Day 4: Prepare for Village (Gram) Excursion (August 4)

On August 4th, I spent the morning finishing up the basic information session started at the beginning of the week with some more office introduction, all of which were repitative of earlier topics. We were told that the following week we would be going on a week long excursion into an under-developed village, the exact location and details of the trip would be discussed during a meeting after lunch.  I was excited about the opportunity but a little apprehensive as well.  I had lunch with a few of my co-interns at a nearby diner with some very tasty food and amazing Lassi, which is a yogurt based drink with rose water.

After lunch we were briefed on the excursion.  We would depart Dhaka on Sunday morning to a village called ShorShodi located in the district of Comilla.  The trip was to last the entire week, returning on Thursday evening.  This excursion was intended to provide an in depth, hands-on observation of Grameen Bank's bottom line operations.  I was grouped with two other interns, David from France and Hamza who attends Emory University in the United States.  During the trip, we would be under the care of the Manager of the Grameen Bank Center of ShorShodi who was responsible for educating and training us on Center operations and assigning us to various tasks throughout the week.  We were also assigned to formulate surveys and interview questions which was relevant to our research interests.