National Immunization Day, round 4

With all the recent polio cases, it was decided to have another round of trying to vaccinate all the kids in Bangladesh. Children are supposed to have 4 doses of the vaccine to be considered fully vaccinated. And of course, the NID just gave me another excuse to tote my camera around in Bangladesh villages and take some snaps.

Meet my friend Karen, who made a stop out in Bangladesh enroute to her project site in India! She wanted to vaccinate the little ones in Bangladesh, so we dropped her off in a remote village outside of Noakhali (and told the workers she was a supervisor, hah). She caught on to vaccinating the little ones immediately, all she had to do was give the vaccination version of "here comes the choo-choo train."


After 3 hours of vaccinating and playing soccer with the village boys, it was good to see that I'm not the only one who has the piedpiper effect.


Oh by the way, sorry for not telling you all the good news earlier, but Karen was actually my Bangladesh "wife"! It was a lot easier to introduce her to the Bangladesh locals that way, although it took some getting used to her signing the bills with my last name. Hmm... so this is what married life is reduced to? Just signing bills? Hah!


Such a great sight to see... kids toting around kids nearly the same size as themselves.




The bede are kind of like the gypsies of Bangladesh. They sell cheap trinkets, have monkeys on display, and are snake charmers. They're also nomadic, but like everyone else in Bangladesh, they need to have their kids vaccinated. They're definitely an at-risk population since education is lacking and unserved. But their kids are awfully cute!