Trees

…they grow fast here in Bangladesh. These were all planted from relatively small saplings just over two years ago.

a time to build and a time to tear down

After Masud and his family left (see the previous post), the demonstration farm project was re-evaluated. And it was clear that we were not going to learn a lot more with the farm, so it was not worth the effort and expense required to keep it going. So yesterday a team of carpenters came to take it down -- the same team that had put it up only 2 1/2 years ago.

By evening there was only a few concrete pillars standing among the scattered rubble. A sad sight. I know the project was more effort to maintain than it was worth, and the buildings were hastily built, nothing pretty. But the farm had slowly become home to Masud and his family, and slowly become a part of our lives.

Masud

Next to the workshop and guesthouse/office of our Sustainable Technology Center has been a small demonstration and research farm. The idea was that the farmer family would live there rent-free but also use the technology and farming methods our staff recommend. The cash flow from the farm would also help us better understand the economics of our crops and farming methods.

The economic monitoring part was doomed from the beginning. It was in the farmer's advantage to show a loss: the loss would incline MCC staff to help out with free seeds or free straw or other various marginal assistance that was excusable because of the experimental nature of the arrangement. So it was always rather hard to tell how well or badly they were doing. After several threats to leave over the last year, our staff decided not to agree to any more special allowances, so the family finally did leave 2 weeks ago. Their claim of not being able to make a living was a stretch, given that they purchased land in their village and left with several more goats and cows than they came with. And it wasn't a week before they were calling us asking if they could come back.

But thankfully, I wasn't involved in the money issues. So I knew Masud and their family as our most friendly neighbors. It took months before I started to catch on to their thick, coarse village dialect. But we shared many evenings talking with our guards, many hot days working together around the project site. Masud took me out to his village home, and had me over for dinner and iftar and snacks. I patched up more cuts and scrapes on their kids than I can remember. Every afternoon, they brought over fresh milk from their cows. Often when working at my desk, I'd hear a "bhai…" ('brother') and look over to see Masud grinning in between the window bars. I'll miss that big goofy smile.

[Thanks to Joey for these two great pictures.]

The farm had been christened the 'adorsho kamar bari' (Ideal farmstead), so our staff often jokingly referred to Masud as our 'adorsho kamar,' ideal farmer. Ideal or not, Masud was a farmer through and through, a real village man, with no pretense of being educated or sophisticated. One day, when I offered him tea, he told me about how tea was the vice of the cities: "In the cities, a man will sit down at a tea stall and drink one, two, three cups of tea. Before you know it, there's 10 taka wasted!" (10 taka is about 8 cents.) Another day he asked to borrow my phone, but asked me to dial the number for him. While I was dialing, he told me about his brother, the educated one in the family, who knew all about pressing buttons. Other times he would ask me to come along to the local haat (weekly market) -- just to be part of the crowd, and see the wares, which he would describe with big, excited gestures.