AfricaBeside the Brahmaputra
The people we live among are mainly Muslims, with a sizeable Hindu minority and a few Christians. So as soon as we came to live in Mymensingh in 1987, as a way of building bridges of trust, we started small schools for the poor. At that time, very few children in the poor areas near our home went to school. These areas are densely populated and we soon got to know many people there. Once the children started going to school, the mentalities started to change. Many of the rickshaw pullers and coolies are proud that their children are going to school, in spite of being so poor. And they will tell you how they too can write their names and read simple sentences. At the beginning, we had evening classes for the mothers and fathers too. Eventually, however, it became clearer where exactly we were most needed.
Bangladesh is a country where much development work is being done, even if sometimes it seems chaotic. In Mymensingh town, there are now schools in most areas. We therefore only run three feeder schools (from kindergarten to Class II) in the hope of getting these very small children interested in continuing afterwards in a nearby school, where otherwise they would not easily be admitted. So we have continued three bigger schools with five classes. Altogether there are more than 1 500 children studying in our schools.
These schools are also places where the young teachers, Muslims, Hindus and Christians, learn to work together. They are all students who need to earn money to pay their studies in college; they teach for two to four years, sometimes even longer. These students understand that if they themselves wish to receive help, then it is important for them also to give something. They give of their time to run schools for poor children. And they do it so well that they have earned the respect of much older teachers in nearby high schools, who come to ask them to send their best pupils to their schools after graduation! These young men and women not only discover the pleasure of doing a good job together. Serving the poor together encourages a sense of the being one human family. In our monthly meetings, apart from talking about the practical aspects of the schools, we try to encourage them to discover an attitude of heart that cares for justice, peace and love for the poor, and a respect for each other’s religion and culture. This is a vital part of development that is often forgotten, and not only in poor countries.
Binpara
Our house is close to the Brahmaputra River. Rising in the Himalayas, for Hindus this is one of the holy rivers of the sub-continent. On the other side of the river from us, the villages begin; with their paddy (rice) fields, clumps of bamboo and small houses made of bamboo and tin roofing. The villages closest to the river are flooded every year. The people are poor, and work in the city of Mymensingh as coolies, rickshaw pullers and day labourers. The women sometimes work in the homes of the middle class families as cleaners, cooks or laundry women. Their salaries are extremely low: food and 5 or 6 dollars a month.
We started our first school in 1988 in Binpara, the Hindu area of one of these low lying villages. There was much drinking and quarrelling, and some of the men were addicted to gambling. We built a small house – as usual, in bamboo with a tin roof – in an empty space near the river. The children started to come, with much hesitation. Every morning, the teacher went to the houses to encourage the parents to send their children. They would come one day and the next day they stayed at home. We managed to continue with the first small group until the first year was over. Then the children passed into class two; the battle was over and we had won.
Slowly the attitudes of the parents in the area and the nearby Muslims changed. They agreed to come to the school for small meetings where we discussed their problems of drinking, gambling and domestic violence. They started regularly saving money – a few takas a week – and deposited the money with us for safe keeping. Mothers came to learn embroidery and how repair their children’s clothes. Fathers started showing interest in their children and came to the school, until gradually it became the centre of the area.
After a few years, the school had to be moved because the area was threatened by erosion caused by the river. Today, this part of the village has disappeared completely. The new school has over 300 students from a large area around Binpara: a few are Hindu, most are Muslim, with 14 young teachers. Year by year, we have repaired the school after floods, added classrooms and recently even a whole house from another school in town, which had to be closed when he municipality cleared a slum area. But Binpara has remained very much a village school, made out of bamboo and corrugated iron. The trees have become bigger and the teachers are talking about planting a small flower garden. The change is gradual and the school is melting into the environment. The change in mentality is also gradual. All the parents contribute a little to the school now. They understand the importance of learning and they appreciate the vision we share. In Bangladesh a more fundamentalist attitude towards life is becoming more widespread. Koranic schools are springing up everywhere. In these, oppositions sharpen and the outlook is narrow and exclusive. We try to continue as we began, working all together, with great respect for each other.
