Stories from the city, stories from the sea

Do you work on women's empowerment?

My response to this question, posed by Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times

Sure, I can tick the box saying I work on the empowerment of women and girls. A big tick. But truth is, I don’t do much. “Can you write your own name?” I might ask. “Does your daughter go to school?” Probing question after probing question, I tease out the threads of women’s lives until they become whole stories without an end.

I might talk to their husband, or their son, but I might not. I might sit amongst the cacophony of colour a group of women create when they sit together in saris to discuss violence against women, or early marriage, or dowry, or divorce and ask what has changed their world. I might laugh at a woman pulling at my curls, tight and defiant in the humidity, and accept her offer of a banana or mango. I might cheer, or cry, or clap as I hear about twelve year old Tania who was promised to a man four times her age; or Nasrima who has rebuilt a road so her daughter can go to school; or Kuki who is training Tasmina to take over her role as leader of the local women’s empowerment group when the funding runs out.

I will lift my lens to meet their eyes. Trying to capture smiles, the shy ones, the individuality of the woman in her black chador, the wisdom in the grandmother, the hope in her daughter. Lights! Camera! Action! I will bring all three with me, and feed off the symbols we devour of life for the bottom billion; dirt floors, roaming chickens, naked children, tube-wells. The bloated bellies aren’t so popular these days, or the big eyes staring vacantly, so I will look for the children who have clothes on, whose teeth are clean and white, who can lift their heads and focus on me.

At the end of the day I will open my notebook, filled to the brim with more tales than I could ever tell, and sort through them. Should I pick Tania and Shopna who have started a small spice business from their slum, fingers stained yellow with tumeric? Maybe Moutushi, the first in her family to finish high school, or Maya, the first to use contraception in her village? Should I choose the educator? The midwife? The mother? The village elder? The husband who supports his wife’s economic independence? How can I choose one when the world is so full of little earthquakes reshaping what it means to be born a girl in Bangladesh?

Do I work in the area of women’s and girl’s empowerment? I guess I don’t. Not really. But by telling the stories of those who do on a daily basis, as part of CARE Bangladesh’s SHOUHARDO Program, I know a lot of people who do. This is their story.

The Distance

It might be after the event, but I want to give a big shout out to my sister Kara who did the Oxfam Walk last weekend. For those who don't know, it's a 100km slog, which she and her fellow Snail Trails knocked over in 32hrs. Ouch!

It was in the name of charity, and so far they've raised a tidy $4,335. You can still donate (come on, all donations are tax deductible!) here.



Kara climbing for her life

Beggar on the street of love

It’s fair to say I didn’t know a lot about Bangladesh when I applied for this job. I knew a few hazy details – they had a cricket team, for example, and it was near India? And some taxi drivers in Sydney were from Bangladesh. I knew this for certain because three nights before I got on the plane I was having one last hurrah with my friends Michelle and Jez, and the taxi driver who took me home in the wee hours of the morn was listening to the cricket in Chittagong. We shared a moment. Or at least I had a moment. He was probably quite glad to leave this babbling, slightly slurring, overly emotional girl on the curb.

So those are the things I knew – Bangladesh had a cricket team, was near India, and there was a Bangladeshi taxi driver in Sydney. Overwhelming really.

If I start talking preconceptions though, I had plenty. For one, the India thing. I assumed, incorrectly as it turns out, that Bangla food would be similar to Indian food. It isn’t. I was pretty spot on with the expectation that there would be lots and lots of people, there are. And that there would be lots of beggars. There are. And that I would find it hard to deal with the whole ‘begging thing’. Once again, I was spot on. To quit beating around the bush, the begging thing absolutely sucks.

I’m not going to bother trying to be articulate about it because there’s nothing fancy or warm and fuzzy or intellectual or even interesting about the conditions of a society which forces an entire underclass of people to rely on the generosity of others to survive. The very fact that it has taken me over eight months to even write about is a good indication of how inadequate I feel.

Not a day goes by where I am not approached by someone – a man with his femur (that’s a big bone in your leg) sticking out through the flesh, dull with dried blood; an eight year old girl carrying a naked and malnourished toddler with the kind of bloated belly we’re all familiar with from those old World Vision ads; an old women with cataracts so murky I wonder at how deftly she negotiates the traffic.

