If you visit the Campus Cafe in the Wright building, you’ll find four flavors of Teatulia tea available for purchase. In March over spring break, three IU students and two staff members traveled to Bangladesh, where they visited the tea garden that tea is sourced from.
The trip was a collaboration between the IU School of Education and IU Dining. Katie Cierniak, Director of INSPIRE Living-Learning Center, and Rahul Shrivastav, Executive Director of IU Dining & Hospitality, accompanied students Anika Vinard, Sabine Thomas, and Kathleen Suelzer. The trip lasted 10 days, giving the group a chance to visit the tea garden run by the company Kazi & Kazi in the northernmost tip of Bangladesh and to immerse themselves in the local culture. It was a chance for all who went to see how they are connected to a community half a world away.
“Bangladesh and India are so different from the U.S. in so many ways, and so it’s a lot to absorb. For all (the) students, it was their first time in that part of the world, and they really handled all of those changes with flexibility, understanding, and eagerness to get to know about everything there, not just about the tea,” Cierniak said.
Even though the students are studying different majors, there was something relevant to everybody on the trip - and it provided an opportunity to see how all of these things are affected. Schooling doesn’t happen in a vacuum, Cierniak pointed out, adding the experience helped answer the question of how the tea garden was connected to higher education in the U.S.
Vinard, who is majoring in special education/elementary education, had never flown internationally prior to the trip. While in Bangladesh, she spoke with the women who worked at the tea garden and helped local children build butterflies out of pipe cleaners during a craft activity.
“It was a different way of interacting with kids than I'd ever experienced, and it changed my thinking on what all schools have and how they teach kids,” she said. “Being able to go to a country where English isn't the predominant language and be the minority was interesting because we got to see things and experience things that others experience all the time in the US. I would do it 10 times over because it was beautiful and it changed one of my perspectives.”
Thomas, an International Studies major at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, had extra interest in the trip as the president of Fair Trade at IU: “I was especially honored to visit Bangladesh's first and only Fair Trade tea garden. It made me proud to know that IU supports such a wonderful garden. Its impacts on the environment and the local community are truly outstanding!”
