Today we had the unexpected pleasure of a distribution in another Santal tribal village. We didn’t find out about this until all the luggage was packed for our travel/rest day . . . too late to change into our Sleeping Children shirts. Onward we went.
The site was a great choice as it was near a church and this compound also included a medical clinic where about 40 people appear daily.
The setup was no problem but again the road did not accommodate the bedkit delivery truck. No problem for our partners. They hired a flatbed pulled by farm vehicles to shuttle the bedkits from the truck to the site.
After completion we visited two houses belonging to people in the village. The houses are constructed of mud with walls a foot thick. This makes a warm home for winter and a comfortable cool home for summer. There’s an interior courtyard where the cooking is done, the chickens roam and, in one case, a cow had her own space.
Later today we stopped at the imposing Rangpur Museum. This was originally built in the early 20th century for the royal family who were emigrating from the Punjab. The owner was a jeweller by profession. After Partition the building was taken over by the government of Bangladesh.
We were amused to find that we had to pay a foreigner's entrance fee of 400 Takas but locals pay only 30 Takas and Indian tourists pay 200 Takas!!
Inside we weren't allowed to take photos but we saw some stained glass windows, carved columns and 15th century black stone scriptures engraved in Arabic and Persian as well as many terra cotta pieces found during archeological digs.
The gardens also had some colourful flowers.
We left, having enjoyed our brief but interesting visit, to resume our journey back in time for supper. Thus ended another successful day with only 2250 bedkits remaining to be distributed.
Team Bangladesh, 2024
Rotary Club of Dhaka 🇧🇩 and SCAW 🇨🇦