GMB AKASH

Two global agreements – one focused on the protection of refugees and the other on migration – are in the final stages of negotiation between different governments, under the auspices of the United Nations.  Each offers a rare opportunity to protect migrants from one of the biggest sources of displacement today – climate change.

While the UN recognises that climate change is a cause for migration, countries are under no legal obligation to protect the rights of those affected by its consequences.

Through the following stories and photos, we are taken into the lives of mainly Bangladeshi women who are survivors of climate-induced migration. It is the ultimate display of human resistance.

Over the next few decades, scientists expect 17 percent of the country’s land to be submerged, and 18 million Bangladeshis to be displaced by seas. The country regularly suffers from deadly and devastating flooding, tropical cyclones, storm surges and droughts.

When a land that has been a people’s home for centuries disappears or becomes uninhabitable, through no fault of those who live there, what choices do they have and where can they go? These are questions that the international community currently have no answers for—and that’s neither fair nor just.

Featured first on my Facebook page: GMB Akash

I have always known that ‘water is life’ but this water has been killing us for the last 10 years. This water never gives us any peace. I am from a coastal village. We moved here because of yearly river erosion. If there is a fire in your house, only the house gets burned; the land remains.  But when there is river erosion, everything is lost. We lost everything  six times while living in my father-in-law’s house after our marriage . We have nothing left now. We came here and started life with only a few clothes and took out a 2000 taka loan from my sister-in-law.

Life is very hard here and our poverty is only increasing. We are waterlogged for almost the entire year.  We have thousands of problems here. Which one should I tell you about and which one should I skip? Everyone here is becoming a beggar and only buys medicine for waterborne diseases for their family members. We have to spend more than we earn every day. Every night this slum becomes like a howling Hell.  All the children start crying when they go to sleep because of the pain of their infected feet caused by walking the whole day in this muddy water.  We elderly people can tolerate most pain but the innocent children don’t understand that they are poor and should not cry about pain.

 I came here with only one child and now I have 4 children. My husband is the only worker in our family. I can’t go to work leaving my children here in this unsafe slum.  I have three daughters and almost every day in our slum, girls are getting raped.

For those with only one income earner, it’s very difficult for them to maintain a family and feed six mouths daily. Life becomes painful. It’s as if we are gasping for our last breath every day.  In our village life was so beautiful like in dreams. My children have never seen a village in their entire lives. I sometimes tell them stories of my childhood and our village. They listen to me as if I am telling them fairy tales. They want to go there to visit. But there is nothing left in our village anymore except the name. Now everything is under water. I heard most of my village people moved to Dhaka already. We all know there are two things in this world, ‘Heaven and Hell’. When I was at home in my village with my neighbors and everyone else, I used to feel like I was living in Heaven. Now it feels like we are living in Hell. We have cried so much already, but you know there is no end to our crying.

_Ruby Begum

After the flood, I lost my house for the sixth time because the river eroded. I sold my cattle and everything I had in order to rebuild my shelter last year. This year there was another devastating flood which destroyed my house again, and now staying here is another nightmare. I have no idea how I will manage to pay back all my loans while spending nights in this smashed-up house with my children.  We have been starving most of this last week. We have nowhere to go, no way to cook and most importantly nothing to cook. We live on the bank of the river in the northern part of our country. Now floods come two or three times a year and in addition, the extra water from India also comes when we don’t need it. We live in the flatlands so even in heavy rainfall this area becomes flooded. We can’t grow crops because this kind of sudden flood destroys everything throughout the year. Before the end of one year of trouble, the second year of floods begin to make us suffer again.

I never had any happy childhood moments. From the beginning of my life I have been facing extreme hunger and a washed-up future. At the age of six for the first time, I had to rebuild our destroyed house those nights; when the river took every dream we had. I was never a child again.

Two of my younger brothers died after that incident from diarrhea. There was no treatment. We could not afford to go to hospital. I have seen many deaths and diseases. Some were silent, some were miserable and some were deadly. But nothing is worse than hunger. You can fight disease but you can’t fight hunger.

I am looking forward to joining my husband in Dhaka City.  He tried for several years to make me understand that I had to leave this land and work together with him for a better future for our children. But I never listened to him as I never wanted to leave. But this time I have prepared myself to be strong. I love my land but it can’t meet the needs of my children’s hunger. My land can’t give me a respectful life. This land only can give me heartache every year with its cruelty.

I hope our endless sorrow will end one day. Hundreds of women are leaving here and going to Dhaka. I also want to get out of this open prison, this world of water where I was born, as soon as possible. I want to give my children a better life and I want them to be able to have a childhood. I don’t want them to rebuild their destroyed house again and again with a broken heart. I want them to carry their school bags every day with hearts full of hope.

home with my parents when the flood hit us. Then the river took our land. I grew up during

_ Ashma Begum

My wife is probably not going to live much longer and I am a helpless man and unable to do anything for her. I had to leave the woman with whom I have been living for 50 years alone in that dead drought place. I came here to earn money so that I can send some money to feed her and buy her medicine. I was a farmer with land. We used to have happy and beautiful days before the drought. But now because of the drought nothing grows in our field. The drought killed everything; it killed our happiness and now it is going to kill my wife.

I have been working here for the last 2 years. I never rode a rickshaw before. When I ride this rickshaw everyday it’s very difficult and scary. But I am doing this for my Buri. She is waiting every day for me to come to her so that she can die in front of me. She is very sick and suffering from malnutrition. I don’t earn enough so it’s very difficult for me to bring her here or give her enough money for good food or medicine. She can’t even drink enough water. Where will she find fresh drinking water? She needs to walk for miles to collect drinking water. She can’t walk enough to collect drinking water every day. She lives alone in a drought-prone area on my land. All my family members including my son and daughters have moved from there to Dhaka. But no one took her with them.