I’m cornered in the market by the old lady with the walking stick, followed home to my door by street kids who try to hold my hands or hang off my shoulders, helped across the road (yes, he stops the traffic, for me) by a man with what looks like cerebral palsy to my medically untrained eye.

The only way I’ve found to ‘deal’ with it is to have one policy and stick to it. The idea of trying to value one persons’ wellbeing above another’s is so repugnant to me (though I understand it is an important part of many people’s lives, it’s something I’m just not cut out for) that I’ve had to take a ‘one size fits all’ approach. I just don’t give.



A reminder for me from the Kolkata metro station that things can change

When it comes down to it, I believe that if I give to children, I am helping perpetuate the cycle which keeps them out of school, uneducated, vulnerable to the sex trafficking and prostitution industry, and attractive slaves to gangs a la Slumdog Millionaire who take their cut of the money begging pulls in.

For everyone else, the sick, the disabled, the people shamed from their communities, the ill and the ageing, I leave them to the mercy of the ill-equipped government and NGO services that are too few in number, but who are there, and who specialise in bringing beggars out from the underclass.

At the end of the day I believe whatever small amount I would give will always be inadequate – and would not form part of the bigger solutions required to address the system which fails so many.

Fortunately the organisation I am involved in here is working on the bigger solution bit. This doesn’t make me feel any better when I walk the long way home to avoid the boy with one leg who begs in front of the fruit stalls at the end of my street, but at least it’s something.

Little earthquakes

Shunajur Village is sixteen kilometres from anything resembling a town centre. To get there you have to follow a small dirt road for fourteen kilometres, then continue on foot up and over the river. At the small shack on the left after the bridge, turn left and follow the dirt path into the trees. You know you’re in the right place when you get to the thatched huts. If you’ve got access to a four wheel drive, the journey takes about an hour in good weather; much longer by any other means.

As far as villages go, this one is pretty lucky. It has a tube well providing safe access to drinking water, and sanitary latrines. The odd cow, a handful of goats and ducks add their animal sounds and smells into the village mix which remind me of the hobby farm I used to spend summer holidays in. Not that I eat cows or goats or ducks, or even eggs. Trying to explain that to the villagers is like trying to explain that where I’m from falling pregnant isn’t dangerous. The very idea is hard to grasp for women who give birth on dirt floors with the help of traditional midwives, of whom 79% are illiterate and untrained. I use the term ‘women’ loosely, since 60% of women have already given birth by the age of 20. I’m 28 years old. These statistics scare me.

At least I don’t have to be scared for the girls in this village. Through women’s empowerment support early marriage is widely understood as being dangerous. Considering the average age of marriage for girls is 14 years old, this is something to be excited about. Here girls are lucky, they can carry on being girls and go to school until they’re 18; they don’t have to worry about giving birth on dirt floors just yet, let alone dealing with a husband or a family in law.

In fact, the future is as bright as it has ever been for the girls in this village. With any luck, they may not have to give birth on dirt floors with the assistance of the local midwife who was trained by her mother, grandmother, or neighbour. The name and number of the local government health visitor is well known here, so the possibility of delivering little Jasmin or Faisal with the help of a trained midwife is a little bit closer to becoming a reality. These girls may also have some say in deciding the size of their family, as the welcoming of contraception use by the older, respected women is becoming more widespread. Since all of this healthcare costs money, though, nothing is guaranteed.

When I say this healthcare costs money, it’s important you know what I mean. I’m not just talking about the actual care itself. Of course these women will probably have to pay for the doctor and/or nurse, and any follow up medication or bandages etc. But they also need to pay to actually get there. Those sixteen kilometres on foot when you’re pregnant, sick, or injured must feel like six hundred. The alternatives are paying a rickshaw puller (man on a bike) or CNG driver (motorised baby-taxi) to take you there, and then bring you home. This is expensive stuff though, if you’re from this village. It’s a long way, and they don’t earn very much.

When I say they don’t earn very much, it’s important here too that you know what I mean. In this village, women earn money through selling vegetables they grow in their front yards, or by hand sewing detail onto salwar kameezes. If you do a combination of these, you can expect to earn between 100-200 taka, or AUD$1.85 - $3.75 per day. This doesn’t leave enough to buy luxuries like apples, let alone pay for rickshaws or CNGs. Considering that most women aren’t involved in paid work, this again puts these women in the lucky column. With only 4% of women earning a cash wage, earning anything at all is a huge step in the right direction. We all know what money buys.

