Muhammad Yunus:
2006 Nobel Peace Prize-Winner
Read a Chapter and Pass It On!
Banker to the Poor:
Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty
by Muhammad Yunus
Chapter Four:
The Stool Makers of Jobra Village
In 1976, I began visiting the poorest households in Jobra to see if I could help them directly in any way. There were three parts to the village: a Muslim, a Hindu, and a Buddhist section. When I visited the Buddhist section, I would often take one of my students, Dipal Chandra Barua, a native of the Buddhist section, along with me. Otherwise, a colleague, Professor H. I. Latifee, would usually accompany me. He knew most of the families and had a natural talent for making villagers feel at ease.
One day as Latifee and I were making our rounds in Jobra, we stopped at a run-down house with crumbling mud walls and a low thatched roof pocked with holes. We made our way through a crowd of scavenging chickens and beds of vegetables to the front of the house. A woman squatted on the dirt floor of the verandah, a half-finished bamboo stool gripped between her knees. Her fingers moved quickly, plaiting the stubborn strands of cane. She was totally absorbed in her work.
On hearing Latifee’s call of greeting, she dropped her bamboo, sprang to her feet, and scurried into the house.
“Don’t be frightened,” Latifee called out. “We are not strangers. We teach up at the university. We are neighbors. We want to ask you a few questions, that is all.”
Reassured by Latifee’s gentle manner, she answered in a low voice, “There is nobody home.” She meant there was no male at home. In Bangladesh, women are not supposed to talk to men who are not close relatives.
Children were running around naked in the yard. Neighbors peered out at us from their windows, wondering what we were doing.
In the Muslim sections of Jobra, we often had to talk to women through bamboo walls or curtains. The custom of purdah (literally, “curtain” or “veil”) kept married Muslim women in a state of virtual seclusion from the outside world. It was strictly observed in Chittagong District.
As I am a native Chittagonian and speak the local dialect, I would try to gain the confidence of Muslim women by chatting. Complimenting a mother on her baby was a natural way to put her at ease. I now picked up one of the naked children beside me, but he started to cry and rushed over to his mother. She let him climb into her arms.
“How many children do you have?” Latifee asked her.
“Three.”
“He is very beautiful, this one,” I said.
Slightly reassured, the mother came to the doorway, holding her baby. She was in her early twenties, thin, with dark skin and black eyes. She wore a red sari and had the tired eyes of a woman who labored every day from morning to night.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Sufiya Begum.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
I did not use a pen and notepad, for that would have scared her off. Later, I only allowed my students to take notes on return visits.
“Do you own this bamboo?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“How do you get it?”
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