We became our children’s burden. My Buri became their burden. Now no one is with her to take care of her or give her a drop of water in her mouth if she starts to die. I can’t even work properly thinking of her. I am so anguished thinking about her and I always feel worried that I might not see her again. I can’t breathe normally when I think of her condition.

I am trying with every single drop of my blood to accumulate enough money to bring her here with me so that she may die in front of me.

_ Rohomot Ali

Sometimes it’s the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination. I am Bilkis and come from a slum in Dhaka city. I used to work in a factory with my husband. I fell in love with him and I fled here with him eight years ago. For the last eight years I have seen a very different world, full of the hardships of the people on this island. Many times my husband told me he wanted me to return to the city again. But I could not leave this land and these innocent people living in this situation. For the last seven years I have been working to bring changes to their lives, a little at a time.

Every year unseasonal flash flooding and extreme river erosion make people’s lives in North Bengal impossibly miserable. Countless people lose their children and their cattle every year. People of this land live a life of uncertainty. The severity of this is increasing every year. Hundreds of people have had to leave here because they lost their houses, their land and their hope of living without a hungry stomach.

I am the only educated woman on this island.  I wanted to guide the people but rather than cooperating with me, they always wanted to create obstacles because I am an outsider. But I never lost  hope. My husband is always with me. He never interrupts my work and always supports me. He knows that I want to help these innocent villagers deal with nature’s cruelty. Seven years ago,  when I was discussing my dreams with him, my husband said “to help these poor people you need to know about the floods and the current situation. Why don’t you buy a radio?” He sold our only cow to buy the radio. And that one radio changed the situation on our island.

I used to listen to all the news regularly, mainly in the rainy season to stay informed about the flood water so I could warn my neighbors to take shelter in the highlands and save lives. The first year no one wanted to listen to me about the arriving flood waters except two families and that was the biggest out of season flood in the last 10 years. Hundreds of people became poor and had to beg. Many people lost their children and cows. It was a disaster. In the last six years I have had to move our house three times but no one from my island has lost their lives.

Women from this island never wanted to leave here and work in the city, because they believed that working alongside men was a sin. I made them understand that women can work alongside men to survive and to end their hunger. Upon understanding this, hundreds of women from this island moved to Dhaka; to Amin Bazar.

Now everyone from my island, older or younger, admires me and listens to my words. All hard and positive work pays off. I have been providing education to 10-15 girls in my yard for the last five years and gave my radio to them. Together, we made some high land on our island. Now I am prepared to leave this island with my husband and move to Dhaka city because I know now that lots of Bilkis are ready to take the responsibilities of their own land and people.

_ Bilkis Begum

She doesn’t go to school anymore. For us, collecting water is more important than going to school now. We old people used to go to school but this new generation is becoming uneducated. But you know; education only helps when you don’t have to suffer for basic needs like food and water. Now staying alive every day is the biggest fight in our lives.

Every day here in this coastal area we have to face different problems. But the biggest problem is the lack of life saving fresh water. Water is life and we have an abundance of water everywhere, but for a bucket of drinking water we have to travel miles and miles or cross this river. We don’t get adequate sweet water for drinking or to use for ourselves. Our kids are wasting all their time collecting water for their families. We cannot remember the last time we took a shower in fresh water. Fresh water is now the priceless treasure in our lives. I passed my SSC education, but my children are illiterate. Like mine all the children of our villagers are becoming illiterate only because they waste their time collecting water. School will not save their lives when they need drinking water to quench their thirst and that of their families.

We are going to collect water. It takes a lot of time to reach the pond from where we collect water and then we have to line up for taking water from the pond which takes a lot more time and then return home. The pond is also getting drier day after day. Sometimes the owner of the pond doesn’t allow us to take water from there. We have another water source on our island which is a 12-mile walk. Our children are becoming sick and exhausted from collecting water every day from different places.

Only during monsoons can we collect water easily from the roof of our house with thin plastic sheets. But monsoon season is also our biggest fear. Our house is just on the edge of the dam and every night we go to sleep afraid that it could disappear with a surge of water at anytime.

We used to fish in fresh-water and earn enough to feed our family, but now there is nothing except salt water. It comes inland up our rivers where it stagnates. We can’t earn enough money as there are no jobs. Salt water has devoured our place such that we can’t grow anything on our land. We can’t even raise cattle because they too need fresh water to drink. Our income source is low considering the situation of price hikes. I cannot buy any vegetables or meat for my 75-year-old mother or my children. We are becoming the workless and the poor as well as beggars.  Our daily lives became a deserted life after the cyclone. Life seems so helpless here. Thousands of people are leaving this island because of these problems. But I can’t leave my elderly mother and she doesn’t want to leave this land. She would die starving and thirsty here but still she will not leave this land.

_ Hamida Begum

My children ask me all the time why we have to move from one island to another. I have no answer.  I also ask Allah the same question every day. My home has been taken by the river six times. A few days ago, we moved to this island and made our seventh home. On this remote island my husband can only go fishing. Last night my five hungry children were freezing in the cold. To fight the chilly wind we embraced each other and their father kept reciting the Quran. If my husband can catch a fish, we can survive another day.

We fear the future and fight for today. As we are poor we don’t know what we will eat the next day. We had some land from where we used to get some paddy every year. But this year it is now in the middle of the river. We have no hope for paddy or rice this year. Only by the grace of Allah do we not have the problem of drinking water. For many days we have been only drinking water from the river to survive.

The river took everything from us; now we have nothing left. How can I make you understand how we are living our unbearable lives every day? I was once so fond of my village from my childhood, but this cursed land and cruel river is killing me and my family every day. I don’t want to live on this land anymore; not for a single day. But I have nowhere to go; I have not a single penny to move from this cursed land. On this island only two families live with us and they are also surviving like we are surviving; fighting all odds against us.

