Field work

Beef.  It's what's for dinner.

The “field” actually includes Dhaka.  It includes the slum I go through every day to get to work.  One thing that many of us don’t think about is that “slum” is a catch-all term for low-income housing.  It includes neighborhoods with 2-500+ households.  It includes dormitories of 20+ men and one-room family units.  None are technically “legal” in Dhaka, but most are on privately owned land, rented out and tightly managed (albeit with nefarious tactics when deemed necessary).  Evictions are an issue, but largely for the minority living on government land, or those close to major roads, or on real estate where the value is quickly rising.  Obviously my perception is colored by Korail, since I see it every day.  It’s part of the 20% of slums in Dhaka on government land.  But what about the other 80%?

So today I went to another slum to get a sense of the diversity.  This is the 5^th or 6^th that I’ve been to; out of over 5,000 (remember that some are as small as two households; actually if I include those I’ve been to a lot more).  This one is built on the water, on the western outskirts of Dhaka.  Everyone living there works in garbage collection.  They collect the garbage and put it into containers, which the government promptly brings to their neighborhood and dumps out.  Then the trash sorters grab it and start separating it based on the material, which they resell.  The most lucrative item you ask?  Human hair, at a going rate of 4,500tk/kg ($123/lb).  Kids even collect trash they find to sell to the waste sorters, often gathering just enough to get them the few taka required to buy a popsicle or piece of candy.  

Hard to fine people for littering if this is what
the official waste system does with trash

Malnutrition is widespread; many of the kids were naked or topless, and their swollen bellies were quite obvious.  But nonetheless they seemed to have energy to dart around us, get in the way of any picture I was taking (or get behind me to see the screen).  They were shy.  First we were told none of them went to school, but when we asked, a few said yes and then ran away.  The whole neighborhood had come from a northern district (Rangpur).  Roughly half of Dhaka’s new arrivals these days come from 5 (out of 64) districts, and Rangpur is one of them.  “People from Rangpur don’t care about educating their kids.” We were told.  The explanations are rarely that simple, but the truth can take time to piece together from what is said and what is left unsaid.  We visit the house of a woman who’s pregnant with her second child.  She’s from Rangpur.  I ask what work she does and my colleague looks at me and says, “She’s pregnant!” I hadn’t considered that was a full-time job, but duly note it down and let him lead the conversation for a bit.  They send money back to her husband’s family in Rangpur via “flexiload.”  That is, most mobile phone owners in developing country use a “prepaid” system.  You go to a guy on the street who sells minutes, essentially.  You give him tk10 and your phone number, he adds tk10 ($0.12) to your balance.  When your balance runs out, you go back.  Flexiload stands are plentiful, available pretty much nationally.  So flexi has become a way to wire money as well.  This family gives a flexiload seller tk550 ($7) in Dhaka, along with mobile number for a flexiload seller in Rangpur, who will give the woman’s in-laws tk500 cash.  Bankless improvisation of financial transactions.  The woman’s house feels sturdy; she has two fans and there is electricity for most of our visit.  No stove though.  I ask where she cooks, and we are led around the corner to the communal cooking area.  There are a few holes in the dirt, where pots are cooking over fires fueled by coconut shells.  Anyone can use them, but it’s BYOF (Bring your own fuel).  I start to understand why there are so many piles of sticks out on the street—there is a huge need for firewood.
We go to see the communal bathrooms.  We get close enough to determine that they really aren’t sanitary and despite the theoretical distinction of the men’s and women’s, in actuality men use both, making it difficult for women to use the restroom safely and with dignity.  I walk a few more steps to get away from the heaps of trash and bathrooms and find myself face to face with a cage full of cows!  Seriously, in a place with so little space?  None of it goes to waste, except for the parts that are well, used as a place to dump the city’s waste.  It turns out that they belong to the landlord, who owns all the buildings in the neighborhood, and makes sure that they have water and electricity.  It’s a good business for him to develop these neighborhoods for the city’s working poor.  Behind the cows, there is a three-story building under construction for cottage industries—very small garment factories, for example.  We wind back up to the main road and head down to a rickshaw “garage” (i.e. a small open space where a lot of rickshaws are kept.  The owner is there.  He’s also from Rangpur and over the past 20 years has acquired 51 rickshaws.  He rents them out to drivers, almost all from Rangpur, many of whom sleep on the second floor of the bamboo shack that he’s build as one of the walls of the fence encircling the garage, and take their meals at the “mess” next door.  Many of these men, the owner included, are victims of river erosion; their farmland back home is no longer arable and they were forced to find another source of income.  We talk to one driver who looks younger than me, though he’s married and has a wife and three kids in Rangpur.  He sends money to them via bkash, the new mobile banking company (a BRAC investment).  He pays tk20 to send tk 1000.  He goes home as often as he can as well, often staying for a few weeks or until money runs low—having ridden that 10 hour ride in a jeep, I’m sympathetic to how “far” away it is.  It’s cheaper than bringing the whole family to Dhaka, since then he’d have to pay rent for one of these one room flats (about tk 2000, $25, utilities included).  His wife could work in Dhaka; there are jobs available for women with limited education. 

Where many rickshaw drivers that have come
to Dhaka alone sleep at night

It’s amazing to see how the macro-level changes that we read about in The Economist or The New York Times are the result of these types of individual stories that are occurring simultaneously for families all over the country.  While I’m excited by the obvious new opportunities, the NGO worker in me looks around and sees what’s lacking.  Most kids are out of school, many look sickly.  I can only imagine the state of sanitation and hygiene in a place where no one has a sink or bathroom at home, and has water on one side and heaps of trash on the others.  Is this a neighborhood, a community?  People seem to know each other’s lives—one woman points out all the kids in the group that go to school—and there is lively adda (socializing) at the tea stalls.  People say that Bangladeshis always identify with their bari, their home village (we ask, “apnar desh kotai?” to learn what district they are from—“desh” means country).  Does the fact that all of these people come from the same district translate into a sense of kinship?  Certainly in the ethnic communities in big American cities, like Chinatown or Jackson Heights, one can see that.   We’re told that there is no crime (“Everyone here is poor, what would they steal?”) but again, this is an answer that it’s easier to tell visitors who come for a few hours.  My guess is that there is a darker side to the bustee that one has to dig deeper to see.  Surely there’s sexual violence—in the home and out—as there is everywhere.  But maybe this is not “crime.”  It’s hard to pry on these issues to a woman who’s let us come into her home, and knows that there are 100+ kids spilling into the house from the pathway, listening to every word.  Privacy, at least in the way I think about it, is non-existent here. 

 This family of three—with one bed, three dressers holding clothes, dishes, and other household wares—has maybe 4ft x 7ft of open space.  People in New York 1-bedrooms should stop complaining so much.

Soon-to-be "slums"

One thing I love about New York is that it’s comprised of several distinct cities—you can leave New York (or America for that matter) for a few hours.  From the surface, Dhaka appears to be more homogenous, it lacks the global flavor of New York, but sometimes I feel like am transcending centuries or worlds when I step into different parts of the city.  This was one of those days.  New York is proud to be a city of immigrants, “Give us your tired, weary souls….”.  Dhaka is this as well—it’s a symbol of opportunity, but not without the shadows that arise in the name of progress and in a developing country.  That same optimism, the hope, the buzzing energy of activity; there is much of that here, particularly in these types communities.

On the way back, we drive past new communities of this sort being constructed.  Whether we like it or not, more people are on the way.