Bangladesh09 Saturday
Saturday 19th September
After what by Bangladeshi standards was an uneventful journey we arrived at the Hotel Royal in Khulna in time for lunch. The contrast between this and the Hotel Pashur couldn’t have been starker. This large hotel in the centre of the city had all mod cons even if some of them had seen better days. I had a room on the eighth floor so I had a good view over Khulna, not that there was much to see, just a grey, low-lying sprawl. Below my window was a roundabout with three giant prawns looking down the three roads that met there.
The staff were very friendly. The lift took me to the seventh floor instead of the eighth so I walked the last flight and met a porter. He showed me to my room and noticed the lack of a television. “I will be five minutes sir,” he said and disappeared. Five minutes later there was a knock at the door and there he was with a television. He plugged it in and found a horror film in English for me to watch. I decided to meet the rest of the team in the restaurant instead and ordered fish and chips from the European menu. The restaurant was nice enough and had a huge flat screen TV that was tuned to the BBC news channel. Good to see their getting broadband into Africa. They could do with that here.
Our food orders arrived after a wait of 20 minutes but my fish was well worth the wait. It was delicious and there was plenty of it. The chips were okay, all six of them.
After lunch we met down in the foyer and Faith Willard arrived. Faith is the founder of Home Of Joy, an orphanage supported by Global Care through their child sponsorship scheme. She’s an American and lives in Cape Cod but comes to Bangladesh three times a year and started her work here in 1979 when she heard that it was the poorest country in the world. She’d been interested in children’s work since working at a kids’ camp run by her parents. “We thought it would be a wonderful idea to start a work with mothers so they wouldn’t have to give up their children,” she told us. They offered widows employment, embroidering garments that were then sold back in America. Part of the day’s work was a break where they would study the Bible. This developed into a coffee morning and the work with the children of these women grew. This in turn developed into a ministry for orphans which is now home to 80 children.
To look at, Faith reminded me of your typical American grandma, white hair up in a bun and a kind and wrinkled smile. To many of the children here she is the only mother they have known. It was an impressive set-up with two residential buildings, a school, workshops and a multipurpose hall. We were starting to get used to the welcome children gave us but it was still very special to see 80 children lined up along a path, singing to us as we arrived.
After coffee and cake we had a tour of the grounds. English is taught at the school and many of the children speak it enough for us to be able to talk to them. I met Mack who is 15 years old. He’s been at the orphanage for as long as he can remember and is now studying engineering.
Marg and her sponsored child, Namula
Marg had sponsored a girl here called Namula, whose remaining family took her out of the orphanage for an arranged marriage. We’d hoped we could meet her but had heard that she’d moved away. Arriving at the orphanage Marg found out that the marriage didn’t work out and Namula found herself on the streets and made her way back to the Home Of Joy. It was very beautiful to see them meet for the first time.
We spent the afternoon playing with the children and getting to know some of the staff. They produced an Indian made guitar called a Givson and we had a session swapping songs and feeding a tame myna bird. At six o’clock we joined in with the Bible study where Stu talked about hearing God’s will for our lives and Sohal translated. It was quite a site to see 20 young men sitting on the floor in a circle in a serious Bible study.
We joined Faith for a dinner of American bolognaise and coffee. The whole thing was a strange contrast to John Bose’s work in Horintana. There was nothing wrong with it but I was left with some niggling feeling that I couldn’t put my finger on.
Driving back to the hotel Khulna was still open for business. The markets and street vendors were still busy and rickshaws played chicken with trucks, busses and tuk-tuks. Back in my hotel room the sound of the traffic outside was as if I was on the street. Ah well, city life in Bangladesh. This was what I was there to experience.
