I’ll start of with a quick “about me” I love collecting stamps – the travelling kind! Who wouldn’t be proud to show of a well travelled passport with all the wonderful stories that come with it?! I also adore children (not the bratty kind!) and god willing plan to have my own one day until then I have my adorable nephews and nieces to keep me occupied. Some day I’ll be a story teller and tell them of my travels but for now let me tell you my story.

Bangladesh is one of the smallest and poorest of countries, though in my opinion it has some hidden treasures in terms of some truly stunning places and the people are warm and welcoming – if you ever go travelling there take along ‘The Lonely Planet Guide to Bangladesh’ and it won’t be long before you stumble across some of these great places. I’m writing about my memories from my last trip to Bangladesh in January 2006, which marked the final leg of my tiring and exhaustive yet amazing solo tour of the Far East and South East Asia. Rest assured that will be my one and only solo trip, as I have got married since and now I have my permanent travel buddy!

One of the first things I noticed about Dhaka is the traffic and chaotic scenes outside in the airport vicinity - the poor trying to target the international passenger, vying for your hard earned pound or dollar. Some begging, some offering porter services, taxis etc. Ofcourse like any other city, there are some beautiful places and very well developed areas where the super rich and powerful live. But you don’t have to travel far before you get into the poorer districts where there is wide spread poverty and the substandard quality of living, likened with Hong Kong, where the rich and the poor live side by side in some places.

During my travels, I experienced a wide array of emotions, the highs and the lows. You would truly have to be heartless and without a conscience to be apathetic to the plight of the poor – it can be emotionally draining. My strong connection with children meant that I found it particularly distressing seeing children as young as 2 or 3 walking the streets with their siblings/families scavenging and begging for food, raiding dustbins (other people’s rubbish for crying out loud!) looking for whatever bits of food they can get their hands on, chances are that’s the only thing they’ll be eating on any given day. My affinity towards children is because many of them are helpless and vulnerable and can’t fend of for themselves and it’s seeing the children living like that which really gets to you especially if you have young children of similar age in your family whether they are your own children or your nephew/niece, that’s when it really hits home, makes you think it could have been one of our children, It could just as easily have been any one of us in an alternate reality.

When I heard of Restless Beings and what they stood for and the fact that the first project is working with the street children in Dhaka, I did not have to think twice to get involved especially having witnessed first hand the problems there. The thing is I know some people think “I want to give to my own people” the truth is the geopolitical borders do not exist in terms of poverty or to the needy, try explaining that to a young child! The children are the helpless innocent victims of circumstance, they are all our children and we have a duty to protect them by whatever means we can.

We are in the Muslim holy month of Ramadhan; it is a time for reflection and generosity and for encouraging empathy and compassion for others, especially those less fortunate than ourselves - the poor and the vulnerable around the world. Although the month of fasting comes by once a year, for many of the poor, they endure fasting almost every day of the year! Those who fast will no doubt know what it feels like to have an empty rumbling stomach and the hunger pangs that just do not seem to go away at times, yet we are not too concerned as we have the luxury of knowing that, as soon as the sun sets, we can break our fast and devour into a lavish meal. What about the luxury of the poor? They don’t know if and when they will be having their next meal! What about their lavish meal? They will be lucky if they have a plate of rice which they will share with the rest of the family!

It isn’t possible for all of us to go and work as aid workers – I wish I could, I would love to do that some day – but for now we can do the next best thing which is to provide financial help via organisations like Restless Beings who have the necessary resource in place. We should all give and encourage others to give whatever amount is within our means, no matter how big or small as every penny counts.

By Yousuf Goni – RestlessBeings Community Relations Officer

This week’s blog comes from one of our new additions to ur team, Tariq, who has joined as part of the pr/marketing effort. He was recently in Bangladesh and visited our team. These were his thoughts:

For me the attraction of Bangladesh is based on something that I can’t totally identify: maybe its discovering the roots that for years I feel I have neglected or perhaps its just escapism from a London life that can often seem pointless, regardless of motive this was my third visit in the last 12 months to a land and its people with whom I am finding increasing affinity.

The street children of Bangladesh are something that I have always been aware of on my visits (very difficult not to be), but due to maybe an inability to do so (lame excuse) I have never really attempted to connect with and understand this community, for the first time I had a framework within which to do this, namely Restless Beings.

An objective of this visit was to film a couple of evenings with RB’s field workers as they interviewed the homeless community at Kamlapur – the busiest train station in Dhaka, when telling relatives I would be doing this no-one thought it was a particularly clever idea as the area has a rather seedy reputation and attracts its fair share of drug addicts, I was expecting to feel intimidated and even entertained selfish thoughts of canceling (ridiculous). As is often the case in life, reality and perception couldn’t have been further apart, On meeting the two field workers Shoeb and Shipa I felt quite at ease and on commencing filming I couldn’t believe how much attention we were receiving - really excitable (but never aggressive) kids.

