I’ve been sick for the last couple of days, to the point of being stuck in bed without being able to get up… that’s a lot of time to reflect… 11 months after arriving in Bangladesh, this paradoxical, improbably, impossibly beautiful mess of a country, I still hear the question: “why Bangladesh?”… Except now it always seems to be followed by “why for free?”… I find it to be the least comfortable of questions to answer; my experiences and reasons naturally differ greatly from those of others in my program. Our backgrounds and motivations are difficult to compare, so I often hesitate to respond, lest my answers be taken as a general rule… So why Bangladesh? Because that’s what I was offered. Had I been offered Somalia, Colombia, the Philippines, Laos or Samoa, I would have accepted any of them… someone once told me that if I was serious about working in development and aid, my primary purpose should always be to work myself out of a job… unfortunately, as it stands, the need for help is s
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