Working at Concern Universal Bangladesh

I’ve been at my work Concern Universal (or ‘Concern’) for almost two weeks now. It is an incredible organisation which seems to have achieved so much since starting in Bangladesh in 1993 (head office is UK, they have chapters in 12 countries).  They use a strong community empowerment ethic which translates into working with a range of local organisations to build up their capacity to serve their community better – trainings on climate change, disaster management, resource capacity building and so forth.  In the main project I'm working on, there are 67 different partner organisations  57 in Bangladesh and 5 each in India and Nepal.  Every one has a different acronym...!  

During the time so far I’ve been doing mostly reading of reports and other 'desk research' – internal ones to try to find out what other staff are actually doing, and external docs relating to climate change issues and adaptation practices.

The staff are friendly and luckily for me they speak English well.  Quite a few of them sing well too – both my female co-workers have beautiful voices that they spontaneous burst into song with from time to time.

The Dhaka Streets (I)

To indulge in gratuitous stereotypes, anyone who has traveled amongst Asian countries knows the broiling pot pouri streetlife that makes anglo-saxon streetscapes seem like ghost towns.  Dhaka is no exception.

Moving in – Choy house

Today I finally moved into my home-to-be for the rest of the year – called ‘Choy house’  ('choy' is six in Bangla which was its previous number of occupants). It’s a five-bedroom flat at the top of a five story building in the heart of the Gulshan, one of the weathier areas of Dhaka. ‘Wealthy’ here seems to mean a larger polarisation between rich and poor – slick and ostentatious mirrored and pillared white apartments peer down on street sweepers, beggars and dilapidated shacks. The AYAD program, being government-run, has tight security guidelines around where we can live, and most AYADs are in and around this area. This apartment block is on the moderate to medium scale – the rooms are big, the floor and walls are clean, with the added touches of wiring bursting out of the sockets and numerous holes where fans or lamps may once have been. (maybe that’s where the mozzies (mosha) are coming from.  My room has a gorgeous west facing balcony – today the sun set like a glowing orange sinking to kiss Dhaka’s dirty pink horizon.  

 The view from my room

 The room itself!

In Country Orientation

We had two weeks of orientation and various trainings at the lovely Hotel Lake Castle.  The ‘lake’ was somewhat different to the photograph and reminded me more of sewerage filtering ponds.  But apart from this the staff were all very friendly, the rooms spotless, and it was generally a very cushy place to live.  Training sessions were held at the hotel and covered things like security (safehouses, hartals, muggings and the like), living in Dhaka (houses with guards and preferred perimeter walls), health (multiple forms of diahorrea, malaria, dengue fever), and transport (curfew after 8pm).  Perhaps it was aimed squarely at eliminating the Howard’s ‘relaxed and comfortable’ motif. 

The AYAD staff are a dedicated bunch and consisted of Badral the manager and Boby and Raihan running the logistical operations.  These consisted of mainly multiple shopping and tour runs using two vans amongst the crazy Dhaka traffic.  They handled it with aplomb and I was further impressed to know that Boby had pulled it off previously with 17 AYADs last year (including sari shopping, which he diligently took our group on also).

Arrival/Singapore airport

Singapore airport proved an interesting 4hr stopover.  It has a walking tour connecting various small parks, including a butterfly house and sunflower rooftop garden (the latter that was unfortunately moonlighting as a smoker’s garden).  There are various interactive exhibits where you can practice rubbings (the stall was secondarily advertising a paper with green credentials, interesting given the amount of discarded paper it seemed to be generating), and a science learning station. Even fire hydrants were treated with respect. Melbourne airport needs to get its act together.  After six hours in the air, the aircraft starts on a slow circle around a sprawling metropolis, its thousand upon thousand lights burning below.