There is not a single person to help me. I wanted a loan from one of my brothers who lives outside of this town who came to visit us last year. But he refused to help; saying he is also having a lot of problems and he didn’t believe that I could refund his loan! He asked me, “How will you refund my money?” I could not answer his question!

No one believes in poor people, not even a brother from the same mother.

I feel hopeless as Hell nowadays. I have never gone anywhere away from this land and don’t know what I could do to survive with my whole family. I am in the middle of nowhere and finding no way to get out of this problem.

When my children get sick sometimes, except for crying and asking help from God, I can’t do anything for them. I don’t know how many days we can live here like this? How many days we can live hungry and fight this hostile nature and weather. I don’t know how our miserable days will end or if they will ever end or not!

_ Khodeja

How can I possibly make you understand what a big sin I have committed? I don’t know if Allah will forgive me or not but I am sure my child will not forgive me. My family members will not forgive me as I can’t forgive myself. I had to sell my 6-year-old son to a man in order to survive with my other two children and my husband. To save 4 more lives, I had to make the most devastating decision of my life. We had one little piece of land to cultivate that we had to sell 4 years back for very little money. After cyclone Aila, nothing grows on our land anymore so no one wanted to buy it for a fair price. My husband and I, are both used to cultivating fish in our own fishery. That was the only work and income source for us.

But after cyclone Aila, there was no sweet water anywhere anymore. We couldn’t cultivate fish nor grow crops on our only field. Aila took everything from us: our house in the tsunami water, our land, our fisheries, the food from our mouths and even our elder son. This is why we had to sell our son to feed the other four mouths. How many days could we live without food? Day after day we all had to starve. I was pregnant. I remember getting faint after several days of hunger. I don’t know where my son is now! I don’t know what they have done with that piece of my heart. I don’t know if I will ever meet him again or not! When I think of him, I become like an insane woman. Sometimes I feel like killing myself because I feel so guilty. But no one would ever understand the anguish of it if they do not go through having an empty pocket and a hungry stomach. With the money we saved, we managed to move to Dhaka last year. Now I work as a housemaid and my husband works as a porter at Shadarghat. Now we don’t have to starve anymore day after day but we can’t ever sleep happily anymore. Every day before we sleep we regret our loss. We think about our son. My husband cries loudly holding me and my two children. Almost every day we fight and cry before sleeping. My oldest daughter always asks me where her brother has gone. I can’t reply to anyone; instead I try to turn myself into stone again in order to go to work the next day.

_ Hasina Begum

I poured my sweat and blood into building my house. I did it with my own hands. My wife and I worked hard every day so that we could make a home where we dreamed we could see out our days. Our children grew up there just like in our dreams. After so many happy years, one day like a nightmare, the river Jamuna took away our house. We never thought the river could come that close. Now I have only memories and nowhere to live. Isn’t life the most unpredictable thing?

 Everything happened in front of my eyes. We could not save anything except our lives. My wife’s wedding sari, my cherished radio and years of treasured belongings all went into the river. I was stunned that night when the calamity hit us.

That house was everything to me. I was a simple farmer; my life and heart were rooted in that land. But now it is all in the river. Now I have nothing except a plastic shed where seven of us have been trying to make do for the last couple of months. Now even drinking water is a problem because my water tube wall which cost one year of income from my crops, is also gone into the river. Now we drink the river water. We don’t have a kitchen nor a toilet. We cook under the open sky.

It will cost more than two or three hundred thousand taka to build a new home. When I can’t even collect food for my  family to eat, this much money is now a dream. In order for all of us to eat, my children had to stop going to school and have started working as maids in a villager’s house with their mother.

Though I know I will not get to return to my house, every day I come to the riverbank and try to mark the spot where my lost home might be now.

No one is coming to help people like us. It is getting worse every year. It’s a kind of war which has no value for anyone else other than the people who are fighting it and suffering every day for the rest of their lives.

_Shaha Ali

I was a hawker of girls’ cosmetics in our village and married a beautiful happy girl who I fell in love with the first day I saw her. Twenty years before we were married she used to be one of my regular customers. She fell in love with me unconditionally and married me after dealing with a lot of problems with her family.

I am a poor hawker man, who loves his wife and daughter with his full heart, but as people say, this doesn’t fill your stomach. It is very hard for me to see innumerable pins on my daughter’s slippers and holes upon holes in my wife’s sari. I feel hopeless and a failure when I can’t feed them three times a day, when I can’t manage school fees for my daughter and when I can’t buy new clothes for my family for the Eid festival. I couldn’t do anything for my family. But they never complained about anything because poor people get used to it; they know that no one can cope with the power of nature.

For the last six months we have been really worried about what will happen if we will lose our house and land again. Where we will live? How we will continue to survive? We already lost everything four times in the river due to river erosion. We continued to buy land beside the river because it is cheaper.

This last time I intentionally collected more money to buy land in order to make our home away from the river and this village as we knew that the river would again sweep away everything we have and will again show her unkindness.

But nature is more clever than mankind and has bigger plans than we poor people. Last week she took everything we had away again. This time it was so rapid and so much crueler than before that I could not save anything. I could not even grab the money I was saving for my girl’s marriage, nor the money for buying the land on which we were planning to build our home.  I could not save my hawkers box which I have been carrying with me for 25 years; nor could I save my only fulcrum tool. We lost our crops, our cattle… everything.

The night the flood hit one part of our village completely collapsed and was submerged in the river in front of our eyes . Before we understood what was happening, everything went under water. No one could save anything without losing their lives. We could just save our lives by running far away, holding hands with our family members.

I don’t know in what way I have sinned in order to deserve being punished like this year after year. I don’t know where I will go with my young girl after being released from here. For the last two weeks we have been living here because of my wife’s sickness. My wife’s condition is getting worse day by day. I am a beggar now. And as a beggar, I am begging to my god to please not take my wife away from me. I just don’t want to lose her too.