Which brings me to how optimistic I am for this village, or more correctly, the people who live in it. From the outside, it looks like they’re getting a lot of the important things right. They’re becoming healthier, educating their children, and earning money. On the governance side, they’re forming committees enhancing women’s empowerment, and solving village problems collectively, then marching up to the local government to demand the services the law says they should be receiving. Their girls will be women before they become wives and mothers, and their boys better equipped to be good husbands and fathers.

Yes, as far as villages go, this one is pretty lucky. Or not, really, since luck had nothing to do with it.

Shelter from the storm

While I was busy entertaining the Chittagongian city-folk during Cyclone Aila, the coastal areas and islands in Bangladesh were (and still are) having a tougher time of it. In terms of cyclone severity, it didn't rate very high on the danger scale, however so much damage has been caused because the cyclone hit at high tide, which meant already high waters just went higher, and higher, and higher...

Here's a pretty accurate account of what the situation is from the BBC:

Six months in a leaky boat

Three things I love about Bangladesh (right now):

· My job: I’m back from a week in remote Kishoreganj mixing it up with Early Childhood Centres and Women’s Empowerment Groups and loving it. Now I get to spend the next couple of weeks turning these hours into case studies, articles, fact sheets and monitoring and evaluation assessments. All while wearing aqua and lime green pyjamas, Birkenstocks, and belting out renditions of “We Are One, But We Are Many” off key. There are worse jobs (and many of them are here).



Getting in amongst it: a women's empowerment group in an urban slum

· The random factor: Ben the Backpacker has been and gone, and it was great to experience the weird and wonderful of Chittagong through fresh eyes. In three days Ben had near death experiences, got married to someone he’d never met before, donated money to a coffin, found out turtles have toenails, discovered the wonders of Mini Bangladesh, had more photos of himself taken than he took, played cricket, found out his choice in sunglasses is closely linked to Bangladesh’s political history, ate at the best restaurant in town on a backpacker’s budget, and learned the usefulness of the Bangla word “shesh” (meaning finished) when discussing public transport. Oh, and got drunk; he is Australian after all.

Ben the Backpacker and I rickshawing through the streets of Chittagong

· Watermelon: it’s cheap, everywhere, and unlikely to kill me. Especially good when chilled. Mmmmm.

Three things I don’t love about Bangladesh (right now):

· The Dhaka-Chittagong highway: three (relatively minor) traffic incidences in three months makes me a very nervous passenger these days.

· The bug factor: living alone and having a job which sends me out and about frequently means the cockroaches and rodents can have quite a field day in my place while I’m gone. I suspect this is what some parents feel like when returning from time away while entrusting the family home (and the liquor cabinet) to their teenagers - albeit without the advantage of the extermination process. I must look like a bit of a mix between a character out of The Terminator and Ghostbusters each time I come back home – can of bug spray in each hand, jumping out of my skin at every movement I catch out of the corner of my eye, and cautious when opening cupboards.


watching kids de-lice each other - a great way to make the scalp crawl

· Power outtages: No power means no fan. No fan means one very hot, sweaty and inappropriately dressed bideshi (foreigner). It’s really quite impressive how much sweat one can generate while not moving a muscle. Impressive, and gross.

Ask for Answers

As enthusiastic as I am for my job, there are some days where I ask myself why I've elected to give up living in a great country, in a great city, in a great house with great flatmates and a great salary to fund a great lifestyle to ... well, if you're a regular reader of my blog, you can probably insert the relevant experiences yourself.

And then I come across articles like this in today's Sydney Morning Herald online, which I urge you to read. Having assumed a degree of laziness, however, I have pulled out the bit I most identified with:

"The vast conurbations of the developing world are largely unsewered. They have little clean water. They pile humans, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and rats on top of each other. The largest cities each contain as many people as Australia. They are perfect incubators of species-hopping viruses of all kinds. And the viruses only have to make it to the nearest airport to make a global impact.

There is, however, no need to terrify ourselves about the inevitability of new pandemics.

We know how to prevent the spread of most pandemic diseases and to stop minor outbreaks from becoming major problems. A century ago, industrialised countries invested in sewers and water works and created basic primary healthcare systems available to all, regardless of income. Livestock was banished from the cities and instead raised and slaughtered in separate, hygienic new facilities".

Bill Bowtell, The Deadbeat of International Aid

Today I can say, unequivocally, that there is nothing else at all I'd rather be doing at this time in my life.