Leading and Learning

My mom arrived today!  She heads home tomorrow, but it’s wonderful to spend some time with her before she goes.  We went shopping, and I bought new stuff for my apartment this fall.  Since I’ve been here, when I’ve been shopping I haven’t been very interested, but I broke through that feeling today.  It will be great to be reminded of this trip with functional stuff that I need for my apartment anyway. 

English class is finished for SATHI; I’ll miss my students and their laughter.  Today they sang me some Bengali songs which were fantastic.  The songs were all a little bit haunting with the sounds of the language and melodies.  I was extremely curious about music in Bangladesh;  there isn’t music playing in most public placing and Nancy and Kohima don’t play music at home.  I pulled up iTunes and played some of my favorite songs and so in order to demonstrate Begnali songs, my class sang them too me.  I recorded the last few on my camera and will post that soon.  I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed English class until today (typical).  These past days I’ve kept really busy teaching, going on field visits and talking about the annual report for SATHI and cubical potential of the CWRC office. 

I don’t have as much time to think about stuff, which in some ways I miss, but it is wonderful to be able to do so much each day.  The field visit today included five trips; everyone was excited for the attention and I was excited to be able to see how the PI model was working in action.

The PI model is fantastic.  I would say that the more I see the more convinced I become that it is a practical effective solution, but I’m already sold on it. 

I still felt some dissonance as I took pictures and wrote down stories.  Taking pictures I’m an observer and listening to stories I’m an inquirer and that is still not meshing in my brain.  Add journalist to the list things I don’t want to do for a job. 

Three of my English students are field advisors in the area I visited today.  I got a chance to see them as advisors rather than as students and it was remarkable how that different perspective highlighted their leadership and character.  Taslima is an advisor to an adolescent group and it was wonderful to see her guiding the group.  The girl who was the leader was new, and just a little bit flustered.  As the group leader, she was teaching the lesson, one about personal hygiene.  Taslima gently steered her in the right direction, helping suggest questions to ask and encouraging her. 

The girls in the adolescent group all loved learning; they were eager to share why they thought it was important to learn various lessons.  It was inspiring to me to hear the girls talk about how they had broadened their awareness and how they were now making choices to keep themselves safer and healthier.  

Later, when the girls were sharing about what they liked the most about the group and things they had learned, the group leader was more animated and even shared that she had decided that she wanted to marry after she got her Master’s degree.  If her parents want her to get married sooner, she will disagree with them.  Arranged marriages are the norm in Bangladesh, and even “love matches” go through the parents.   Through the lessons they have learned, the girls are broadening their horizons and becoming aware of their rights. 

In another year, the group will elect a different leader, and another girl will be given the opportunity to develop leadership skills.  Taslima will encourage and support the next girl who becomes the leader in the same way, nurturing the group’s leadership one girl at a time.

SATHI is helping Taslima become a leader and encourager, and Taslima is helping the girls in her group become leaders and encouragers.  With rotating leadership, the small groups become communities of leaders, everyone equal and everyone getting a voice. Group members takes turns leading and following each other.  Because each leader is elected for two years, the leader has time to develop skills and responsibilities; after two years, someone else is given that opportunity.  In this situation where empowering community transformation is the ultimate goal, rotating leadership is extremely important, even if one or two community members are really excellent leaders.  As a small group, people who would not get opportunities to be leaders can have that opportunity.  Sometimes people need to be challenged in order to grow and transform.  Part of being a leader in this community development is following and supporting other group members as leaders of the group for the growth of all. 

I had the opportunity to visit five different places on the field visit today, but I will have to talk about them some other time.  This past week has been super busy and this weekend is pretty full visiting with my mom and spending some quality time working on SATHI’s annual report and writing up stories about all the people I’ve been able to visit.