_ Khairul Mia

We have been born with the fate of uncertainty. Every year that we are alive, we live with the power of our fate. As each year passes by and we count ourselves fortunate; we count each new breath as good luck. The year of Cyclone Aila in 2009 was the curse of my life. We lost the only tree over our head. I lost my husband in the cyclone. No one could find the body of my husband for us to see him for one last time. Can you imagine how unfortunate we have been?

For the last six years I have been fighting uncountable complications with my four daughters. People say daughters are blessings, but for me daughters are dangers no matter how beautiful and moderate they are. There is danger in everything and  it’s worse when you are poor and homeless. I had never thought it would be  such a challenge to marry my beautiful daughters. Whenever I used to worry about them my husband would say, “Why are you so tense? The boys will fly to take those angels away.” But like everything else the salty water stole my daughters’ beauty.

I came here from Shatkhira, Munshiganj with my two unmarried daughters two years ago. Who wants to leave their birthplace and come here? But I have been obliged for the sake of my daughters’ lives and futures. My daughters had to walk uncountable miles every day for drinking water.  If it’s so difficult to find enough drinking water just to survive, can you imagine how hard it has been to obtain fresh water for my girls to showers? So they have showered in the salt water, which is very bad for our skin. It itches. It was a nightmare when my girls got their periods. I couldn’t bear their crying every month. The land gave us nothing but dead hopes. We couldn’t grow crops because of the cursed salt water. We couldn’t provide drinking water for our cattle. With no source of income, we couldn’t live there. Must I remain because it is my homeland even when my homeland is not able to feed me?

I moved to this rice field two years ago with others from my village. I had to take an advance of 50 thousand taka from my manager. With that money I repaid the loan I had taken to feed my children throughout the years since cyclone Aila. It may take me one more year to repay the loan to my manager. Our work here is very hard but at least I can drink water whenever I feel thirsty and I can feed my children every day.  We don’t need to starve day after day. I don’t have to listen to my children crying for water and food.  Sometimes at night I remember tearfully the joy of earlier days. But I force myself to go to sleep, in order to be ready the next day for the reality of life.

_ Parvin Akter

I never thought even in my worst dreams that I would have to leave my land and move to Dhaka – but this is what I am about to do. But what we want is never always that which happens. I don’t know how I will live there in one restricted tiny room after living in my open-spaced village here. How will I breathe in that blocked room? But it is also not possible to live here in my village anymore.

My grandson Motaleb came from Dhaka last night to take me with him from this cursed village where I have been almost dying for the last 10 years. But I didn’t want to go to Dhaka or leave this place. My seven sons moved from our village after the severe cyclone to search for work and for living. We had a house of eight rooms. We were not a poor family but now you can call us beggars. We have nothing left after that extreme cyclone. That cyclone took thousands of people’s houses and lives. Everyone moved to different places from here.  Overnight middle-class families became beggars.

Luckily one of my sons saw a tide 8-10 feet high breaking a dam and coming right towards our house . He cried out, “We will die if we do not leave this place. Let’s leave the place”. We couldn’t take anything with us. We were holding trees with one hand and with their other hand my two sons helped me and saved my life. I saw everything was floating; cows, goats, ducks, chickens, trees, even people. Everything was floating away in front of me.  I can never forget this memory.

We are from the coastal area so I have seen a lot of cyclones during my lifetime of 70 years, but I never felt that worried. However, this time people were very worried. I have never seen this kind of destructive cyclone before. Usually water would come and go and we would mend the damage every year. But Cyclone Aila took everything from us. It is not possible for us to be like we were before.

My sons  tried to make me understand that nothing was left here for me to be able to live here alone. But I never accepted their impassioned insistence and I did not want to leave my homeland where I have been living my whole life. However, it is now impossible for me to live here alone with a lack of available food and sweet water. Drought, frequent floods and storms as well as the barbaric torture of jungle animals have made my life Hell and have caused health problems for me. Last month I asked my elder son to take me with them. Today I am leaving my homeland forever at this old age taking every good and bad memory with me. I don’t know how many days I will live but I know even after my death I will not return to this land again.

_ Hamida Begum

I have no one. I am alone in this world now. For the last 10 years I have been living alone only remembering that day. For my one and only wrong decision, I lost my whole family in the horrifying 15 November Cyclone Sidr. I don’t know what I should call it – good luck or bad luck.  I am the only one in my family to have survived by holding onto the last tree in our village! I can’t forget how the next morning I was searching for my loved ones and lining up the dead bodies one by one. I lost my two daughters, my only son and my husband that night. I can’t forget losing everything; all my cattle were floating away like water lilies in the cyclone water.  The water took away everything from me.

I am from Pathorghata Borguna. There, every year we faced big and small cyclones. But in 2010 even in my worst dreams I never thought this would happen. My daughters asked me while holding onto me tightly several times “Ma, it’s a number 10 warning signal and they are announcing it again and again. Ma, we are feeling really afraid. Let’s go to the cyclone center.” But I was a foolish woman. I did not listen to them.  I did not listen to my husband either because I thought nothing would happen. I was feeling very lethargic and did not want to take everything with us to the cyclone center.  I thought like the many storms before, that the cyclone would pass and nothing would happen. For my obstinate decision of that cursed night I had to bury them alone the next day. I had to take out a loan from my villagers to bury my family members because I lost everything in the cyclone. I have only the sari I was wearing that night. I starved under a tree for several miserable nights.

I could not bear it, but I had to come here to search food in order to stay alive with my other villagers. When you are alive, your stomach hurts for food. For the sake of this stomach I had to come here. But it’s a very difficult job that I have been doing for the last 10 years in order to survive. But now I know there is nothing too difficult for the poor.  When coming here I took a 20-thousand taka advance from the owners and I have been returning this money for the last ten years. We get a very little amount of money: only 60 taka for a long day’s work when we finish drying one field of rice. Sometimes when it’s the rainy season or the sun doesn’t show up, it takes three to four days to finish drying one field of rice for 60 taka. The owners take the loan money out plus interest.  They give us rice but we have to buy vegetables from our money so we have to take out more loans from the owners. I became their slave for 20 thousand taka and this is how my life will end: working here day after day.

