Bangladesh Diary: In This World

I have spent the morning in one of many hundreds of slum areas dotted around Dhaka, in the company of my intense and socially committed friend, R, and two Swedish journalists. R. has connections with NGOs and charities who deal with street children, and he moves with ease and grace amongst these urban poor, who greet him as 'brother' and lightly touch his arm as they speak.

We are in the area of the main railway station at Komolapur. As we approach, there are trucks parked on either side of the road, their colourful painted bonnets thrown open to reveal steaming engines. There is the sound of hammer on metal, and a train's whistle in the distance. Alongside the trucks are the houses of some of the destitute street people of Bangladesh - tarpaulin, hessian sacks, stray plastic snapping in the breeze. The ground is covered in a patina of litter, dust and dirt. Our taxi's windscreen is smashed - and thus it is through this glittering spider's web that we look out on this sea of human misery.

But even here, among the destitution and grime, there is no self-pity, simply no time for despair. If there is one adjective to describe this people, it is resilient. Everyone I meet is resourceful and determined. They are also generous and dignified, and we are welcomed as guests with a humbling openness.

Most of the people are unemployed - though some work as rickshaw wallahs, earning less than £1 per day, and often having to give up most of that in rental charges to the rickshaw owners. Others break bricks, smashing away at the unforgiving stone, inhaling red dust. The lucky ones among the young boys are out working in garments factories, leaving the women and the girls to sit in the shade of narrow bamboo houses, washing the babies, or to lean in the doorways, closely watching this strange foreign delegation. The bolder ones call out 'Your country where?' They grin with delight in response to my greeting 'Salaam awaleikum'. Peace be with you.

The scrappy yard in which we first find ourselves is a jumble of old truck parts, dusty wrecked buses, cows idling away the afternoon. A calf nuzzles my knee and I reach down absent-mindedly to pat its head. What are you supposed to do with a calf? Beyond there is a green field of spinach plants, and over there, in the corner, a man crouches down to pee.

But the building which draws our attention above all others is a small corrugated iron shack. Decorated with torn colourful posters advertising mineral water and Sprite, this is the makeshift one-room school.

The kids tumble in on our arrival and sit in huddled rows at the miniature wooden benches, and the bespectacled young teacher sternly puts them through their paces. They chant the Bangla alphabet; they count to ten in English. Their faces catch the sun - a study in light and shade. Their tiny voices form a ragged thin chorus, as of hungry birds. They lean forward - hanging onto every word. Soon after, they play games outside, Simon Says, Touch. It's not much in the way of formal schooling, but here is co-ordination, collaboration, language: luxuries they can't access so easily in the grim daily round of home survival. ides, between this young student and his charges there is a real connection - a sense of commitment which is all too absent in so many schools here. There is just the slightest chance these kids will follow these role models and escape the poverty of their parents. They will not easily let go of this chance.

Bes

Round the corner is another, even bigger slum. We walk over, taking in the occasional moment of lightness as we pass. A queue of people step daintily onto a punt, balancing precariously on the shimmering green water. A couple of girls dressed in brilliant red and white saris head for an end-of-exam celebration at their school, their make-up skilfully applied, their dark eyes catching and holding ours. Some hopeless romantic has written 'I love you' on the grimy windscreen of a dead bus.

But then we are back in the narrow lanes, the bamboo, corrugated and brick houses (in strict ascending order) themselves a sad little league table of poverty. The open sewers flow past. We move from house to house, greeted like visiting kings. Everywhere we stop there is a huddle: bright and curious eyes follow our every move. Faces appear at the window, children gather at the door. The children's faces are beautiful, but they are also knowing, old before their time.

There are babies everywhere. When I was a child I would follow instructions in drawing books to look carefully at a picture and find the ten hidden mice. You could do the same here - can you spot the twenty babies in this picture? Down there in the corner - over there on the table... Every time I move or bring my arms down from taking a picture my elbow bumps gently into some poor child's head.

Inside these houses attempts have been made, as everywhere in the world, to decorate. Coloured bedspreads, torn glossy pictures of film stars, clawing back a sense of home. Here too we meet committed young people who give up their time to teach the children, bringing glimmers of hope in the lifelong struggle to be heard. They give instruction on how to clean your teeth, how to put away whatever money your childhood labours may bring, what the letters of the alphabet look like. It is inspiring to see such unwillingness to give up.

But what other, harder, lessons lie ahead of these old-young kids?