Into The Slums

First Foray

Nothing really prepared me for what I'd experience in the Dia Bari slum.

The first sight that greeted us was an open area filled with garbage.  It wasn't a landfill, less of a mountain and more like a small lake of trash and filth.  As a group of foreigners we attracted a lot of attention before we even stepped into the slum, curious faces surrounding and following us as we made our way in.  Care packages had been prepared with muffins, fruits and snacks, but we held off on handing them out just yet.  

Led by Nahid and escorted by our drivers, we ducked into a narrow corridor, to do our first interview.  This block was lined on both sides with corrugated tin sheet, and had 12 rooms housing 60-80 people.  We spoke with a wrinkled lady holding her infant granddaughter.  Three generations of the family lived in one room, with one bed and scattered belongings.  They didn't own it, but rented through a manager from a landlord they never met.  The family uprooted to here from the village, because they had no land and thus the conditions were even worse.  At least here in the city the husband could work as a rickshaw driver or sell vegetables for money.  As bad as things seemed to us, they were unquestionably better than the old rural life these people escaped from.  Children went to school, but were expected to leave early in their teens to start earning for the family. 

With a cloud of flies buzzing around my head, I ducked into her home for a quick inspection and a picture.  There was no light inside, so it was flash, snap and go.  Cooking was done either outside the doorway or at the end of the block.  No electricity or running water.  There was however a communal low commode, a makeshift cover over a hole with little in the way of privacy.  Toddlers and shawled women wandered out to stare at us.

Halfway through our interview I thought of the bottle lights.  When we directed our questioning to their sources of light, one woman brought out a simple kerosene lamp that produced a large flame and thick, oily smoke.  They used these and candles at night, nothing during the day.  I started to tell Nahid to translate the idea of bottle lights to her, but it seemed too complicated for the moment.  After that though I started paying a lot more attention to the roofs around me.

The next house we stopped at was surrounded by a low stone wall, forming a small yard around it and the adjacent unit.  All the other kids had been playing and running around us outside, while this young girl sat on her ankles at the end of the bed, studying.  Sunlight angled through the doorway just enough so she could read, but the rest of the house was unlit.  Her name was Sunni, just like our Sunnie, endearing her to our group even more.  She was studying hard to pursue her dream of one day working for the government.   

We finished our interviews and started handing out goodies.  That's when the kids around us erupted, making it impossible to walk through some of the single file alleys.  We were happy to take pictures of them, visit their houses, hold their hands and give them props.  Some of the kids spoke rudimentary English, but the moment transcended the need for language.  Looking at the ladies in our group, I couldn't help but think of Lady Diana in the villages.  The infectious energy warmed us all on that cold winter day.  I myself got caught up in the moment and started yelling with the kids, and became a simple matter of rocking the crowd.  We told them we loved them, and to stay in school.  The kids followed us all the way out of the slum onto the streets, and waved at us through the car windows until we pulled away.

I knew I'd be back.

The Stark Contrast

My second slum experience was not as magical as the first, though very educational.

Carole and I went with BRAC to visit their operations in the nearby slums of Korail, the largest in Dhaka.  BRAC is the largest NGO in the world, and has been instrumental to the development of Bangladesh in many ways.  We got a sample of their work as we walked through the massive slums, home to some 300,000 inhabitants.  Sitting in on a microfinance group meeting was an interesting contrast to Grameen Bank's in the village, though the mechanics were similar.  Close by was a section of the slum that had been forcibly demolished by the government using bulldozers and arson.  We then went to a workshop at the maternity and child health clinic, where I learned of an injectable contraception that women prefer so as to hide it from their husbands.  Finally we visited a BRAC-run school with very well disciplined students.  Most of them wanted to be doctors.   

Everything was smoothly run, and the slum itself was in relatively good shape.  Like Dia Bari it was a dirty, corrugated tin jungle, but the similarities ended there.  In this labyrinth, avenues were lined with shops and markets, everything from food to telecoms and even barbershops.  There were drainage systems, and the electricity stolen from the grid powered the TV's in many shops.  It was a bustling neighborhood, and a far sight different from what I'd come to expect in a slum.  

It was plain to see that even within slums there is a huge difference in quality of life.  It seemed that BRAC was taking care of Korail quite well, and especially through microfinance families were working their way out of the poverty cycle, buying land in the village areas for retirement.  

I kept thinking about Dia Bari, and Sunni's sad smile.