Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

an important example of the positive results that come from foreign aid.

Dysentery is a leading cause of death, particularly among children, in parts of the world where there are limited sources of clean drinking water. The ICDDR/B developed “oral rehydration therapy” (ORT), a solution composed mostly of salt, sugar and water, that is easy to administer and responsible for saving the lives of millions of children. This simple, inexpensive solution has been called one of the most important medical advances of the century, and the hospital that pioneered it depends on American aid. The success of ORT is also a model for the type of low-tech, low-cost treatment developed abroad that can be replicated in the U.S.

I had first learned about the Grameen Bank more than a decade earlier, when Bill and I invited the bank’s founder, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, to Little Rock to discuss how microcredit lending programs might help some of the poorest rural communities in Arkansas.

The Grameen Bank provides loans to very poor women who have no other access to credit. With loans averaging about $50, women have started small businesses―like dressmaking, weaving and farming―that help lift them and their families out of poverty.

These women have not only proven to be excellent credit risks―the Grameen Bank has a loan repayment rate of 98 percent―but dedicated savers as well, who tend to reinvest their profits in their business and their families. I helped set up a development bank and micro-lending groups in Arkansas, and I wanted to promote micro-lending throughout the United States, modeled on the success of Yunus and the Grameen Bank. They have provided or facilitated assistance to similar programs around the world, distributing $3.7 billion in collateral-free loans to 2.4 million members with borrowers in more than forty-one thousand villages in Bangladesh and elsewhere.

But its triumphs in helping landless women gain self-sufficiency had made the Grameen Bank (and other similar programs) a target for Islamic fundamentalists. Two days before we arrived in Dhaka, some two thousand extremists marched on the capital to denounce secular aid organizations, which they accused of tempting women to defy a strict interpretation of the Quran. In the months before our visit, village banks and girls’ schools had been torched, and one of Bangladesh’s leading woman writers had received death threats.

One of the most disconcerting aspects of security is that you never know how to identify a truly dangerous moment. The Secret Service had received intelligence suggesting that an extremist group might try to disrupt my visit. When I traveled outside the capital to visit two villages in southwestern Bangladesh, flying in a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport plane, we were again on high alert. In the village of Jessore, we visited a primary school where the government was testing a program that rewarded families with money and food if they allowed their daughters to attend. This seemed like a novel inducement to persuade families to send their girls to school in the first place―and then let them stay there. We showed up at the school, which was in the middle of open fields, and I went into the classrooms to talk to the girls and their teachers. While talking to students, I noticed a commotion outside and saw Secret Service agents running around. Thousands of villagers had materialized out of thin air, pouring over a little rise, ten to twenty people deep as far as I could see. We had no idea where they came from or what message they might have wanted to deliver. We never found out because my agents swept us out of there, afraid of a crowd they might not be able to control.

Our visit to the Grameen Bank in the village of Mashihata was worth battling the crowds and the long, bumpy drive. I had been invited to visit two villages―one Hindu and one Muslim―but I could not manage both because of my schedule. Remarkably, the Muslim women decided to come to the Hindu village for our meeting.

“Swagatam, Hillary, swagatam, Chelsea,” the children sang in Bengali, “Welcome, Hillary, welcome, Chelsea!” My old friend Muhammad Yunus was there to greet me, bearing samples of clothing that some of Grameen’s women borrowers had made for sale.

Both Chelsea and I were wearing similar outfits, which he sent to the hotel for us, and he was delighted. He said a few words echoing the theme I had been developing in my own speeches.

“Women have potential,” he said. “And access to credit is not only an effective way to fight poverty, it is also a fundamental human right.”

I sat under a thatched pavilion surrounded by Hindu and Muslim women, and they told me how they had all come together, defying the fundamentalists. I told them I was there to listen to them, and to learn.

A Muslim woman stood up and said, “We are sick of the mullahs, they are always trying to keep women down.”

I asked what sorts of problems they faced, and she said: “They threaten to ban us if we take loans from the bank. They tell us the bank people will steal our children. I tell them to leave us alone. We are trying to help our children have better lives.”

The women asked me questions to try to relate my experiences to theirs. “Do you have cattle in your home?” said one.

“No,” I replied, grinning at the traveling press corps, who by that time were like members of a large extended family, “unless you count the press room.”

The Americans laughed out loud, while the Bangladeshis pondered the meaning of my quip.

“Do you earn your own income?” asked a woman with a decorative red dot, or teep, on her forehead between her eyes, traditionally signifying that she was married.

“I am not earning my own income now that my husband is President,” I said, wondering how to explain what I was doing. I told them I used to earn more than my husband, and I planned to earn my own income again.

The children of the village put on a