_ Fatema Begum

My entire life had been spent on an island on the Brahmaputra River. I had never seen any vehicles in my 35 years of life, except for boats, ox carts and horse carts. Like me hundreds of women from these islands had never seen any modern vehicles. The men of the islands went out for necessary things but women didn’t need to go anywhere. I, myself, never imagined a city life could look like this. Last year for the first time I left my land in search of making a living with my complete family and came to Dhaka. We took out a loan to move here in the hope that our family could at least eat three meals a day. We had to rebuild our home 5 times before we decided it was time to move. Before coming here, we were surviving by eating a blend of wheat powder with river water once a day. Sometimes we ate a mix of rice and eggplant. If my husband could catch a fish from the river, it was royal food for my family.

I was born on the island of Shakhahatichor in Chilmari district, 400 miles away from Dhaka. Chilmari district has 6 unions, or councils but 4 out of 6 are now in the middle of the river. Our island is one of them. Life is becoming more difficult every year for the people of the islands. People are dying from starvation there. Nothing grows on our islands because of draught. People have nothing to do; no jobs for surviving. There are no agricultural activities for farmers. In recent decades our area has been afflicted by severe droughts. There were not many problems in the previous years because there was adequate water in the Brahmaputra River. Now the water does not flow. The mighty Brahmaputra is the lifeline for our agricultural and our domestic lives, but it is dying every day and taking thousands of lives with it.

Thousands of islanders are facing a serious food crisis, natural disasters and temperature problems. Every year from mid-September through mid-November, this crisis is extreme. We call the period Mora Kartik, meaning the months of death and disaster. The last time we were there we couldn’t even stay in our hut because of the intolerable cold and wind. Now the season and weather have become unpredictable. Last winter my father died in his old age because he couldn’t tolerate the biting, painful cold any longer. My father used to say: “It’s so cold that tigers are shaking.” He is not the only one; lots of old people die every year from these conditions. During winter this place becomes unbearable yet during summer the heat feels like Hell.

Even though we were hungry on our island, we never wanted to move to Dhaka. But we had nothing left but our two hands. Without food or a  job, these hands are incapable of feeding our mouths. So, I listened to my husband and came to Dhaka for work. My husband is a day laborer and I work as a cook in a canteen where laborers eat every day. I have to work hard the whole day for 3000 taka and food for myself. Sometimes I can take some leftovers for my children. Life is very hard here too but at least we have opportunities for income. We can eat three times a day. My children don’t have to starve for food anymore. That is what I have wanted my whole life.

_ Morjina Begum

When danger comes, it comes in every conceivable way. Who would have thought that we would have to work here in this dirty dump yard? Fate has dragged me here. I am from a respectable family. Women of our family never used to work outside of the home ever. Now I work here with my whole family.

After cyclone Sidr, we were trying to fix our house but another cyclone, Aila, took the rest of it. We lost everything to the rising tide.  We lost our home, crops and now we are losing our dignity by doing this work every day. Everything we had is under water now. Now, except these hands, we have nothing left and are like beggars.

My father-in-law could not tolerate our situation and died from the grief of losing his home, land and property. My husband left me with my two daughters without saying anything and married a woman for money. I know he is living with his new wife in a nearby slum. I never thought that he could do this to me and to our two beloved daughters. How could he leave us like this? Once upon a time I had a family and a home. My husband could not eat if I did not cook the food myself. Now I know everything was a dream and the biggest lie ever.

I came here after taking a loan from villagers and selling some of my jewelry which I had been wearing my whole life. I took my mother-in-law with us. She is all alone now. How could I leave her? I thought if we eat, she will eat with us. Now I have four mothers; my own mother, my mother-in-law and my two beloved daughters. We are all working here and living in a rented tin shed room. We are working hard and repaying the loan every month. My daughters can’t go to school anymore. How can they? After working here the whole day in this smelly rubbish, no one allows us to sit beside them. Getting water is very tough. The whole night we have to wait in the line to take a bath, but washing and smelling the soap feels heavenly.

I passed class eight but my daughters can’t even pass primary school. There is no end to our troubles. I can’t tolerate seeing two older women working so hard every day. I can’t bear to see my innocent, beloved daughters  working in this dump yard from morning till night just to survive. I feel so depressed and feel like giving up sometimes. It’s better to die than seeing this misery in our lives. People throw broken glass and blades in the garbage; they never think there are people like me who have to work here. Those of you who threw that broken glass in the garbage need to know it cuts our feet. But it’s okay; I am accustomed to such pain. I forgot the last time when I smiled but the tears never stop rolling down from my eyes. We sit here and have our lunch. The smell of rubbish is nothing to us anymore. Nowadays our lives have become more rotten than this rotten dump yard.

_ Nurjahan Begum

We are the people from north Bengal who lived on the banks of the Brahmaputra River. Each year we were the first in the country to endure the flooding, before floods came to other parts of the country.

We had become accustomed to flooding because we had experienced it all our lives and fought against the odds every year. But in 2010 the flooding was so sudden that it left us with a new shoreline. We survived for four days on the top of that shore but the next day, it too was underwater. After searching madly for a whole day for banana trees, my husband finally found five trees to make a raft. We tied it to our hut so that it did not float away and we moved our essentials onto the raft.

