Kids

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Two stories about children that I’d like to remember:

Child beggars are pervasive. It’s one of the more difficult things to deal with here even after a long time. In a car, they will swarm me, pressing their faces against the window yelling, “Madam! Madam!” While walking, they will run towards me, grab my hands, try to pull my bags if I’m carrying any. “Madam, please!” they continually call. Sometimes I buy them some bananas or something or give them an extra mango from my backpack. Most of the time I brush them aside, say hello and ask them to go away. I try to steer them away from getting taken out by cars as they surround me while I walk. Sometimes they are sweet and look badly in need of some food. Sometimes they are rudely aggressive and look quite well-fed. It’s a situation I continue to feel uncomfortable with. Sometimes they don’t approach me at all. Most things I can deal with, but pushing a child off my arm and telling her to go away is still upsetting.
Which brings me to my CNG ride back from New Market. At every stop, we were surrounded by little yelling children, skinny sad women with naked babies, ill old men, and young guys trying to sell maps and jasmine necklaces. At one stop we were approached by a girl and a boy both around seven. Each one had a bag of hard candies in his and her hands. They were all smiles to catch two blue-eyed women sitting in a CNG. Apnar desh? they asked, which is always the first question from non-begging strangers. “My country? America.” I replied. More smiles. They began rambling on in squeaky Bengali that I couldn’t decipher in the loud traffic. They each shoved a couple of pieces of candy into my hand. I kept telling them, “No, no, I don’t want to buy candy. Keep it, it’s for you.” Still they rambled on and ignored me. We talked about the candy, America, how they were. Soon other kids began to crowd in, reaching in their hands and faces. I told them no, no, I don’t have taka to give you. I really did not want to pull out my wallet and give 500Tk to 10 children, which was all I had. Still they chattered and crowded in. Finally I remembered I had some lotgan fruits in my bag from the market so I took them out and tried to give one to each child, but that’s always a mess. Giving food or money always becomes chaotic with snatching hands and yelling. I did my best and told them no more. They each ripped open the white skin and began sucking on the fleshy seeds. Soon the light changed and we began to move. Most of the other children had moved on after I gave away the fruit but the original girl and boy still stood by us, picking seeds out of their mouths. I realized I still had the 4 candies in my hand and again tried to give them back. Please take them, I insisted. Instead they smiled at me. “Gift,” they said as they took a step back and we pulled away.

Last night I went out to dinner with a couple of American public health graduate students doing work at ICDDR,B. They were both still in rather dark moods after a week all of us dread occurring. Sometime last week, the two of them went with a senior researcher to a field site. Like usual, the driver of their van was driving recklessly, honking incessantly, etc. The typical way everyone drives here, but I guess even more so than usual, especially considering they weren’t in city traffic. Because no one else ever says anything about the driving, we never say anything. Like they said, no senior people commented and they didn’t want to be the ones that would make them late or anything. And then a little girl didn’t get out of the way of the van. The driver quickly swerved but hit her anyway. The van never came to a complete stop and instead speeded up, the driver convinced that he had killed the toddler and would be followed by the locals and killed himself. He didn’t stop until they ran out of gas. The Americans asked if they could get out of the van, but the people told them no, they couldn’t. Also, they couldn’t report it because no good would come of it. It was an accident, right? So why cost the poor driver his job? In complete shock, only one of them came to work the following day. She was told that a report had been filed so she had nothing to worry about—it wasn’t her business. She insisted on seeing the report. Come to find out the driver wrote the report and said he was actually involved in an accident with a rickshaw van and a girl was like somehow involved or something. Basically it was completely fabricated and then just signed by the others in the van without consulting the women. The woman told the senior researcher who had been in the van that the report needed to be changed. A few days later she found out it hadn’t been so she went to the head of her department, which seemed to be the only thing that got the ball rolling. The girl was sought out and found at a local hospital with substantial injuries throughout her body, including head injuries and two shattered legs. The women were told that ICDDR,B’s policy is to give a maximum of 5,000Tk in such situations. 5,000Tk is the equivalent of about 71 U.S. dollars. If the woman hadn’t been vigilant about taking responsibility of the situation and eventually going above her supervisor, the girl would have never been found or received anything. So not much has been made of the situation while the higher-ups decide what to do, whether to transfer her, how much compensation to give, who to reprimand. As it stands, an impoverished village watched as a van with ICDDR,B written across the side—an organization dedicated to helping improve the lives of Bangladesh’s poor—recklessly hit and severely injured a little girl without even slowing down to see if she could be helped or if she was even alive. It’s been making me think a lot about the work of intervention organizations and local perceptions of them. I wish I could say the whole incident was less surprising despite its complete awfulness. There’s not much else I have to say about it.

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