I thought that Alam might have scheduled a day to let me recuperate from all my travelling, but no such luck. First thing in the morning, we were off to visit a branch of PLAN International.
We met with several members of the PLAN staff, and soon my questioning turned to what their organization was doing for working children. They told me how some of their projects had significantly improved the lives of the poor.
“Would you like to see for yourself? Would you like to visit one of our projects?”
Of course. My purpose in coming to Asia was to be out with the children, to see for myself how they were living. We were taken to one of Dhaka’s largest slums. It was an experience I will never forget.
In the sweltering heat we piled out of our car onto the garbage-littered streets. The slum filled an entire valley, a maze of huts stretched away from us as far as the eye could see. It was an astonishing mass of poverty, like nothing I could ever have imagined.
I stood for a moment, numbed by the sight before me.
The huts looked fragile, most of them made of panels of woven reed, framed by sticks that were tied together. We were told the people lived in constant threat of the government bulldozing their homes to the ground. It looked to me that a strong gust of wind would flatten them even faster.
I was hit with the smell of the place. Animal and human excrement lay in the gutters. The hot sun beat down on heaps of rotting garbage, intensifying the odour to the point that I could barely keep from covering my nose.
We walked down the alleyways between the huts, occasionally peering inside one to get a better idea of how the people lived. Most dwellings were a single room, in some cases no bigger than the bathrooms of some houses back home. In a few I noticed a small fire with a pot of water over it. No electricity or plumbing. The furniture was often simple crates. Frayed and tattered rugs were scattered over the dirt floors. The only decoration seemed to be woven cloths with the simplest of designs hung on the walls. The people had virtually no possessions.
As we walked, some children tagged along. What few clothes they wore were dirt-stained and ragged. Most of the boys wore only shorts, and the youngest children nothing at all. Most had bare feet.
But they were not without their laughter. Their attention quickly centred on me. With my blond hair and almost turquoise eyes, I certainly stood out from the crowd.
“Salam alaykum,” I said to them. “Hello.”
They were surprised. They whispered and giggled, daring each other to come close to me. One brave fellow dashed up and poked my back. Before I could turn around to see his face, he had scurried away and disappeared between the shacks.
I doubt if any of them had ever seen a white child before. Certainly not one walking among their homes and wanting to talk to them. I decided to make a game out of their curiosity. I would crouch down, and when the younger children built up their courage to come within my reach, I would pounce on them and tickle them until they ran away. I did it again and again. Finally I was out of breath and sat down for a while. Some of the children came and sat next to me. We talked through an interpreter. They wanted me to come visit them again. Maybe I had more games they could play.
One young girl became our guide. She led us to a clearing. No refuse or garage was to be seen anywhere. Standing in the centre of the clearing was her community’s pride and joy: a hand pump built with the help of the local office of PLAN International. The people who lived in the slum absolutely cherished it.
The girl explained the operation of the pump, as if it were a miracle. “Once the hole had been dug, beautiful, clean, clear water rose from under the ground.” She went on to show how it worked. “It is simple. You pump the handle like this, and after about ten pumps the water begins to flow.” As if on cue, water appeared from the spout. “And then,” she said, with excitement in her voice, “it gushes out!”
The people didn’t want to lose a single drop. As soon as the pump filled one bucket, another appeared in its place. The full buckets were carried off in all directions. A team of men, we were told, was responsible for maintaining the pump and the site around it.
I tried to imagine what it must have been like before the pump was put in place. Water probably came from a great distance or, more likely, what was used was often contaminated. I couldn’t help but compare it to how freely water was used in my own home. I thought of all the swimming pools back in Thornhill, each filled with thousands of gallons of water. In Canada we think nothing of letting water drain endlessly from our kitchen taps and garden hoses. Our country is filled with lakes and rivers. We take our fresh water so much for granted.
To these people, water was a gift. It was a treasure, as precious as life itself.
Our last stop was at the house of an elderly lady of seventy or more. She was slight and wrinkled and stiff with age. Her scarred hands told of a life of hard work. But in her old age she had taken on the responsibility of caring for babies who had been abandoned, infants left on her doorstep by girls and young women who had given birth to children they couldn’t care for. We heard the babies crying in the background.
“Who will take her place once she is no longer able to care for them?” I asked. There was no answer to my question. In such a place, people learn to cope as best they can. Amid the misery there is always hope. These people were not asking for handouts. No one asked me for money or food. They merely wanted the chance to make a better life for themselves.
As we were leaving, our driver said, “This is one of the largest slums in Dhaka, but it is certainly not the worst.”
In the car, I quizzed our hosts from PLAN on the economic situation in the slums. Eighty per cent of the men who lived there made their living as rickshaw drivers. I knew from my ride from the airport that it had to be one of the most brutal and punishing jobs in the world. In exchange for his fourteen hours of work a day, a driver barely earned enough to feed his family. Most of the drivers had little hope of ever owning their own rickshaws. They were forced to rent them from a middleman, and it was to him that a large portion of their earning went.
A rickshaw costs at least ninety dollars, an incredible amount of money in a country where the average yearly income is $220. I knew what ninety dollars meant for someone living in the West, the cost of a pair of running shoes. Many Canadian parents spend five times that amount just to outfit a child for hockey.
Seeing the slum was certainly a sobering experience. But even though the situation for these people was bleak, I could see evidence of an entrepreneurial spirit, especially among the women. I discovered women at the doorways of their huts selling baskets they had made and food they had cooked. A few were carrying drinking water to nearby construction sites to sell to the workers. My guide told me of the strong bond that existed among the women who lived in the slums. I understood why projects such as the Grameen Bank,1 which gives them small loans to start their own businesses, were so successful.
My visit to the slums of Dhaka left me feeling that these people had a real spirit of cooperation and community, and caring for their neighbours. The visit had been, in a strange way, uplifting.
I had come to Asia to see as many child labourers as I could. I wanted to be there in their workplaces, seeing for myself their exact situations. The following morning I found myself at a train station, sitting on a ledge, my feet dangling over the side, simply observing everything around me.
There was a constant stream of activity. The dismal, decaying surroundings were alive with the surge of passengers pushing their way on and off trains filled to bursting. I spotted numerous children in the midst of it all, selling their services as porters for a few coins. As soon as a train pulled into the station, kids would rush aboard. They would hurry off again before the train left, and if they were lucky, they would be carrying someone’s bags for them.
Later that morning we visited the docks on the river. Amid the bustle of the waterfront we found children loading and off-loading cargo. We found them also actively employed in the fishing trade—mending nets,