I never imagined that on this night my life was going to change forever. After finishing our dinner, we were resting on our raft sitting and holding each other so that we didn’t fall into the water. After having done a lot of work looking for materials and building the raft, we were tired. We were resting and I was breastfeeding our one-and-a-half-year-old girl. The whole night I was very concerned and was breastfed her for a long while. At the end of the night when it was almost dawn and I heard the sound of the azaan call of prayer. Then I heard the sound of something falling into the water.  For just one second I had not thought about my child and the next second she was no longer there.  I cried out wildly and jumped into the water. My husband also jumped in. We searched for her frantically. We were dipping in the water and crying loudly at the same time.  My husband was diving and calling her name “my Moyna, my Moyna, O Allah, my mother!” The current was so strong that it was pulling me away. After a while I fainted at the thought that I had lost my treasure; a baby that had taken seven years to conceive.  After that accident I became mentally-ill for five years. I had to have treatment in a mental hospital from 2010 to 2015. My mental health improved when I fell pregnant for the second time, 6 years later. But after Arafat  was born, I became terrified that I would lose my child again in the water. After seeing my mental condition, my husband brought me here by selling everything we had.

There is nothing called poor persons ‘luck’ just as there is no guarantee of a poor person’s life. We came to this railway slum last year. Life became even more perilous here in the slum than in our flooded village. I can’t leave my son for a single second because  trains come and go every 10 minutes. There is nowhere to move to from here because this slum is the cheapest in the city.

With the money we have we cannot go to any other slum. My husband works alone for us as a rickshaw driver. I cannot go to work – who will guard my son?  It does not matter if I do or don’t eat, but I can’t bear losing my child, my heart again.  If you haven’t gone through this, you wouldn’t understand the horrific pain when one loses that part of your heart. Life is hard for poor people when even nature treats us so poorly. It is nature that plays the most devastating role with poor people like us.  If this were not true then the floods would not have been so cruel as to take so much from me.

_ Rita Begum

 

We woke up in terror after the roof of our house was swept away, and moments later we were chest deep in rising waters. The water came in so quickly and it got so high that it almost reached the ceiling of our house. My parents jumped into the water to try to save the cattle but could not. We lost everything in the cyclone. We escaped with just our lives from there seven years ago.

There were between 100 and 150 families along the riverbank. All their homes were washed away just like ours. We lost everything. We lost our boats, our cattle, and our land was flooded with salt water. All the land is under water now. We had to move very quickly and we couldn’t take anything except the clothes we were wearing. We were left with nothing just like refugees. Today, boats pass over the place where our land was; where I spent all of my childhood like a dream.

I started my job as a sex worker seven years ago here in Dhaka City, when my mother committed suicide for the unbearable pain of our losses and my father fled leaving me to look after my four siblings. My little sisters and brothers don’t know what I do till midnight. Sometimes it’s very hard to explain to them why I can’t return at night to them. But this is the only job I could find that would allow me to feed my family. They wait the whole night for me so that I am there to hold them beside me while we all sleep. My only aim now is to feed my siblings and give them a better life. Seeing them going to school every day fills me with a lot of pride. I can take care of them till the evening, after that they take care of each other.

I have been pregnant several times and have had to have abortions. I always prayed to God, “Please don’t allow this pain to happen to even my worst enemy”.

_ Rubina

We came to Dhaka from Gabura, Munshiganj, in the Sathkhira area two months ago and now we are living on the streets. There was nothing left in our area except hunger and uncertain livelihoods – we were surrounded by salty water and drought ravaged lands. In order to come here, I had to I had to sell my only pair of gold rings that I got from my mother-in-law which is a symbol prestige and value in our family. When our life is valueless, how is it possible to protect our values? I sold my prestige to feed my family.

I never thought my life would turn into Hell soon after that first cyclone. Hundreds of people left our villages after cyclone Aila due to lack of food, sweet water and a secure life. But we did not leave then. We did not want to leave our forefathers’ land, showing disrespect. But we had no choice. There was nothing left there. No opportunities for surviving. You could not even beg from anyone. Everybody became so poor, nobody had anything to give you.

We suffered terribly in winter and during the monsoon season in our broken hut in our village. My husband used to sell fish in the local market and somehow used to manage to get us one meal a day. When he would manage this one meal, my son used to burst into happiness and I would burst into tears, thankful that we were avoiding starvation. But there were many days when all my son wanted was some rice and I had none to give him.  In such unimaginable misery, our hungry stomachs pushed us to come here to search for work and survive.

My husband started riding a rickshaw a few days ago. It was very difficult to get the rickshaw for rent because owners won’t rent you one if they don’t know you. We knew no one in Dhaka. After several weeks, we got somebody from our area that helped us to rent the rickshaw from the garage. Before this, we begged on the street in order to survive with our children.

We are still living on the streets as we can’t afford to rent a room in a slum.  The rooms are more money than my husband can  earn in a day by riding the rickshaw. I know no work other than doing household chores. I am now searching for a job as a maid but like my husband, I need someone to help me.

_ Salina Begum

 

 

 

 

 

Caste and occupation-based discrimination remains one of the most severe and forgotten human rights abuses of the twenty-first century. Many groups who face this type of discrimination are identified as untouchables and have taken on the identity of Dalits. Dalit” is a Bengali word which literally means “someone trampled under the feet of someone else”.

 It is used to identify an outcast minority of oppressed, exploited and deprived people. Dalits in Bangladesh face various forms of discrimination and challenges due to their social status. There are between 5.5 to 6.5 million unseen Dalits in Bangladesh.

 The majority of Dalits are usually very poor leading a hand to mouth kind of existence. As an excluded community, they continue to work in some of the most menial, low paid, and dangerous jobs in the country, such as cleaning toilets, sweeping streets, and emptying the septic tanks of others. Sometimes they face severe forms of human rights violations, including abduction, rape, torture, threats, intimidation, as well as the destruction of their houses and eviction from their land.

Despite all the difficulties in their lives, these marginalized people still dream of a better future. Perhaps they dream of a day when their children will not be judged based on their birth identity but on their qualities.

