I am so behind on my posting. But then I assume that none of you spending your waking moments counting down to my new post or dream about all the wonderful adventures I am having in Bangladesh. Sunday was our last hectic day with BRAC. We went into the rural villages and viewed their Ultra-Poor Grant program. As opposed to microfinance loans, the grant programs gives the villagers enough money to buy a few chickens, goats, or a cow. Which they can then make money off of. Its pretty impressive to see how drastically it is able to change these women's lives. We started out at a meeting, then went around to houses. The first house was a women that has been in the program for a few months. She used her grant to get two goats and a chicken. She sells the goat milk and the eggs for profit and now has babies goats that she will evntually sell, yes I got to play with the baby goats. They are sooooooooooooo cute. I want one, except it will eat my shoes and that would make me sad. But up until that point I really really want one. Then we met with a women that had been in the program for a few years. She started out with one baby cow, which she raise and sold. With the profits she bought two cows and some land. And has continued on until she was able to buy her son a rickshaw for him to work. She has six children and believes that she is in her 20s, but seems closer to 70. There is no national registry so most people have no idea how old they actually are. Its even more abiguious in the rural areas. I also think that I am blending stories here, but you get the general idea which is good enough. I am fairly certain BRAC controls the world. Or at least Bangladesh. They have programs in dairy, handicrafts, microfinance, health. I don't think there is anything they can't do. I feel like they enable the government to continue being ineffective and corrupt, but I assume that they will eventually take that over as well. Then it will just be one unified body running everything in an efficient manner. For the most part, BRAC seems to be a fairly clean organization that truly looks out for the people of Bangladesh, but I could easily see them getting carried away and becoming completely corrupt and self serving. I'm sure interesting things happened today as well, but too much time has really passed to remember right now.