Adventures in Dhaka

We've been in Dhaka for a couple of days touring other Universities and organizations we might collaborate with or set up internships for our students. Part of it is also to advertise our University and make our existence known.
First, it was an adventure getting here--we took two vans instead of a big bus b/c the traffic in Dhaka is unbelievable (I can try and describe it to you, but you will never really understand....) so they wanted smaller vehicles to drive us around the city. Our van got a flat tire and we had to sit around in a small roadside town/village while it was fixed. Needless to say it was quite the spectacle for the locals. They just stood around us in big groups and stared and stared at us. Once it was finally fixed, we got back on the road only for the tire to explode about five minutes later. We were close to our destination at that point and already running about two hours late b/c it was also monsoon-raining that morning, so we had to drive slower than expected. So the other van came back to pick us up--I don't know what ever happened to that first van and its driver--it was a rental and I have a feeling we might have just left him there to fend for himself. Thank goodness for cell phones! Even people in remote tiny villages have them!
On the way to Dhaka, we stopped in Comilla at BARD (Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development). It is a beautiful campus with lots of greenery and it was nice and quiet.
Here's one of me camouflaging into the jungle background:
And one of some of our group chatting with BARD staff--this cafeteria area had beautiful art and murals;
BARD has training and education courses for thousands of people each year in rural development activities. They've been around for about 40 years and also take credit for the first micro-lending projects.
Then we finished that day (Saturday) with another few hours in the van until we arrived in Dhaka.
We began our touring of Dhaka on Sunday with a visit to Dhaka University. It's a huge school with around 40,000 students. Here is a photo of the first building that was built for that university in 1920. It's a Mughal architecture with red bricks, which the British were fond of.
This photo is like 1/20th of the building--it sprawled over the size of a city block or two and now houses the Faculty of Science (here Faculty means 'college' or 'school' and they have all the usual departments of physics, chemistry, microbiology, etc.) On a humorous side note, the physicists here are also nerdy and disheveled looking which was comforting to see that they're the same worldwide! The Faculty of Science have three women as heads of departments out of five total and the Dean of the Faculty is also a woman (and a chemist!) They also have around 35 or 40% women professors as well.
Then we went to meet with the Prime Minister's Office where we met his principal Secretary. no cameras allowed, but he reaffirmed the government's support of AUW and for our work , which was very nice to hear. I think our founder and acting Vice-Chancellor has a lot of high level connections--he appeared out of nowhere for that meeting and then vanished again immediately afterwards.
Later that same day we met with the Vice Chancellor of Dhaka University and his wife on the lawn of their house on campus. Here's a photo of him showing us the beautiful grounds, gardens and landscaping:
He was a very suave character and his wife was very beautiful. they gave us all gifts from the university--little purses with the Dhaka University logo and the men got ties.
Yesterday (Monday) we visited BRAC University. BRAC started in 1960 as an NGO, it stood for Bangladesh Rural Advancement Center and has subsequently branched out to a huge number of areas--there's a BRAC bank, and the University started in 2000. It was great to meet with their faculty and deans because they're also a new university, so we had great conversations about the challenges of beginning a new institution. It was also inspiring to see how far they have come in just 10 years, so maybe AUW can accomplish great things also! Their school of public health is really extensive and productive because they can use the BRAC NGO as a 'research lab' and they require all their students (not just public health students) to spend six months in a rural setting to remember that population in all their future work. BRAC is now the world's largest NGO and the acronym no longer stands b/c they have so many different and varied programs.

We also visited ICDDR,B (International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh). They're also a very old and well-established NGO that began doing work on diarrhea diseases and have since grown into many varied programs such as nutrition, maternal and neonatal health, HIV/AIDs, chronic diseases, etc. Their first office was on a floating barge because so much of Bangladesh is flood plains and in the 1960s when they began it was easier to reach more of the population that way than on roads.
It was interesting to tour their labs--they looked quite modern actually--and meet with their scientists. They do a lot of cutting-edge research and surveillance on emerging diseases, too. They publish in international peer-reviewed journals, and are a very well-respected organization. They have a HUGE hospital that is free for everyone and a quick walk-through of their short stay ward was hugely depressing, as it was full of tiny, skinny crying babies and their poor mothers.
For dinner, we met with a British former entrepreneur who is active in establishing responsible tourism in Bangladesh and they seem quite good. So now if anyone wants to come and visit, we can basically design our own tour--ruins, beaches, jungle hikes--you name it and Bangladesh has it. No one knows we do, though so it truly is one of the last unexplored destinations. This photo of a very old tourism poster was actually hanging at BARD, but it fits better here:
Here's final photo of two very "dhaka" things--horrific electrical wiring and insane traffic jams. It makes the city of Chittagong look calm and quiet (which is not). Imagine every one of these cars honking and this electrical wiring running on every street.
We have two more days here, including a visit to the national museum, so I'll have more info forthcoming!