Every day we walk down the clean streets but we never look back and think about who keeps the streets and sewer systems clean. They are the most unseen people. No one listens to their silent cries. I always wanted to deliver their voices to all of you and show you their hidden pains, struggles and anguish.

To do that, I have been visiting Dalit communities all over Bangladesh for the last 4 years and collecting their stories. I have been documenting their everyday lives through my lens to shed light on the suffering of these marginalized people.

I am sharing now some of the real-life stories of these unseen people, whose lives continue with silent weeping…

Featured first on my Facebook page: GMB Akash

I was not born cleaner. I was an innocent kid who would vomit in bad odor. No one from my family ever was a cleaner. But now I have spent seventy years of my life by cleaning filth and dirt of others. I started doing this work to save my family from starvation. The day I started working as cleaner my whole family’s identity was turned into one name ‘Cleaner’s family’. My mother was called cleaner’s mother. In these seventy years, no one ever told me that my work is important or I am important. I have noticed people do not look at me as a human, they do not do eye contact or come very close, and they do not let me to sit inside their house. For everyone I am just a sweaper or cleaner. No one ever asked me, how it feels to wake up in the morning and without having any breakfast just go inside the pile of filth or gutter.

When my mother was very sick, one day I burst out in tears to her and asked for her forgiveness. She asked me why I was asking her to forgive. I told her that because of me for decades she was addressed as a cleaner’s mother. I humiliated her because I was not able to become a mechanic or even a labourer. She touched my head and told me that I have already become someone that no one can become. She told me, only few people can clean other people’s dirt by becoming dirty and the incredible one can do that for family. She told me how proud she is because I gave her food that comes from pure honesty.

After my mother’s death, I continued to do the same work I was doing, cleaning filth. One day I found a gold chain and I quickly hid it before my coworkers saw it. When I was returning home I was clean and tidy but that chain was inside my pocket and I was feeling all over dirty. I could not eat that day and thought how that gold chain can change my destiny, my life. I planned to give it to my sister in her marriage, I planned to sell it and start a business, I planned everything I could plan in my wildest dream but I could not sleep peacefully for the first time in my life. After a few days I sold the chain and took the money. The money was with me for nearly a month. I could not sleep peacefully for a single night. The day before Eid festival I was sitting in the local shop of my slum. A boy arrived there and begged to the shopkeeper to give him some rice so his family could have something to eat during Eid day. The shopkeeper scolded him and he walked away. I was seeing him weeping and going to home.

At night I did bazaar for the poor families of my slum with the money I had. I spent every penny. Everyone was surprised and asked me what had happened. I did not lie to anyone but did not tell the truth too. When I went to sleep at night I was poor again, a poor cleaner on his mattress. But I was able to sleep that night and dreamed my mother for the first time after her death. I saw her very young, in a beautiful saree, She was smiling and proudly telling everyone. ‘I am the cleaner’s mother. My son can be dirty but no one’s heart is as clean as him’.

_Idris Ali (80)

I found out my daughter had an affair with a boy for five years. She never spoke about it as she is always afraid of me. Apart from that, I assumed my children always hated me for the job I have been doing since my childhood. I asked her to bring the boy and his family to our house. I decorated the house like a new bride and bought the best food for them. I have been saving for my daughter’s marriage for twenty years. That day my daughter was the happiest I had ever seen her. When the boy’s family started the conversation they brought out a note of demands. They wanted all the material things a family needs. I was calculating and nodding in agreement with every word they said. After all, it’s about the happiness of my daughter. The last point was that they did not want me to introduce myself in front of their relatives and that I should never go to visit my daughter. The moment they said that, my daughter screamed in anger and by surprising all, she slapped the boy. She angrily said, ‘My father can do the thing that no one else can do. Not everyone can clean the messes of others. I am proud of what he does and if you do not leave my house in one minute, I will beat you all.’ She broke the marriage proposal and ended her five-year relationship in one second. From that day on, I knew how fortunate and happy a person I am.’

_Sweeper Monu lal

Why do you want to take my picture? No one will like me. For everyone I am a sweeper’s daughter. At childhood I used to go to a field near by us, I wanted to play with girls of my age. Their parents never allowed them to play. One day I asked one of the girl why they were not taking me to play. She said, ‘Don’t you know you are a sweeper’s girl?’ I have never gone to that field since then. Do you know what our people do? We clean your dirt, we pure you but for you all, we are the dirtiest people who do not even deserve your two minutes attention. I am sure you are wasting your time, no one is going to like this picture, and by standing outside garbage no one has time to appreciate a sweeper or his girl.

_A sweeper’s girl (that’s what she wanted to use as her name)

I had never seen any love or care for us in anyone’s eyes. When I work people give me a feeling that I came out from Hell.  We cannot sit anywhere to have a cup of tea. People look at us like they look at dirt. There were days when I hid my tears after being insulted by strangers for no reason.  I was sure there was no love left in this world for poor.

Ten years ago, I was working beside a children school. My job was to clean the drain and repair the site. We blocked the road and it was taking a few days. So the children had to walk to their school. I attentively did my work every day without noticing anyone who could again insult my job. One day a little girl arrived, smile widely at me and said, ‘Why are you so dirty?’ Before I could say anything, her father dragged her away by saying, she should never talk to strangers. I felt horrible, imagined he must be telling her daughter how disgusting workers like me were. And then for a week, she came to me every time with same question, why was I so dirty. I never got chance to speak as her father was always there to drag her away. I could not sleep those nights by thinking about a beautiful reply, ‘why I am dirty’. Poor cannot be clean all the time, we are born in dirt, raise in dirt and die in dirt and no one care when a dirty thing left the world. I could not say any of this to her. I wanted to quickly finish the job and never wanted to see the girl ever again.

