Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

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The girls in particular are very proud of their uniforms. In some cases they will be the best clothes they own.

 

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This is Sahara Beghum. When young she was the village beauty and that has scarcely diminished. You can clearly see the Arabic ancestry. Nirmal was very much in love with her. At one point he had to rescue her from her husband's family. They lived a hundred miles away, and had her confined in a mosquito infested para (sort of a village compound), where she fell seriously ill with malaria... Nirmal bravely went to her rescue (they could easily have killed him) and returned with her to the village. She was heavily pregnant at the time. Later, her husband rather sheepishly turned up and settled down with her. They were so poor that they slept on the ground on thin mats. I eventually had to buy them a bed, though it scarcely fitted in their tiny mud hut. .She is an expert seamstress.

 

 

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All of the women decided wanted photographs of themselves wearing their best saris and insisted I joined them. Poor me.

 

 

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Mohammed Yunus is the founder of “Micro-Finance”, which he began in 1976 and led to the founding of the multi-billion-dollar Grameen bank, which supports millions of women in Bangladesh and West Bengal with tiny loans that make all the difference to their ability to make a living for their families.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 30, 2013 by alanna

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He and the Grameen Bank won the Nobel Prize, but he is more famous for having appeared in an episode of the Simpsons

 

 

http://www.theworld.org/2010/07/muhammad-yunus-lisa-simpson/

 

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I met him once, sort of. Well, in December 2007 we shared a glance across a crowd of people where he evidently mistook me for a photo-journalist. Not much of a connection really.

 

I’d forgotten all about it until I read a review of Les Miserables, in which the writer said that Hugh Jackman was a big supporter of charities and in particular a friend of Mohammed Yunus.

 

 

 

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Last year, Hugh Jackman travelled to Cambodia and Ethiopia to see and learn about micro‐economic development.

 

 

It’s long‐term, it’s about giving communities a future, and that’s a powerful thing.

 

When you are spending time with people in their communities you see first‐hand the dramatic effects that certain programs have on people and their families. Then of course you see the ripple effects that this has for the entire community. I remember very clearly one woman receiving a loan for the first time in her life. Finally she had the chance to get ahead. I spent time with her family, and got to know about her life, and then also saw the broader work going on in the community.

 

When communities are empowered, the effects can be far‐ reaching and quite astounding.

 

The story of Dukale, who I met in Ethiopia, is truly one of the most inspiring stories I’ve come across in all my life. He has five children and grows coffee on a small farm. With help from World Vision he has installed a methane gas converter so the gas from his two goats and cow powers the stove he cooks with and the lights he reads by. Most importantly, it also powers a roadside café he operates to sell coffee to make extra income. He can now look after the day‐to‐day expenses of his family and

save for the future. Dukale has inspired me and my family to look at our lives and consider what we could change in our world to reduce our footprint.

 

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Just as the smell of baking bread led Proust to a cascade of memories and his magnum opus, Remembrance of Time Past., I found myself remembering that Tuku – who I knew as mischief when she was a child , a Muslim child - wanted to be a dancer, a Hindi dancer, and that Hogulkuria, a Christian village, where she now teaches Hindi dance to Moslem children, was very, very poor.

 

Mohammed Yunus walked into Hogulkuria on 30th December 2007 like Christ riding on the back of a mule on Palm Sunday, feted by crowds.

 

Swallowed up by adoring crowds, a troupe of local village girls trained by Tuku performed a traditional Hindi dance of welcome.

 

More of which later.

 

 

Edited March 30, 2013 by alanna