Thursday, February 5, 2009

Thursday, February 4, 2009-“More Kids than I ever want to have”

I didn’t know what to expect out of the day, but I did solidify what I was going to do the rest of the time I am going to be here.  Without getting into the mundane detail, I am going to be looking at some controls and learning more of the process that is associated with the bank.  I have a lot of little projects on my plate, including a cost-benefit analysis, brochure for potential clients, website set-up (I am more a person on the sidelines here, Rusty is the brains of the operations), automating a bit of the system… etc.  You know, little kids stuff.

Speaking of little kids (David, get your mind out of the gutter), I went to a local stand and got some fried bananas (they are bananas that are rolled in some sort of fila dough and then fried… extremely good… I am trying to eat four right now just so I get sick from them and don’t eat them anymore.  That is beside the point.  I was standing and waiting for the bananas and I sat down for a second.  The children outside were playing and having a great time (again, I am not sure what they were doing, but they were having fun nonetheless). 

On that note, it was quite interesting when reading the book written by Yunus he had talked about his time growing up.  He was just like any middle class kid in Bangladesh.  For fun, he would play guns and watch the people in the market place and comment with his friends regarding them.  Maybe this is what the children do all day long… my thoughts would soon be answered.

One child approached me and asked me for a peso (I respectfully declined, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to give her one, but she was doing it to just approach me, not to ask for a peso).  She giggled and asked me my name.  In that span, the children seemed to have multiplied from one to about twenty.  All of them staring at me, I smiled and said hello in Tagalo (local dialect), “Hello.”  The children laughed and ran around in a frenzy, like I had just shocked them with a taser-gun, there little arms flayling everywhere and voices screaming.  This went on for approximately two minutes and one kid, my unofficial translator, asked me if I thought the little girls were funny (I was laughing)… I said yes and the children laughed (flailing ensued)… After about two minutes the children calmed down and then they realized I was just another person with a different face.  They lost interest rather quickly and went about there business.  I had a great time.

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