First trip to the field

Well I had my first trip to the field as chief of party, which was very exciting. It was nice to be part of the visit not as a visitor but as the host. We had some VIPs from Washington, DC visiting and we were showing them around our sites in Southern Bangladesh.
We flew from Dhaka to Jessore (pronounced joh-shore), which is about a 30 minutes flight from Dhaka. Bangladesh has about 4 airlines that fly domestically and apparently we flew on the most punctual of them, so I was pleasantly surprised with the efficiency and punctuality of our trip.

Jessore is a relatively small town in the division of Khulna with about 30,000 people. The division's main city, Khulna, is about a two hour drive south of Jessore and is where our main office is. We stayed, however, in and around Jessore for this trip. Like most parts of rural Bangladesh, it is predominately agrarian so the countryside consists mostly of rice fields and villages with farms.

 For our VIP guests, we took them to see some of the work we're doing in a few of these villages. Our first stop (pictures below) was a group of women who participate in what we call a 'farmer field school'. This is a new group we are working with near Jessore. We work with these women to teach best practices in kitchen gardens, proper nutrition during pregnancy and poultry rearing. Here we're showing a more efficient way to encourage hens to lay more eggs and our field rep (the guy at the front) is demonstrating how this is done.

The rest of the afternoon went well, though it was very hot! In addition to this farmer field school, we also showed them some home gardens, hand washing stations and a nutrition counseling session that our health extension worker was providing to new mothers in a nearby village. The visitors seemed very happy with how the visit had gone, which of course made us happy too! No problems or delays coming back to Dhaka. So it was a good first trip to one of our divisions!