First Stop, Bangladesh!

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The soldier was tickled when I showed him the photo on my Blackberry.

Posted by Elsa at 7:50 PM

Labels: Bangladesh

Elsa: United States; A year ago I had made the casual remark, "Wouldn't it be nice to someday have seen all of the countries within which Room to Read is establishing libraries and schools?" Little did I expect it would ever happen. We met the RtR country directors from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, and India at a chance meeting in San Francisco the summer after having already visited Laos. We'd observed that these people are, as Dave says, "where the rubber hits the road." They are devoted to the children of their countries and it shows. We were already on board to participate in the trek to Nepal in April 2010. But when Zaki, the Bangladesh country director looked at me warmly over his glasses and asked, "But, will you also come to Bangladesh?" I smiled right back and replied, "Yes." It was at that moment the idea of the "World Tour" was born. One year later we are on our way to Sri Lanka and India, Zambia, South Africa, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. This will be a journal of what we see. The first stop? Bangladesh!