Mohammed Abdul Aziz School
When we first arrived in Mymensingh an elderly man came to help us chop wood for cooking. We called him “uncle”, “cha cha” in Bengali. That was the start of a long and deep friendship.
Cha cha is an old man now and a little bent, but he still comes to make his weekly visit to us, from his village, Borovila, about 5 kilometres north of the city. He comes on foot and as he leaves again he always says, “Every night when I say my ramaz (prayers), I pray for each one of you.” “God gives to you and to me the same message: Love one another, help the poor and live together in peace.” In 1990, we started a school in the cha cha’s village. His real name is Mohammed Abdul Aziz and the school is named after him. The area was poor and no one went to school. The people, all of them Muslims, were superstitious, narrow minded and distrustful of Christians. The first years were difficult. When I went on my bike to visit, children would call after me “Christian”, which was not meant as a compliment. When the Gulf war broke out, people said to the cha cha, “You are with the Bush people. You are a traitor.” In trust, cha cha continued his friendship with us. Today, the school has over 300 students.
Among the teachers, at the request of cha-cha, we always keep two Christians. He insists on the importance of having two non/Bengali, Christian teachers on the staff (these teachers come from an ethnic minority group, the Garos, who are almost all Christian). For the ceremonies of the opening and closing of the school year, distribution of results and guardians’ meetings, the school yard is crowded with fathers of the students, among them the imam (prayer leader) of the local mosque. The mothers are invited too and quite a few come, standing in the background or listening from inside the class rooms. Of late they have become bolder and now even sit on the benches outside, in a row to the right of their husbands and brothers.
Jagaroni
Ever since the British left India in 1947 and the sub-continent was partitioned, Hindus have been leaving Bangladesh for India. Whenever there are riots between Hindus and Moslems in India, the Hindus in Bangladesh have their villages attacked, their possessions looted and the exodus continues. Those who remain are either very poor or very rich. Among them are the “outcasts”, the people who sweep the streets and clean the toilets. Mahatma Gandhi called them “Harijans”, “children of God”. Members of one group of Harijans, who look after dead animals and bury the dead, live not far from us. The area is dirty and the people are often drunk. This is the “lowest” group on the social scale.
We started a school there in 2002, in a small room made of bamboo, built on an open space between the huts. First of all, with a group of young people, we cleaned up the area. When the school opened 60 children came, but soon many dropped out. Like everywhere else, the teachers have to go looking for the children in the morning. Sometimes drunken parents come to the school to take their children away, as if they wanted to resist any change to the only little universe they have ever known. In spite of everything, the school now has 120 pupils and has produced two batches of graduates from Class V. Several have continued in high school, though for many, especially the girls, this means a struggle with tradition and uncomprehending parents. Jagaroni being in the town, this school is slowly being transformed into a feeder school. The area is very small and there are other schools nearby.
Bolashpur
The people of Bolashpur used to live very close to us, in a village-like slum area by the river. Then one day about six years ago the government decided they had to move. The police came to demolish the huts of those who did not move quickly enough. A new place was found, near the river, on low land that is flooded every year during the rainy season. Sometimes, for as much as two or three months, the people had to “camp” elsewhere on higher ground, leaving their huts in the waters of the Brahmaputra. But the government, with the help of the army, eventually raised the ground and constructed long rows of tin huts. This area is now neat and clean and the people have formed a committee that is very active. When they left the river side, we promised them to build a school. This school is now big, with 350 children, and will have to be extended in the future since the government is building even more tin huts in the area.
Seven in all
In all, there are seven schools now, and next year there will be more. There are many aspects of these schools. The parents see one, the teachers another, the children yet another. For us, this is a part of the pilgrimage of trust on earth, which has many, many faces.