Bangladesh is a long way from Iowa. In fact it is twelve time zones ahead of us, longitudinally on the opposite side of the world. Though the size of Iowa—each has about 56,000 square mile—and rural like Iowa, it could hardly be more different from Iowa.
For starters, it is a coastal country rather than situated in the middle of a continent. For another, its seasons are mainly marked by differences in rainfall rather than temperature. (By our standards even the dry season is wet; the rainy season literally is a monsoon. Rather than our average of 30 inches of rain a year, Bangladesh exceeds 100.
Where we take snowfall in stride, they do the same with flooding because in a “normal” year 30 per cent of the land surface is submerged.)
Another significant difference is that where Iowa is largely Christian, Bangladesh is almost totally Muslim. Beyond that is major differences in income. Iowans on average make about $28,000 a year, Bangladeshis about $2,300—a twelfth as much.
The most striking difference between Iowa and Bangladesh, though, is population. Spread over its 56,000 square miles, Iowa has a mere three million people. A drive across Iowa shows that we are still a farm state, though few of us actually farm.
Over an area slightly smaller than ours, Bangladesh has a whopping 150 million people! To understand the difference, consider this: The City of Cedar Rapids has a population density of about 1,900 people per square mile. The whole country of Bangladesh —the areal equivalent of our river to river state —has a population density of about 2,700 people per square mile. Even if we extract the one-third of Bangladesh’s people who live in cities (and the land they live on), the density of rural Bangladesh is about the same as that of the City of Cedar Rapids — the whole country with people as densely settled as Cedar Rapids!
How do they do it? What are the consequences? Fifteen of us affiliated with the Geographical Alliance of Iowa are about to see for ourselves. We embark on an adventure to Bangladesh July 7, returning August 6.
We will develop curricular materials from elementary through university levels based on the National Geography Standards. We will be focusing in particular but not solely on environmental and health problems because these are so acute.
We have done our homework, so we know what we are getting into. We know we will be there during the monsoon, but we have had similar experiences before. (About half of our group had similar trips to Nigeria in 1999 and India in 2003. You can see we are serious scholars, going to places that are ill-understood rather than vacation spots.)
Through The Gazette we will share with you our month long adventure. We will report on our daily activities and the lessons we learn. We will relate the ups and downs of the trip. We will give you a chance to meet us, people who teach your kids from the elementary level through the Regents universities.
Before I end this first submission allow me to say a few words about the “GAI,” our organization of geography teachers in the state. We are based at the University of Northern Iowa under the capable leadership of Professor Kay Weller. Our website includes the products of our Nigerian and Indian trips, complete with photographs and lesson plans so that anyone may learn from them.
This trip, as was the case with the other two, is a Fulbright-Hays Group Project, funded by the US Department of Education after a thorough, competitive process. We are looking forward to the trip and to sharing our adventure with you.
Rex Honey, Professor of Geography
Director Crossing Borders Program
University of Iowa