience of Bangladesh, an experience quite different than most tourists. I hope that in the following days and weeks you can come to see the everyday lives of fellow human beings, different in appearance and culture, but fundamentally the same as the person living down the street. though a desperately poor nation, Bangladeshis have similar hopes and fears to our own. They want to feed their children, send them to school, and give them a future. That is also the goal of Basic Needs.
So stay tuned dear friends
Peace