Here’s the second part of our volunteer experience in Bangladesh. I have been sitting on it for months because I felt it really isn’t adequate. It’s not that it’s badly written, it’s just I haven’t been able to give justice to the feelings I felt in meeting such amazing people. (Click here for Part 1)

INSPIRATION AMIDST DESPERATION

Near the end of our trip in Bangladesh, Mehwish and I were sitting in a living room with a man and all three of us had tears in our eyes. How we ended up there and what caused the tears is a story that was years in the making and starts with the man who was accompanying us. He was born in a camp for internally displaced people (a refugee camp), about 30 years ago in a home that was really just a tiny room about 8’x10’, where his entire family lived.

In this tiny space the family lived with all their belongings, where they had to cook, eat, sleep, clean and study. This may sound like fiction to us, the ones whose bathrooms are sometimes bigger then this family home, but it’s a reality the displaced Urdu-speaking community in Bangladesh has lived in for over 40 years now and how countless others live across the world due to conflict and war.

The conditions in these camps are abhorrent today, so one cannot imagine how awful the conditions must have been 30 years ago. There were certainly no subsidized NGO schools like the ones run by OBAT Helpers that are creating hopes for a better future for countless children today. There were barely any water pumps, unlike the hundreds installed by RS Foundation in the past few years and making life a little more bearable for these families. Back then, parents probably struggled to put food on the table and filthy kids roamed around aimlessly the narrow alleys of camps.

In this environment devoid of hope, there was a boy who dared to dream and parents who encouraged him. Perhaps these two are the only key elements required to spawn new beginnings for anyone. This little boy decided he wanted something better for himself and his family and he did something about it by somehow putting himself through school. He would clean the local mosque including the washrooms and he also became a street hawker, selling used winter clothes on the streets to pay for his school fees. More astonishingly, he kept his grades high and got one of the very limited public spots at a government university. There are only a few hundred openings for tens of thousands of student applicants so it is extremely remarkable that this “son of the camps” landed one of those coveted spots without much support and help.

Roaming his camp, you can tell how well people know his story and how kids look up to him. Sitting in the living room of one of his camp neighbours, we were told how he tried to change the depressing camp environment. He would ask all the kids to get a few takas (Bangladeshi currency) from home, then pool the money, buy some food and sneak away from the camp with all the kids to have a picnic. We also heard how as a teenager he gathered the neighborhood kids to tutor them in subjects like math and English. It is unimaginable how much of a morale booster these types of activities must have been for the children as it gave them an outlet from their desperate situation.

Now, this man has graduated from university and just like always, he is helping the camp dwellers by working for OBAT Helpers (that’s how we got to meet him and we spent a few days in his company). It was not easy growing up as he was scared of what people may think of him because he was a “camp” kid. Even as a street hawker he was afraid of getting recognized by other kids from his school. The stigma of being a camp kid and a street hawker were too much even for him, so to hide who he really was, he would travel by train an hour south of his city to Ishwardy to sell used clothes. Sitting in that living room, remembering those difficult days and the shame he had felt as a child and a teenager, he told us a part of his story with tears and we couldn’t hold back the lump forming in our throats and water streaks rolled down our cheeks listening to him speak with such emotion.

One of the most difficult regions to survey was Ishwardy because this town had not received much help over the years and you could tell the desperation and the frustration of the people. As we walked in the camps in Ishwardy, all the residents gathered around us, started talking to us about all their problems and worries, held our hands and tried to take us to visit their homes. One person actually said that “now we will get food and water” and through the desperate faces you could see a ray of hope peeking through. They had us completely surrounded and were looking for any kind of assistance. This was extremely overwhelming. It was difficult especially because people needed help immediately and we had none to offer. The only hope we could give them is that our household surveys would document the dire situation and OBAT Helpers and RS Foundation would redirect some funding to this neglected community.

Amid this gloomy environment there was a “jewel” in the camp. As I was going from area to area, randomly selected house to another, I picked one that had a few teens inside. It looked like there was some sort of session going on so not wanting to trouble the host I excused myself and moved on to another house. After a couple more surveys I saw the kids from that house were outside and I asked if I could survey that household, a little curious to find out what was going on there. Sure enough, I was allowed to go in and was met by a 22 year old. This young man told me he was tutoring around 50 kids and charged between 0 to 200 takas per child. Usually, tutoring costs can run into the thousands of takas per child per subject, whereas he was charging a flat fee for all subjects and his fee depended on the economic condition of the child’s family. His motivation? Simply to help kids get a better education and to give them a chance at a better life. He stated that he himself was in the same situation growing up and he wanted to help kids living in the camps.

