Bangadesh meeting

In 1973 I was 23 years old and I worked for the World Alliance of YMCAs in Bangladesh. I worked in 2 remote villages setting up community projects. One was in a village called Brahmanbaria. This village is a bit out of the way and in 1973 Bangladesh was rebuilding in the aftermath of the war of independence (1971-2), consequently white Europens were very rare and hence the locals, and in particular the local children saw me as a quite curiosity and often used to watch me coming and going from the project. Actually unbeknown to me at the time, my presence in the village was widely known and commented upon. Apparently the children used to refer to me as "Mr Robin". I finished my time their and went on to pursue a career in social work in Australia ( where I come from ) and in England where I now live. My current work largely involves training and teaching people who are training to be social workers or who wish to pursue post qualification courses in social work. Recently I was running a training course in Maidstone in Kent for social workers who have left the profression but wish to return and so need to brush up their knowledge of the law and current procedures. I noticed on her application form, that one of the trainees, a woman I guessed to be aged about 50, was from Bangladesh. We got chatting in a break and I mentioned I had worked in Bangladesh and I asked what part of the country she came from. She said she came from a village called Brahmanbaria. I said, this is amazing because that was the village I was working in. She stopped, looked at me, and said, "you were Mr Robin". She was one of the children who used to watch me at work all those years ago. The odds against us meeting like this must be phenomenal.