Grameen

Bank, right? Mohammad Yunus's microfinance genius has actually expanded to encompass a wireless communications company, too. Most of DCH, myself included, uses GrameenPhone cell phones. Many NGOs in Bangladesh, actually, have for-profit, purely business arms. I read about this before but kind of pushed it aside as in the interesting-little-complication category until I came here and realized how very big these NGO "companies" are. Just the other day, I saw (if I remember right) an advertisement for BRAC (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) tractors.

The past couple of days have been a lot of reading about chlorination and the RAAMO paper. I've learned so much about different water purification methods, wells, filters, pumps, etc. Dick wants us to recreate the RAAMO study using their methods and our data--this should reveal that improved dugwells that are properly chlorinated are safe and not as frighteningly bacteria-ridden as the wells sampled in that study. This will all be written up in a proposal and presented to the two representatives from the World Bank who are visiting later in the month.

I've taken Stat 100. Read: I'm in a little over my head.

But it will come, something will come together as it always does. Once I receive my DEET-containing mosquito repellent that my mom sent (my bottles were thrown away at Heathrow, uncool) I will go to Siradjikhan and Pabna. I'm not being paranoid about the mosquitoes, I promise, though it may seem so. One of Dick's former students here got bitten, fell ill with dengue fever, was incapacitated for a couple of months. Although, as a result, he learned Bangla, met a Bangladeshi girl, and married her! Still, that's not on my to-do list and I do get bitten like no other, which you can testify to if you were with me in North Carolina or St. Louis. Siradjikhan should be early or mid-week, a day trip to check out the pond sand filters, river sand filters, rainwater harvesting, and improved dugwells. I can't wait to see the green countryside, meet the villagers, and see all of DCH's work in practice. Pabna will be after that. It's a six-hour train ride away, and I'll stay for two or three days at least.

Right now, I'm trying to figure out summer plans. It's looking like the options are:
1) San Diego marketing + Santiago UBC
Probably the most sensible decision in every way and I would *love* to go back to UBC and the Bellolios, but I am itching to go to Europe and have my sun-dappled dream of a summer in Spain.
2) Marketing for a non-profit in Spain
I could probably find something, funding is the question.
3) WHO in Geneva
Should be a relatively straightforward application

Advise me. :)

At the same time, I'm hoping to find Harvard funding (retroactively) for Bangladesh so Arsenic Foundation funds can go directly to Indira wells. I will be doing a lot of proposal-writing this month.