Surveying this area takes an emotional toll on you because so many people need help and you don’t even know where to start. Doing the surveys was particularly emotionally draining because you have to prod and dig into people’s difficult lives and not having an option for immediate relief we mostly saw agony and pain so to meet this young man making a change was such an emotional boost. I just forgot everything else at that moment really enjoyed my conversation with him. I must have been in his house for 45 to 50 minutes (a household survey would take about 20 minutes on average) before Mehwish came looking for me wondering what was taking so long. I was glad she came because I got to explain his story to her and spend some more time with him before heading out for more surveys. It was amazing to encounter people who refuse to give into desperation and have such a positive outlook despite having every reason to be down and depressed.

The above two occurrences happened at the very end of our trip in Bangladesh, but our first impression came from the youth of the camps in Dhaka. We met four of them, two boys and two girls, at OBAT’s office outside the camp. These young volunteers were educated, having gotten the opportunity to study because of OBAT’s schools. They had a real sense of accomplishment and were motivated to help with our work. When we spoke to them we got very positive vibes and they had a very hopeful attitude towards their future. We were especially impressed with the girls who were strong-willed and ready to stand up to their parents. They refused to get married early to pursue their dreams of getting an education and supporting their family and community. They told their parents we are just as good as the boys and can work and take better care of the family. Their confidence and positive attitude towards education and to fulfill their dreams in achieving their goals regardless of their gender, social status or economic situation was admirable. These girls were proud of who they were and wanted to set an example for other women around them.

In the southern Bangladeshi city of Khulna, one camp stood out not because of its condition, but rather because of the camp leader. This camp had a lot of space and green areas, but it lacked a school, jobs and proper infrastructure (the public washrooms were some of the worst we saw). This camp’s leader was another person who was born and raised in these dreadful conditions yet he was brimming with optimism. Even now I am amazed at how positive these people can be given the life of hardship they live. The leader of this camp was not asking NGOs to hand over money, to open a school or to fix the toilets. This man had vision. He had asked an NGO to donate money to start a fish farm in the community. When we were there, the farm had been in operation for only a short while and they were waiting excitedly for their first batch of fish in a month’s time. The man was talking about re-investing that money in the fish farm and using part of it to fix the toilets. This man didn’t want simple handouts for his people. He had so many ideas and they all were to make the community financially independent. He wanted to work and allow his community to be free of outside help, to become self-sufficient and that was so refreshing to see for me and Mehwish.

Not all the inspiring stories were from camp dwellers. It is great to see people living in camps helping each other and succeeding, but it is equally inspiring to see people from outside the camps care so deeply about others. One such occurrence was when we had the opportunity to meet with a few of Bangladesh’s most prominent businessmen. Had we met these men without a prior introduction as to whom they were, we would have never guessed that they were part of some elite class of citizens. There we were, standing in a bare boned camp building with soda bottles inserted in the metal roof for light in case the power went out, crabby looking furniture and a dark, damp atmosphere. Yet, these men who live in lavish mansions, step outside their own world every Friday to enter this world. They spend a few hours at Camp Geneva (largest camp in Bangladesh) to run their organization called Award. They meet with volunteers from the camp to review the situation and assign weekly tasks. They have been doing this for over a couple of decades. When speaking to them, they didn’t highlight all the great work they have done, rather they stressed on two points (or perhaps this is what really touched me and that is what I remember from the conversation). They talked about how they should be doing a lot more to help people but they don’t have time due to their busy schedules and they stressed the importance of helping all Bangladeshis and that they were working in the camps only because of the great need, but they help anyone regardless of their ethnic background. In a fractured society like Bangladesh, where discrimination runs high this was really a heart-warming moment to hear someone talk so passionately about values we cherish as Canadians.

Another beautiful example was a group of young adults, in particularly four of them who were running RS Foundation’s Education Centre in Saidpur (northern Bangladesh). Three of the four youth were not from camps, yet they gave up pursuing potentially higher earnings elsewhere to teach daily at the Centre. It was really an inspiration speaking to them and you could really feel the empathy they had for their students. A couple of them were still studying and they would rush from University to home and straight to the Centre often skipping lunch so they could be in time to teach their beloved students. We were fortunate to spend a few days with them and this allowed us to really see the relationship they had built with their students and also how dedicated they were towards them.

Besides the teaching, these young people also organize RS Foundation’s Food Basket Giveaways to camp residents. The work that is going on at RS Foundation’s Education Centre is of extreme value to the camp kids because it allows them to improve their grades leading to better university and job prospects and perhaps a chance to leave the camps and integrate in society. And the food baskets are vital for the recipient families, most of whom are orphans, widows and the disabled. This Centre along with the hundreds of deep-tube wells installed in the camps have really changed the landscape and has slightly tilted the field a bit more even for camp residents. But even now, there is so much work there that remains to be done.

These stories are a reminder for me about how great the human spirit is when faced with adversity and how regardless of the deplorable situation around them some people can still rise above it all and hope and work towards a better future for themselves, their families, their communities and for future generations. Just amazing stories of inspiration for me and a realization that whatever difficulties and problems I have are minute and can be overcome with a little bit of optimism and perseverance. I leave you with two more pictures that are stronger then any words I can use to describe them.