Day 2 - Barisal

This morning we took a sea plane to Babugani in the Barisal province of Bangladesh. We landed into a rain storm but were met by a dozen or so children jumping around in the river with excitement at our arrival. It set the tone for the day.
We were visiting some of the successful projects implemented by Save the Children and what we saw today was truly inspirational.

It's all about education here. About teaching families how to properly care for their children. How to offer a balanced diet and the importance of regular growth monitoring in order to catch health problems early.

Save the Children has 1616 health volunteers across this district. These women are astounding. The support they offer to the community is second to none.

We met Afia Afroze who has been a health worker for six years. She's responsible for around 200 households in her area.

She has an amazing blog on the Save the Children site where you can follow her work and stay up to date with the mums and babies that she is assisting. You can even see how many steps she walks each day as she visits the children in her care.

Our next stop was to meet Mr Mamun and his family. He's something of a rarity here in Bangladesh as he shares the care of his three children with his wife. He bathes them, plays with them, feeds them and helps his wife out in their home. He's what we would call a new man. There are not many new men in Bangladesh.

He has three beautiful children, his girls pictured below aged six and two months. His baby liked me, she was cooing away and giggling. She stole my heart.

When we arrived back at the field office we were all dishevelled but full of admiration for Save the Children and the community health workers they have trained. What they are doing out here really does make a difference to the children whose lives they touch.

Seeing those close knit families living without electricity and sleeping on hard wooden beds has made me homesick tonight especially as the sporadic web connection has robbed me of a skype call to my supportive family back home. 

I'm perched on top of the fridge in my room, it's the only place my dongle has a connection. I'm hot, unable to sleep and uncomfortable with my own need to fill my life with material objects. I want to be in my husbands arms after a steaming hot bath to wash the mud from my feet and the sweat and dirt from my body. It's so wrong that we have so much in our lives when so many people in the world have little more than a roof over their heads.

Please do sign the Press for Change petition.

Don't forget you can follow our trip from three perspectives; Josie's blog is Sleepisfortheweak and Eva's is NixdMin

The She Magazine Shoot

I went off to London this morning to a photo shoot for an article on internet addiction for the July issue of She magazine. I was joined by fellow pr / mummy blogger Catherine from BabyGenie, Laura from Petit Poppet and Emma the PR sweetie from my favorite online designer fashion boutique, My-Wardrobe.com.

I've been having a bit of a personal downer on blogging over the last week. You know that thing where you stamp and say, 'That's it, I quit. I am over blogging and bored of the meanies and numpties.' 

So I wasn't really looking forward to the shoot but I had fun and it was lovely to meet Catherine in person after tweeting with her and reading her blog for so long. She said some lovely things about CyberMummy and her encouragement has helped to lighten my view on things, so thank you Catherine.

Here's what we got up to....

Catherine in make up and Laura getting curly.

Emma can't bend to put her shoes on as it creases her trousers!

Laura's turn in front of the camera.

Catherine gets fiddled with.

I look pissed off!

And I look pissed off again... but seriously, beige is just not my colour. But make up..... a big fat 10/10!

But you are going to have to wait till tomorrow for that.... cause I have been playing self portrait for this weeks The Gallery!

One more thank you for today and that is to Josie at Sleep is for the Weak for using my post on bullying as one of her prompts in this weeks writing workshop.

Do you want to know if you have this god dammed awful, highly contagious internet addiction? Check out Rosie's post over on Ready for Ten and take the test.