Cox's Bazaar Training

About a week after Dad left, my project team at Concern Universal Bangladesh organised 5 days of training for partner organisations.  The training was part of the climate change and disaster risk reduction capacity building project, and comprised a few different sessions, one on proposal writing, one on learning and evaluation, and other on principles and philosophy of Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction (some info here).Myself and my colleague Kanika developed the proposal writing module, but this largely got delivered by our unit head Hamid.  Most of the participants were founders/executive directors of their organisations, which ranged from tiny to medium/large size, similarly there was a vast difference of experience in the room which was challenging from the trainer's perspective. 

Everyday after the session would end the participants would generally change into board shorts (for the males, the females didnt have this option and remained in sari's generally) and hit the beach, seemingly becoming teenagers again and running up and down taking hundreds of photographs.  After all, we were in Cox' Bazaar, THE premiere tourist destination in Bangladesh, which seemed to mean vast amounts of fairly dubious looking hotels, billboards and stalls selling shells and other nick-nacks, not to mention the highest concentration of hawaiian shirts in the country.  But it quickly became apparent the real reason that people flocked here - the stunning beach, 125 km continuous kilometres of gently sloping sand.  Around twilight the golden light spilled over the water, which through reflections covered the whole place with luminous honey.  Being from Australia I am fairly spoilt with easy beach access, but for most of the Bangladeshis it was their only access to the dreamy space where ocean meets sky.  Interestingly enough I didn't see a single western foreigner during the week I was here, which seemed to indicate the efforts the government was putting into tourism marketing. 

I did get sick with some sort of virus bacteria, alongside a few others... there was a fairly uninspiring day when everyone else went off gallivanting to another more isolated beach and the infirm held close to their hotel rooms and even closer to their toilets and/or handkerchiefs.  Another incident occurred when three of the participants got stuck in a lift... an hour later they were freed, but a brawl almost ensured when angry participants clashed with hotel staff who had seemingly done little to free their friends. 

The trip ended with a looong overnight bus trip back to Dhaka (complete with the obligatory engine failure around breakfast time).  As we crawled back to the capital, and as I felt my sense of space shrinking to matched the crowded streets, I was able to fully appreciated the magical sense of space that Cox's Bazaar had, and the feeling of being around so many people were able to suspend their difficult lives for a few precious days to kick loose in the sand and run around like children.