I arrived home late Friday night - December 14, after twenty two glorious and life changing days in Bangladesh - a country that is emerging from being the poorest major country in the world and headed to be the first country that will totally overcome the bonds of poverty. Bangladesh is a country that is constantly being ravaged by weather disasters - with typically 40% of the country being flooded each year, hurricanes - like Sidr that killed over 5,000 people (much less than a hurricane in the 1990's that killed over 100,000 people) and famines. The country has experienced deep corruption at the highest levels of government - with their two previous leaders now being in jail. They may be on a positive path with currently an excellent caretaker government a non-corrupt and strong/influential army, ... read more

I am pleased to be back in Dhaka where I just had a great Steak Diane American style dinner at Brac Restaurant in the BRAC Center which also houses the BRAC Inn where I have returned and will stay one night before getting on a plane mid-day tommorow for my very long trip (24 hours travel time) trip back to good old California. I guarantee you - I will see all of the many things that we have in the U.S. far differently than I ever have. I was due to have a series of meetings with the BRAC top management this afternoon - but these all got pre-empted by a top management meeting that had been called. Hurricane Sidr has become very demanding of their time and resources. During my first half of the trip ... read more

My tour of Dhaka was yesterday, Friday - the Muslim holy day - and one of my requests of Rena, my wonderful guide (more on Rena in my next blog) was to attend a service at a Mosque. Rena, like 85% of Bangladesh people is Muslim and I was very pleased to tell him of how I have so many wonderful Muslim friends in Santa Barbara, about our Interfaith Initiative and how pleased I am to be helping my Muslim friends obtain aproval to build a Mosque one mile from my home. Rena and I agreed that it is the manifestation of our religions and how we treat and care for one another that is really important. We agreed that most of the people in both of our religions are very good people and within each ... read more

The faces of the borrowers provide the most impactful reflection of why we are here and are drawn to serve. The Pastor in our group had shot a particularly impactful set of photos. They were close up with of the faces of the women. My shots had not been closeups until then. The attached photos (from last week) started to capture that view - but I hope to do a much better job as I go to the field with BRAC. There is much to show and share about relative to the village experience. Because I did not have access to Internet and because I would also have been too tired to blog after returning to the Branch office where we stayed - I have not yet been able to share this aspect with you. It ... read more

Twenty very tired participants from all over the world ended a glorious ten days together at Grameen Dialogue. It started by meeting Professor Muhammad Yunus and ended with our sharing our plans for the future, expressing our gratitude to all of our wonderful hosts at Grameen and telling about what each of us is planning do do with what we learned. I ended my sharing by telling them that one of the reasons I was there was to honor them and what they have done for the world. We toured the museum filled with the many many awards that Professor Yunus recieved and the highlight of the day was being able to see close up the Nobel Peace Prize that he and Grameen Bank received. Enjoy some of the sights.... read more