Art Projects for Teens

Karina and Christina taught the teen group how to make bouquets in teen group today. These beautiful flowers were made from old pop bottles and foam fruit wrappers. The teenagers had a wonderful time and did a great job. It is such a privilege being able to spend time with them.

If only

When the poor labourers came to work the first day, one brought her son of about nine. His shorts were worn thin where there weren’t holes in them. Boys go around without but not at the age of nine.

A couple of days earlier I had gone to their house because the oldest son in the house was begging for food. I knew he might lie about their needs and sell any food I gave him, so I felt I had to go see his parents. It would be much easier just to give him money, but I couldn’t take responsibility for letting him get away with taking the food and money for himself; he might get habits like his father’s.

I asked his mother to come work for me, digging a new garbage pit near my house. On the first day, she and the three others working there made TK 125 each, the next day they were down to Tk 110 and then they didn’t show up. I know they don’t always eat, and I was desperate not to rip them off, while also not giving them charity. The boy’s mother and father came on the third day and managed to make TK 190 together, but that was only because I increased the rate by 25% and then rounded every possibly measurement up to the nearest foot. I didn’t want them to know that I was fixing the numbers in their favour.

The ground was hard, but giving in to the need to be charitable is not an option. There has been too many people creating dependencies and to many people who never took responsibility for themselves because of it. Yesterday two of the people who came the first day turned up again. I guess they were hungry. It was much easier with four than with just two but the dirt was no easier to dig than four days earlier, and even with all my creativity I couldn’t justify paying them more than TK 100 each.

That is just under three kilos of rice, and not enough to feed a family of six. Today I could pay them TK 120 each with only a little fixing of numbers. It is so hard to help well but I was thrilled to be able to do that. The rate I paid today was twice of what I had been told others would pay. Perhaps that is when they dig from fields where the soil has been tilled every season. The best advice I was given was to pay two thirds of the rate I use now, but that was for twelve feet under ground, and we are not even half way there.

Another colleague told me he wouldn’t be able to pay what I pay. He didn’t complain about pushing prices up. From much else he does I know he has concern for the poor. It is just that he and most others can’t afford to pay more. I have been given money by a church in Denmark that I am using so for me it is not so difficult.

I found a quote on the internet, said to be by one of the first Muslim leaders, ‘If poverty had been a man, I should have had him executed.’ It is so hard to know how to help well, but I think I already said that.

Over the weekend a colleague who had heard about the boy and his shorts went to town and brought a new pair for him. Two days later, as he came to get his parents after work he was wearing long pants – I guess because the shorts weren’t decent. The look on his face and the tone in his voice as he put the shorts under his arm, chatted to his mother and they left for home was worth a million.

If only helping was always that simple.

Happy New Year

Today is the first year of the Bengali New Year 1415. It is celebrated by some with early rising to see the sunrise. I rose early, but that was only because a neighbour started hammering on his metal door at six.
My plan had been to stay in bed until the parade reached Bashundhara where I live and then join them for the cold rice called 'panta bhat'. In stead I got up and joined the preparations and the march from which I got the photo and others. (Follow the links on the right to the Danish and English School blogs.) We walked around the compound, went outside and across the rail road and had a dance at Bashundhara - where I got this photo. It is a great way of celebrating the beauty of Bangladesh.

On poverty

Today I went for a walk through a village where a number of our students live. I was going with a message to one family, that they had used their last chance to pay outstanding fees. (Their monthly fee is Tk 150 or about US$ 2.20) This is less than 10% of what it cost the school to educate their daughter and about 25% more than what a labourer is supposed to get for one day’s work.

 

On my way I noticed how there was a brick structure going up where the said family lived – how then was it that they hadn’t paid their bills, if they had the money to build a brick house? Brick houses belong to the rich.

They weren’t in, that is, my student was there with her nephew who is just five months younger than she is, her sister – not the nephew’s mother and this sister’s newborn baby boy. I needed to talk to the parents so I went in to the neighbour’s house where there was much activity getting new straw for the roof – a necessity before the rain starts in June.