I observed a range of cases, from those who were staying there fleetingly to others who were practically permanent residents, at times it was very sad, in fact distressing – the boys were visibly malnourished and the evening does bring out the ‘working girls’, what some have to do to sustain a basic living makes me sick.

Here is not the place to detail each individual case I observed, but to summarise my feelings: It is wrong to generalize the whole community as distressed, many of the kids seem happy with their own ‘habitat’ and are perhaps emotionally richer than many of us in the West. In fact, the kids were amazing, such characters, an idea would be to make a Bengali version of ‘City of God’.

Having said this, witnessing things ‘on the ground’ reminds oneself that there are many who through no fault of their own have been given hopeless starts in their lives and have a right to a support structure which will give them a chance to attaining respectful self-sufficiency.

As a side note, on the way back, the Dhaka-Dubai (home of the world’s only seven-star hotel) leg of my trip provides an opportunity to have some form of chat with the many Bangladeshi expats living out there. The boy next to me described his conditions: impossibly low pay (when he does get paid), squashed in a camp with thousands of others for some life is the cycle of exploitation.

Pre-departure, my concerns were for myself: dengue fever (a close friend had recently contracted this potentially fatal condition in Colombo), the obvious heat and humidity (my first visit at this time of year) and a lack of good reading material for the plane (took a really worthy gamble with Khaled Hosseini’s ‘A Thousand splendid suns’).

I have arrived home safely and well but my fears are now far more pressing and for those I have left behind.

Bangladesh: never the same.

Every time I have visited this complicated, intricate and richly diverse site of so much more than just colour and rickshaws, I notice more change. The country is taking small yet significant steps towards something which in the people’s eyes, is progression….

The middle class is slowly making themselves a space in which they can flourish. However the gaps between the rich and poor are, as always greater than ever and still widening.

 

My trip was part play, part work, part research and part…well… a desire to see more of what I saw but to see its changes.

 

Buildings were more frequently piercing the sky this year than my last visit, however, the familiar rice fields, expanses of green in every shade and bamboo houses by the water were as still and present as I had left them. Life for some was moving faster, and for others, it lay still and rippled ever so slightly when the monsoon approached. That was the magic of the country which brought me back time and time again.

 

Since our launch, RestlessBeings has spent so much time on marketing, events and tightening the skeleton for Project one. This was all executed in the UK, where, amongst the streets of London we leafleted, protested about the injustice in gigs of poetic explosions and networked our passions away… so I felt privileged to actually have the opportunity to go to the heart of project one and actually spend some more time with and amongst the people who the project was dedicated to.

 

Accompanied by my eyes, ears and orientation, Dr Zaki, our Bangladesh Project One Co-Coordinator, Shoheb and Shipa, RestlessBeings Bangladesh Field workers and the Non-Executive Director Saleh and our on-field camera guy Shakir, I visited three main locations for three different purposes.

 

Our first visit of the trip was to Kamalpur station, Dhaka. My co-director, Mabrur Ahmed had made the same visit earlier this year in May and also in December 2007. I wanted to see whether there were any changes in the facilities available in the station and also to meet the new, and old children who occupied and some cases, ruled the station.

 

We were swamped with children, ranging from the 3 years to 16. Many were boys, their clothes torn, their skin dry and dehydrated and their frames smaller than their years but as always, there were all smiles and leaps of energy at our presence. As the field workers worked their way through the crowd by selecting some of the youngest children and talking to them about their day to day duties, and the ways, in which they protect themselves in the harsh streets, I took a little walk around the site these children call home. A looming concrete roof housed many, some passengers taking the train to distant corners of the country, some old and fragile and lying in the stations corners waiting until the night can come so they can sleep and disappear into a better world, and some, were these young bodies of hope, either carrying heavy loads and earning a few taka’s as coolies (ten TK was the max some would get – which is less than 10pence), whilst some sold their bodies for enough money to clothe and feed them, and some, just waited and watched until someone threw away any left-over food or bottles with a few drops of soda or water left inside. For these children, the concrete walls, street and excruciating heat was too much and the pains were visible; a permanent frown on their face, ribs falling out of their bodies, dehydrated skin, swollen lower stomach signalling malnutrition and most importantly a look of stress and sadness in their eyes that was just unnatural for children so young. Kamalpur station was the same, but the numbers of children had increased and my visit confirmed, that despite the presence of some wonderfully pro-active NGO’s in the neighbourhood which offered a place of escape for a few hours a day, these children still had nothing but the baking concrete floor and station corners to rest their bodies at night. Exposed to more than just mosquitoes and angry wardens, some children fell into the arms of abusive adults, paedophiles and local mastans who imposed their money making, sex selling ideas, on young children who, in moments of desperate hunger and danger, would not think twice about selling their body. For some, the choice was not there, they had to enter such realms of self destruction.

