Training trip – Bogra

I’ve just come back from a training trip to Bogra, in the north west of Bangladesh.  The training was for resource mobilization and monitoring/evaluation for 15 or so of our partner organisations – to essentially equip them better to deliver their programs on education, health and disaster preparedness mostly.  It was basically all in bangla so the content largely went over my head, apart from the odd word here or there.  I was doing photo and video documentation of the training so at least I could feel useful in some way... 

Unfortunately on the second day I got quite ill with some sort of nasty viral fever which left me largely bedridden for a couple of days, with aching muscles and a temperature.  Just when I was thinking things may be getting better, another disaster struck – while being in a bout of feverish delirium, my camera fell from its bag and my brand new $650 lens broke (or rather ‘bent’, not a good thing for a lens to do)!  I had discovered the low-point of the trip.  

From there things picked up a bit, I started to recover, and I had a nice last night chatting to co-workers and answering various Australia related questions, being the expert representative.

It was ultimately inspiring to meet so many people from different organisations, big and small, that are working at a grassroots level towards poverty alleviation.  I lost track of all their projects - but they gave me hope.  Another positive thing was that I able to make some beautiful photographs.

On the way there:

During a field visit to one of the partner organisations and their village:

During the training at Bogra: