Aspirations

A friend had asked me to visit the Spreeha pre-schools. I always said I would. I don’t think he realized I really meant it. Their Dhaka team contacted me immediately after he understood. I told them I could do it after I came back from Nepal. A date was in early March was set forth.

Spreeha is a small non-profit working in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was started by hi-tech professionals. They wanted to give back. My involvement in non-profits with focus on education has been steadily increasing over the years. But this was my first invitation to tour a settlement.

Spreeha’s setup is by the 1971 war memorial — in the slums. The multi-story office is just on the edge. The road to it was bumpy. That is typical of almost all non-major roads in Bangladesh. We reached around 10:00 am. There was massive construction going on there. They had recently gotten two more floors there and were rebuilding the internals to fit their needs.

I went to see the clinic first. In one room few moms and kids were waiting to be seen. In another one was a lab. They could run some basic blood work there. Dr. Zahid was very proud when he showed us the new shiny ultrasound machine. I do not know how much Spreeha pays him. But I can tell he doesn’t get to do the complicated surgeries that he learned in med school. He gets to tell expectant mothers who hardly know the difference between a physician and a sham pharmacist that their baby is healthy and growing strong.

There was a short tour of the one-room library, after-care rooms and the computer lab. The library had, may be, few hundred books. The lab about 10 PC’s. My school didn’t have a library or a computer lab. I grew up before computers. But all of my friends and I had huge libraries at home.

The preschools were at the edge of the slums. We walked in through 3 ft narrow paths between the slum rooms to get to them. The “studio” rooms were 10ft by 10ft and housed families of up to 6. During the day just the preschoolers are home. The older kids are either at school or work. The teacher still needs to go door to door and get them. At home they would be babysitting the toddlers. Some bring them along to take care of.

The preschools were slightly bigger rooms. There were 15–30 kids. There was a shoe rack on one side. The corrugated tin wall was covered with a low blackboard. The kids got some snacks in the morning: a cookie. The teachers in a school like this in Dhaka would get paid about a hundred bucks a month for the two hour they work. One girl there was finishing her high school that year. She attended the Spreeha after-school program at night.

The kids were super cute and super excited. I dont know if they knew somebody was visiting but most of them were dressed-up. They raised their voice high studying the alphabet. They did not know they were born poor. They did not know the amount I spent on a dress can run their whole family for two months. They were like any 4-year old around the world. They were happy.

Just before lunch, I met bunch of pre-teen girls. Few of them went to school, many had stopped. I had to press them to talk. They were super shy. But they came there to meet me. That meant they had aspirations. I asked them about their chores at home. They took care of younger siblings while parents were out working. They cooked and cleaned. Nupur said she cooked fish with cauliflower for lunch. I told her that’s an unique skill. Very few 11-year olds could do that. I squeezed out answers to if they liked school or wanted to be their own women.

Jolly was a pretty little girl. She had stopped going to school after 5th grade. She knew how to sew and do embroidery. It was very hard to get those few details about her. Her friends mostly answered for her. She had covered her hair. Somebody whispered in my ear, “Her family will marry her off soon.” It is not fun to be that pretty in a slum. It is like having the crown jewel up for display out in the public. The girl was like a scared little bird. She knew words could hurt her, too. She knew she couldn’t trust anybody in this city.

I am from Bangladesh. I grew up seeing kids like this in my house working. I have seen them on the streets — selling magazines, flowers or peanuts, many begging. Once or twice I have strolled Dhaka streets at 2:00 am in the morning and seen kids sleep on the sidewalks. No sheets, no comforters; barely a shirt. Dhaka nights are about 65F. During my recent visits I have seen few have the “moshari”. A netted housing as a protection against mosquitoes that can cause malaria. Those, I assume, are the workings of a non-profit, too.

Poverty can easily glide over my skin. Whenever my chauffeured car stops at traffic lights few beggars stop by. Our family rule is to pay only the old, the sick and and kids. We pay 2–3 people on each stop. How much? — between 2tk to 10tk. That’s about a nickel to a quarter. My chauffeur tells me we give them too much. After a couple he yells at them to walk away and make room for the car to move.

I grew up in this invisible segregated society. The poor in Bangladesh are not mad that there is no social welfare. They are not mad they live the in a bad school zone. They are mostly happy. They take life as a gift from God. They are very thankful that they are alive and kicking. In sickness they pray and take it as God’s test. They do not think it’s unfair that they cannot afford to go to a doctor. They do not understand the idea of basic needs and the right they have of it.

I made it so far because of where I was born. If I was born in a gutter, really a gutter, I would most likely stay there. I would have no voice. I would get married at fifteen, have many kids. If I survived pregnancy I would have more, still working as a maid or if i am lucky, at a factory. I would be malnourished. I would have arthritis at thirty five and most likely be a grandmother at that age, too.

I once sat through Eric Brewer’s talk. He was still a faculty then. Not this big guy at Google. He spoke about his students’ work in India and Africa. They were doing the most obvious things to improve the connectivity. Like, setting up an automated system so that the routers would restart by themselves. Nobody had to press a restart button. They wanted nurses to be able to Skype and see if a patient had a curable blindness. I was awed by their commitment to serve the world back. No, they were not publishing at top conferences. Their systems or protocols did not require complex descriptions, proofs or prototypes.

When I spend weeknights on ineffective conference calls and weekends editing excel sheets of donations and ticket sales for non-profits, I often yell at myself, this is not worth my time. Then I remind myself of them. Of all of those who do this full-time. Those who do this in the hopes that may be one kid somehow will break out of that cycle of poverty — then two, then all. Yes, they dream big. They motivate me.

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