Finding lessons in optimism from tragedy in Bangladesh

Bhola would clearly be a difficult place to be an adolescent girl. Of the three districts that we work in, Bhola is the most isolated and rural. It takes two ferries—one that is an hour long—just to reach the area from the division capital. More women in Bhola wear burkas, and those who don’t are more likely to wear other Saudi-influenced head dresses and full length overcoats. In the Safe Spaces, group participants tend to be younger, because most girls older than 15 years old have already been married and moved out of the village. Those girls who have married into the village are typically not allowed by their parents-in-law and new husbands to attend the peer sessions. We also see more illiterate girls in Bhola. Even those girls who are able to attend school often drop out after fifth class—the end of primary school and the highest level of education that is mandatory by national standards.

Although we hear stories of parents or communities who object to the Kishoree Kontha project (especially during the first cycle, when the project was still new and viewed with skepticism), I had never met any resistance myself until today in Bhola. We were in search of records from a first cycle Safe Space, and instead we found the older brother of an adolescent who had an earful of complaints for us about the program. (In stark contrast, just the day before we had been welcomed into a community in Patuakhali with fresh coconut juice and ginger tea; the village leaders came to sit with us and answer our questions, meanwhile praising the program and expounding on the importance of providing girls with educational and social opportunities through the Safe Space program. In Bhola, today, all we found was subtle hostility and suspicion.) As we stood in the courtyard of this man’s home—trapped by the mid-day sun and his harsh words—the difference was palpable. I suddenly felt very conscious of what life must be like for the sisters of men like this in Bhola.

After that first encounter we proceeded to five more Safe Spaces, finding incredibly low attendance rates (some as low as 50%) and high numbers of illiterate and non-school going young girls. At our last SS of the day, we found a room full of eleven little girls, all with their heads covered by their urnas. It was a study session day and the girls should have been reading. But nobody was studying. The leader of the session, a sixteen year old married girl, glanced at us with mistrust as we introduced ourselves and asked questions about the attendance register.

When we asked the group members if they had any questions for us—as we tend to do when we invade Safe Spaces with so many inquiries of our own—the peer educator didn’t hesitate. What benefit do we get from this program, she asked. Why don’t we get any money compensation or food? What is our incentive for coming? There was confrontation in her tone, and soon other girls joined in, saying that their parents did not want them to spend two hours every day in these sessions, when they could be home working. Without material incentives, what good reason did they have for taking so much time out of their days every day?
As Harun Bhai, the Program Officer who had accompanied us on our visits for the day, tried to explain the immaterial and life-long benefits of education, a slight murmur went around the room. Out the windows of the wooden house we saw women running across the courtyard, and we turned to the girls for an explanation. They held our gazes, and with static expressions told us that today a girl in the village had committed suicide.

She was 16 years old—a sister of one of the members of the Safe Space we were sitting in. Just twenty minutes earlier she had been found dead from an overdose of pain killers. At the time she must have been swallowing the pills that would end her life, we were in the next bari over, watching 11 year old girls from another Safe Space dance for us. At the same time the girls from this bari were just on their way to their own meeting. They got word of the incident as they walked to their Safe Space.

Today the girls should have been able to sit together and study in various small groups. On a normal day, they said, the school going girls would finish their homework and the non-school going girls would finish their outside reading materials (provided in the Safe Space); then they would come together to read and discuss animated story books. But today their books were closed, and it was no wonder that they had answered our original questions aggressively and defensively. They had just been reminded of the real issues and pressures that they face as vulnerable adolescents.

All too aware of the limited opportunities and means of escape for girls like themselves, they were understandably guarded against outsiders like us, who were essentially telling them they should try harder to change their reality—a difficult task for any adolescent girl, much less the average poor, under-educated, under-nourished and under-valued girl from Bhola.
Arranged in their prescribed circle, the girls looked up at us with blank expressions. Their composure gave away no sense of tragedy. I looked around in search of some kind of emotion or sign of comprehension from any of the other girls, but found nothing. I struggled to believe that we had just heard the same news. Tears came to my eyes but I didn’t know how to cry over the death of a girl I had never met, when I stood in front of a room of friends and peers and their eyes were dry.

I wondered whether the group’s bland reaction reflected the fact that they were inured to such loss, or whether it betrayed their youth and their inability to understand it. The oldest girl in the group was the 16 year old married session leader—a child leading children. Although she was married and most likely wise beyond her years, she must have been too young to really understand what it means when another 16 year old girl is driven to such desperation that she takes her own life. But the significance was not entirely lost on her, and she challenged us to understand the situation from her perspective. “She was the same age as us.”

The session ended a few minutes later. We had no more questions to ask, and the girls wanted to leave the Safe Space and join the rest of the community, who had gathered near the girl’s home. There was a brief moment when I had to wonder what we were doing here. In a community where parents are not supportive of girls education or empowerment, and where 16 year old girls face such bleak existences that they prefer poison, can our six month program really make a difference? Can the Safe Space model—designed to encourage self-realization and personal development—have an effect on girls who are already dropping out of school and getting married? Does the model only work when girls are in an environment that is at least open to ideas of female achievement? Even if girls are coming six days a week to our Safe Spaces and participating in discussions about hygiene, financial planning, and education, what can they do with this information when they return every night to a household that tells them they do not deserve education or opportunity?

Of course there is no room for such skepticism in our program. I’ve now seen a case of teen suicide. I have once met a Safe Space member who was freshly bruised from physical abuse. I’ve heard of countless cases of girls whose parents would prefer that they stay home and do chores than attend the Safe Space. But these incidents are not indicative of greater trends. I’ve also seen incredible examples of empowerment and growth. I’ve met a 19 year old single mother whose husband left her after she gave birth to their first child. She was one of our Peer Educators, and was using her new found freedom to act as a role model and mentor to younger girls in her community. I’ve sat with numerous proud fathers, who are happy to tell us about how supportive they are of the Safe Space program, and how many of their own daughters are participating. I’ve heard of high rates of informal program continuation—groups of girls who have continued to meet on a weekly basis even after their six month cycle is complete, simply because they relish the opportunity to sit with peers and learn from a book that has (unlike most things in their lives) been designed with the sole task of educating and uplifting little girls like themselves.

In light of the recent attacks in Bombay, I know I must remember that these small victories are things to be grateful for. This past Thanksgiving season may have shown us that we are all vulnerable—that our lives are not entirely in our hands. But I am reminded that for most of us this vulnerability is relative. Our options are not so limited that we (like the girl in Bhola) choose to poison ourselves rather than continue to live a life that seems out of our control. We do not (like the attackers in Bombay) know such desperation that we think we have to take human lives just to have our voices heard. In fact we are not helpless, and our vulnerability is not immutable. I believe that we have the means to prevent the violence (rooted in inequality) that people inflict against themselves and others.

And, in the spirit of a belated Thanksgiving, I must declare that I am grateful for this confidence in our abillity. Because it is this optimism (perhaps too much at times and often questioned by others) that makes it possible on days like this for people like Parendi and I to remember why it is that we do what we do. It is what makes it possible for us to return home from a community like this and still believe that we are making a positive change in the lives of some 40,000 girls. I suppose we can only hope that this optimism--this sense of possibility--is something that we can share with the girls of Bhola, who may in the end need it more than we do.

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