Bangladesh - 2nd May

So we took the train from Kolkata, India to Dhaka, Bangladesh on the second of May. We got up early to get a taxi to "Kolkata Station" which is actually the fourth train station of the city, only built a few years ago.

When we got out of the taxi at the station we were in for a huge shock - only a few people across all the platforms, only one guy selling water and snacks.. wow! It didn't feel like India at all.

It was a 12 hour train journey - or, actually, a 7 hour journey interrupted by exiting-India customs and entering-Bangladesh customs. The train was only 10% full, so we were just sitting waiting for the scheduled departure time for a while at each place.

We only stopped in Dhaka overnight, after which we caught a bus to Srimongal (North East from Dhaka), where we stayed with tribal people who lived near tea plantations. This was all arranged with BASD - Bangladesh Association for Sustainable Development, through their director Boniface who came with us to the village. The tribal people - of the Khasi tribe - pretty much own their land, though there are ongoing disputes with the government. They grow jackfruit, betel nuts and leaves (disgusting chewing stuff), pineapples, mangoes... They have little, but what they have they shared generously with us. We got two breakfasts most days, one at home and one at another home we'd been invited to. Simple food, but tasty!

We saw microcredit schemes in action at the tea plantation, and another nearby village - with people proudly showing us the cow or goat they'd bought with the micro loan (I think about 3,000 Bangladeshi Taka, which is £30, buys a cow). The plantation workers earn about 28 Taka a day - 28p, give or take. 1Kg of rice costs about 22 Taka. "Poor" does not feel like an adequate description

After 5 days with the Khasi folk and tea garden and other rural villagers, we headed back to Dhaka, to see "sweeper" slums. "Sweeper" is a job description - these people are of Indian origin, brought to Dhaka by the British to clean the streets. But now, the Bangla government gives sweeping jobs to Bangladeshis, and generally doesn't do much good for the sweeper people.

They live in walled compounds, and can't really go outside at night because they aren't Bangladeshi. They live 8-12 people in under 100 square feet of living space. There are only a few battered communal toilets. Generally it's a very hard life, hard in a different way than the tea garden workers.

But here, like in the tea gardens and surrounding villages, BASD is providing microcredit loans, plus skills training when there is funding available - funding to educate young girls in sewing, beadwork and so on, enabling them to earn a living.

The poverty is simply staggering - don't get me wrong, the people don't appear to be starving, and it's not filthy like in the pictures we see of refugee camps in Africa, but... to work all day, 6 days a week, and earn less than £100 in a year? They have nothing. In a chronically poor country, the discrimination of the Bangla people against other tribes is incredibly saddening.
In Srimongal town, Boniface told us that beggars often "work" for a sort of company - the "employers" give the beggars somewhere to sleep, a little food, and maybe one or two sets of clothes a year, while the beggars give the employers all the money they get.

On the 10th of May, we left Dhaka by the ropiest plane I have ever been on in my life. Dhaka airport, like Kolkata station, felt like part of another world - air conditioned, virtually empty, without hustle and bustle - quite a contrast.