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.