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AHAN President, Emily Busch Visits Bangladesh.
Rice, Balls,
Gloves and Bats Hit a Home Run with Orphans in Dhaka!
July 21st-July
28th, 2006
In July 2006, AHAN President Emily Busch traveled
to Bangladesh to personally follow up on a rice donation
project with the Dharmarajika Orphanage in Dhaka, Bangladesh
initiated by Homma Kancho on his first visit to Bangladesh
in February 2006. Homma Kancho also took a time out from
his visit to Turkey (See July-Sept Activity Report Homma
Kancho Visits Turkey 7-06) to come to Dhaka in support of
this project. On the schedule for Emily and Homma Kancho
was a visit to the Dharmarajika Orphanage and visits to the
Paris International School to deliver 4000 lbs of rice, 200
lbs. of school supplies and baseball equipment and teach
all the children a new game or two!
The following report was written by Emily following
her week long visit to this land of true heart.
We shall overcome…
Written by Emily Busch
AHAN President
I woke up early at the hotel, even after arriving at
12:30 am. after 40 hours in transit. I opened the window to
peer out into this new world, and the first sights and sounds
of Dhaka washed over me. The city was already bustling, and
the streets were jammed with people and to my surprise thousands
of bicycle powered rickshaws! I was to learn later from our
host Maji (Sarkar Almaji Al-Kamal) that there
were over 300,000 rickshaws in Dhaka alone. I soon found out
that from that day forward we would be traveling by rickshaw
almost everywhere we went!
Maji, first took me to meet his family before we set
out on our tasks at hand. The Sarkar family was gracious and
warm and made sure that I felt as if I was part of the family.
We were on a mission. I had arrived first
to lay some of the ground work for a three-year monthly rice
donation system from AHAN to the Dharmarajika Orphanage. Earlier
this year, after Homma Kancho’s first visit to Bangladesh, Nippon
Kan white-yellow-green belt students had raised funds with
a seminar to start this monthly rice donation project, and
it was my job to put the system in place. With Maji’s
help we were able to set up a banking transfer system to purchase
rice for the donations on a monthly basis. We decided that
500 kilos per month of rice would be an appropriate donation
for AHAN to give to the orphanage, hopefully for the next three
years!
Homma Kancho arrived on Wednesday for a whirlwind visit
to participate in the first rice donation personally for the
Dharmarajika orphanage and to visit the Paris International
School for grade school children.
The first stop was the Paris International School. We
were welcomed to the school with a quite impressive martial
arts demonstration performed in colorful uniforms on a very
hard cobblestone lined playground by the boys in the martial
arts club. Homma Kancho also held an Aikido practice with some
of the boys concentrating on tai sabaki with
agility games and exercises that could be practiced on such
an unforgiving surface!
We moved inside where I had planned to teach
origami and play an association card game. The kids looked
so eager and innocent in their clean starched uniforms as they
packed themselves tightly into one of the classrooms. It must
have been 110 degrees that day and the humidity that day was
high. So much for my beautiful hair-do! We brought with us
that day about 100 lbs of coloring books and school supplies
which we gave to the teachers to use later at their convenience.
We were given flowers, fresh fruit and an amazing gift of song…
After practicing origami together and playing
a card game, the children gathered around their teacher to
sing us a song. They began to sing, in English, all five verses
of “We
shall overcome”.
It seemed unreal to me, standing in this
crowded tiny classroom filled with miniature wooden desks,
surrounded by students and teachers singing together a song
of such poignant meaning thousands of miles and centuries of
history away from the United States. Needless to say it brought
a tear to my eye…
After our visit to the Paris School, we went
to the crowded Dhaka markets following Maji to meet with the
rice vendors to arrange for the rice delivery scheduled for
the next day. We ordered 4000 lbs of rice for this first delivery,
which caused a bit of a stir in the market place. A good day’s
business for the vendors!
The next day we arrived at the markets to
find 24 bags of rice stacked neatly in front of the rice vendor’s
stalls ready for delivery. Maji had hired six flatbed rick
shaws to transport the rice. Each rickshaw was loaded with
four bags of rice which meant that each rickshaw driver was
peddling about 700 lbs of rice each. A very heavy load by any
standard! We set out in a caravan of six flatbed rickshaws
piled high with rice, and three passenger rickshaws ladened
with our crew and about 100 lbs of baseball equipment! What
a sight we were to see as we swerved and maneuvered our way
through the crowded streets of Dhaka, nine rickshaw strong!.
Amazingly we all arrived at the Dharmarajika Orphanage
in one piece! We were greeted by the Dharmarajika staff as
we made our way in procession towards the rice storage facility.
The Dharmarajika Orphanage is also a Buddhist Monastery, and
the monks helped unload the many bags of rice.
The orphanage feeds 500 boys, three times a day, a task
that sounds so daunting it was hard for me to imagine. We were
given a tour of the kitchen that feeds so many mouths each
day, and met the women who work so hard to prepare each meal.
To say the least, I was impressed with their resourcefulness
and dedication.
Before sharing the midday meal in the gracious
company of Ven. Suddhananda Mahathero, High Priest of
the Dharmarajika Monastery and
Chairman of the Dharmarajika Orphanage, Homma Kancho
had a surprise for the boys. BASEBALL!!
Baseball is not a popular game in Bangladesh, where
the game of choice is the game of soccer, but on that day,
the many baseballs, bats and gloves were a great hit as the
boys headed for the playground with their new found toys. The
boys snapped up the bats and balls, and soon there were balls
flying all over the playground area. Homma Kancho did his best
to teach about 200 of the boys how to play baseball, in English,
using bricks as bases. It was a riot! I am not sure the rules
of the game were ever understood that day, but the boys delighted
in hitting and catching and taking turns with the equipment.
We returned to the dining rooms where the boys were
being served their meals and had the special opportunity to
share a meal with the Venerable Suddhananda, his General Secretary
Mr. Sunil Barua and his staff.
The Dharmarajika Orphanage I found to be a place of
peace, a place of joy, and a place of hope. The smiles I saw
there were real, and from the heart and touched my heart in
a way I will not soon forget. I left that day humbled by the
experience.
After Homma Sensei’s departure from Bangladesh
back to Turkey, Maji’s family showed me the sites of
Dhaka and even took me to the countryside to see a bit more
of this wonderful country of Bangladesh. I was really beginning
to feel at home here, and Maji’s family began taking
a special delight in dressing me up in their beautiful native
dress. I was allowed to try on many colorful outfits that I
was to find out they had made for me! Maji’s sister Shanto
even painted one of my feet with henna in an elaborate mosaic
pattern!
It had been quite a week. So many sights,
sounds, tastes and experiences; a whirlwind sampling of a world
so different than my own. I don’t think I have every felt so moved
as I was by the events in those few days. I don’t think
I have ever been given such a wonderful gift as the warmth
and the heart I felt in the people of Bangladesh.
I hope to return soon to Bangladesh soon.
I can’t
wait to see my new found family and friends in Bangladesh again.
Until then…
Emily Busch
AHAN President
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