 

My visit to Kamalpur was expectedly saddening and yet strengthening to see that a certain level of hope had not yet disappeared from some of these young children’s faces. They were still waiting to be taken away to a better place. For some it was too late, but for the positive majority, our presence was welcomed. One girl in particular, whose case I hold closely to my heart, was a young girl named Fatima. She left her abusive family to roam the streets of Dhaka hoping to find a job or some means of consistent sustenance. She found neither of those things and ended up in Kamalpur station where she resides with the other children in similar situation. The striking thing about this young girl was that at first glance, you would be forgiven for assuming she was a boy. Wearing a baggy green jumper torn by the neck, hair cut close to her scalp and shorts, she walked, ran and spoke the way a boy did. It was obvious after a while that she was putting it on. I asked her why and despite the fact that I have become desensitised to such morbidity, her response shocked me. Fatima had once again reminded me of the many other stories we had yet to encounter. She dressed and behaved like a boy so she would not be taken and used by the mastans or raped or abused by older boys who were also on the streets and heavily drug induced. Fatima, like the others, had had enough and needed to get out. In which ever way she could…

 

Our second visit was to the property which RestlessBeings hopes to convert into the Rehab Centre & Shelter for these children. The property is in the heart of Mohammedpur. It is the perfect location as we do not want to isolate the children entirely and give them any form of culture or lifestyle shock, we also feel, by remaining close to some of the slum communities, we can gradually nurture them via food, medication, clothing, education, creativity and a clean, warm and safe place to stay at night. The property has two floors, with plans for a clinic with free medical care for the children residing at the RestlessBeings Rehab Centre. The rooms will be divided into bedrooms, play rooms, classrooms, offices and a roof top room were they can carry out creative projects and just relax and eat out. The property is quite run down, and requires some work, but the skeleton is perfect, and I knew immediately, it had something which we could nurture. It is raw and ready for us and our young residents.

 

And finally, the last visit was one to the outskirts of Dhaka were some of the largest slum colonies can be found. This trip was both emotionally and physically challenging for me. Some of the houses were made of old cardboard, bamboo, thin pieces of wood and other materials from rubbish dumps. They were perched on thin bamboo slats about a foot, in some cases only a few inches, above raw sewage. The smell was overwhelming and on some of our stops, it was difficult for our team to continue with our interviews of locals. Walking on top of bamboo paths was quite difficult, it was unfamiliar territory for me and there was a constant fear of falling through. I thought I was being silly and paranoid at first, but these fears were re-instilled after one of slum dwellers talked of how her two year old daughter had drowned after falling through rotting bamboo. The slum dwellers had been forced to move to a number of locations when the government required the land on which they dwelled to build more offices or to sell to rich investors. Despite the struggles and awful living conditions, the government refused to change or help in anyway and so the slum dwellers rebelled and built their homes elsewhere. Without any other option, what else can a family or individual do in such circumstances?

 

Despite the raw sewage, the water they drink by boiling this sewage, the food they eat very rarely and the unstable roof built on bamboo, the children of the slums were in better conditions than the children I had met in Kamalpur station. Some of these children had immediate family whilst others lived with aunties, uncles or grandparents and in some cases older siblings, after losing their parents to the consequences of poverty (starvation, illness, accidents in their labour work which paid peanuts, prostitution etc). Organisations such as BRAC had successfully managed to get their aid workers into these slums and opened up small schools which not only encouraged the dire need for education amongst these socially rejected communities, but also re-instilled a sense of hope in a colony which had given up on greater Dhaka and its governance. But it was all, well…just not enough. My opinion may be utopian, but surely, living on top of raw sewage and drinking and bathing in water from this and living in constant fear of disease, falling through your floor and flooding is not the way any human being should spend their years on this planet. A child in these circumstances is ridiculous!

 

These visits were beneficial in many ways for me. As one of the director’s of RestlessBeings, it reminded me of why we exist and what we want to be, but it also enabled me to meet and greet and communicate with some of the worst affected children who define our project. These children were the children who were either living alone on the streets of slum districts, who were either orphans or had no idea where their parents were, who were abused or in the danger of being abused due to their living standards and who had lost hope. These children were the forgotten, most marginalised and silent children. Those, whose glimmers of hope were gone after years of pain and psychological bruising. Unfortunately, my visits exposed many of these children. They stood away from the crowds of excited children who ran towards the camera or foreign unfamiliar faces. They shy-ed away when communicated to or walked off in anger as they had given up on these ‘invading’, ‘alien’ hands of hope who they had lost trust in. For RestlessBeings, these children were the ones with the greatest call for help. And my visit to Bangladesh was resonating so many of these calls. I have returned with a stronger need to push project one further into development and I cannot do this by myself. It can only be done collaboratively…. For this, I need you because they need us and if we don’t do something now, they may grow up and harm themselves and others or never grow up at all because all their fears caught up with them.

 

Rahima – Co-Director and Founder, RestlessBeings - Trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh - July - August 2008