 

This family had just paid their outstanding bills and I was glad I didn’t also have to remind them about fees. The father works far away and though he sends money home, it is not anywhere near enough for the family to survive. I sat for a while listening to the mother talking about her work as a day labourer; She makes Tk 50 for a day’s work – half of what she has to pay each of the two men who will come to re-thatch the roof, and only slightly more than the Tk 35 she has to pay for a kilo of rice.

She told me how her cousin, who works at LAMB, had said he wouldn’t pay the school fees and then had done so anyway. She had been six months behind. Then she went on to talk about the youngest of her four children who is supposed to get Tk 100/per month from the government but to whom the teachers say that since her father has a job, they won’t give her anything. She wondered who then would get the money.

She told me of her oldest for whom she has to pay Tk 25 every time she goes to take a test and how it is more important to educate the children than to eat.

Then she pointed out that a third student’s toddler sister was playing in the yard; an L-shaped area of about four by four meters. The shape had been a square until she had allowed this family to build a house there when they had been kicked out from where they were living before. They had moved once before when the government cleared all the land along the rail line. The benefit she gained was that there now is an adult male living in the compound; helping to make life a little safer for the three daughters, her son and for herself.

 

I was served water and puffed rice as we talked.

 

While we talked the mother of the first family had returned from work and brought her outstanding bills. I was short with her as I mentioned how they had enough money to build a big brick house, but not to pay the measly Tk 150 we charged to educate her daughter.

It turned out of course that the new brick building belongs to someone else. Our student’s grandfather has sold about 60% of the land his daughter lives on. They were given some of the money as compensation, and had built the foundation and one room; today they told me they had no more money, and they still needed another 500 bricks as well as cement to build one more room and that is before windows, doors and the roof; not to speak of plaster for the walls come into the equation.

 

On the way out I went past one more student’s house; they have added two rooms to their brick house – to make it three rooms total, and hope to put on a roof one of the next few days. The bamboo and old tin was ready. The second grader pointed out which room she wanted and I was encouraged to see, that here was one family for whom life is getting a little better.

Teen Group

Dipa taught the about the armour of Christ using Sweet as a prop when the
teen group went to Siraj Nagar to participate with another group in a
seminar.

Bina

Tuesday before Easter one of my colleagues (not at the school) and her husband were watching TV when they heard moaning noises from their 12 year old work-girl. The girl had wanted to go back to her village and her grandmother since she had come about a month previously. It is very common that families send their daughters (and sometimes sons) away to work at a young age. This often solves two problems – the work-girls family have one less mouth to feed and the family the children work for have someone who can take care of little children or help with household chores. My colleague went into the room and tried talking to the girl who at first didn’t respond. It didn’t take long before she noticed that there was a ring of hair around the bed in which the girl lay. Someone had cut the hair and placed it in a band around the bed. When my colleague touched the work-girl to make her wake up, she felt a strange sensation going through her body and didn’t remember anything until almost three hours later.

 

When a friend of mine (I apologize for not using names, but some of the readers might recognise people) arrived at the home it was closer to midnight. The work-girl was on the veranda and the woman she worked for was sitting in the living room laughing and crying. A group of church people had gathered and were singing and praying in another room. My friend didn’t have to ask to get the story. He could see the hair for himself and noticed how beautifully it had been cut. Soon the church people arrived in the living room and started praying and asking the woman to say each other’s names, to hold and read a Bible and to say Jesus’ name. They were quite unsuccessful. The only exciting thing that happened was when the work-girl came into the room and they started shouting at each other; the woman shouted to get the girl out of the room.

 

After having failed, the church people decided to leave and prepare themselves better before trying to right the situation again. They came back after some time and realised that the woman had been sitting in a corner of the room. After putting her in the centre and laying hands on her and many more prayers had gone up the woman finally started talking coherently; reading a Bible verse, saying people’s names and even Jesus’.

 

The following morning the work girl was taken back to her step-mother and the village she had come from. On the way there she said, ‘my grandmother is happy now that I am coming back home to perform puja.’ (Puja is an act of devotion in Hindu religion.)

 

Please pray with me for this girl, her name is Bina.