At last day when we were finishing the work, it was Ramadan afternoon. I was very tired and down. The school was close and the baby girl did not arrive. I felt relieved, packed everything and was about to leave, suddenly I saw the little girl coming to me by running. She could not breathe properly when she arrived. I was waiting to hear the same question, but she did not say anything except smiling. Then I asked her, where her father is. She showed me a car standing far from us. I waited to hear the same thing. And then she opened her mouth, ‘Uncle, do you like red color?’ By bringing a packet behind from her she handed it in my hand. Her father gave horn and she quickly said, ‘I cannot clean drain, but I can help you to be clean. This shirt is for you, Uncle.’ I could not say a word and she rushed when her father gave repetitive horns. The girl left me on tears. She proved me, human still cares for human. I do not know where she is now, what she might be doing. I pray to God everyday, wherever that little angel is, may God clean all dirts from her life.

_Shohrab

I never told my children what my job was. I never wanted them to feel ashamed because of me. When my youngest daughter asked me what I did, I used to tell her hesitantly that I was a labourer. Before I went back home every day, I used to take a bath in the public toilets so they did not get any hint of the work I was doing. I wanted to send my daughters to school, to educate them. I wanted them to stand in front of people with dignity. I never wanted anyone to look down upon them like the way everyone did to me. People always humiliated me. I invested every penny of my earnings for my daughters’ education. I never bought a new shirt, instead I used the money for buying books for them. Respect is all I wanted them to earn for me. I was a cleaner. The day before the last date of my daughter’s college admission, I could not manage to get her admission fees. I could not work that day. I was sitting beside the rubbish, trying hard to hide my tears. All my co-workers were looking at me but no one came to speak to me.

I had failed and felt heartbroken. I had no idea how to face my daughter who would ask me about the admission fees once I got back home. I was born poor. I believed nothing good can happen to a poor person. After work all the cleaners came to me, sat beside me and asked if I considered them as brothers. Before I could answer, they each handed me their one day’s income. When I tried to refuse everyone; they confronted me by saying, ‘We will starve today if needed, but our daughter has to go to college.’ I couldn’t reply to them. That day I did not take a shower; I went back to my house like a cleaner. My oldest daughter is going to finish her University very soon. Three of them do not let me go to work anymore. My oldest girl has a part time job and the other three of them do tuition. Oftentimes, my oldest daughter takes me to my working place. She feeds all my co-workers along with me. They laugh and ask her why she feeds them so often. My daughter told them, ‘All of you starved for me that day so I can become what I am today, pray for me that I can feed you all, every day.’ Nowadays I don’t feel like I am a poor man. Whoever has such children, how can he be poor?

_Idris

I lost my mother when I was very young. I always tried to please my stepmother. But for unknown reasons, she could not even tolerate my shadow. She had beaten me a lot as a child. I used to stand silently during the times she had beaten me. I could not cry, because she told me that if I cried, she will throw me out of the house. After silently suffering all of this violent abuse, one day finally, she threw me out my home anyway. I cried loudly all night while standing in front of the closed door, but not even my father came out to take me back. I came to Dhaka from Chadpur. I used to roam around all the streets and sometimes ate from dustbins. Then one day I got this job; a job of a sweeper. But the sad thing is that everyone hates us and no one talks to us. Today I am very happy, brother, because nobody ever took my photo; no one ever wanted to know if I have something to share. When you tell my story to people, please tell them not to hate the sweepers. If we stop cleaning, you will die. We are your servants; we go into your rubbish. By becoming dirty, we cleanse you. Please tell the people to not look at us with hatred.

_Md. Rabbi (18)

 

 

 

 

No one has the time to listen to these unfortunate children who are mostly unseen humans. I always wanted to deliver their voices to all of you and show you their hidden pain and anguish. I tell their stories, depict their emotions, and steal their sorrows into my frames…  If any one of you spends even one second in a thought to help them or even to pray for them, this in itself, is the reward of all my hard work.

 If these stories ever touch your hearts, please feel free to share them. Even your help alone can awaken other people to bring their hands to these lost souls…

_Gmb Akash

Sharing 10 real life stories of unfortunate child labourers who were born to work. Feel your heart melt…

Featured first on my Facebook page: GMB Akash

No, I don’t go to school nowadays. I had to choose between school and food for feeding my mother and little brothers. My father died last year in this same factory from a heat stroke when he was melting iron in the fire place. In this intolerable heat no one can work if they are not accustomed to it. He was a very strong person and was used to working in the heat. He used to work a lot for us. No one believed he could die here from this heat. After my father’s death I got my father’s job here. I use the same hammer and the same machine but I don’t feel strong like him. I feel very tired, sleepy and hungry. I miss going to school, I miss playing with my friends I miss swimming in the nearby river. My father used to buy me colorful ice cream when we used to feel hot. I miss eating ice cream every minute nowadays when it feels hot like hell here. I have one uncle who buys me ice cream sometimes and helps me in my work when I can’t do anything. I want to become like him. I want to reduce people’s misery because my ice cream uncle always says “we need each other.”

_Rony

We come to work at 7 am. Because of working continually, we do not usually notice when it becomes dark outside. We work in darkness, under the yellow lightbulb. Sunlight does not enter our factory. Sometimes when the electricity goes out, we can go outside, but now we do not like to play anymore. We feel tired. Telling you the truth, we become very hungry at 3 pm, but rice is expensive. Our income is 1000 taka per month; how can we spend any for rice? We enjoy this free bread at lunch time; when you are hungry everything is delicious. We do not feel full after having it though. But after returning home in the late evening, mother will give us yummy hot rice with mashed potatoes! It’s good for poor people to eat once a day. Please take a piece of bread sir, it is not that bad.

_Ador, Shohag

My father died in a road accident 6 years ago which left us on the street. For several days we ate nothing. We had no money and no rice at our home. We could not pay the rent of our one room house. My mother then started working in this brick breaking factory after only a few days of my father’s death. She was not even physically and mentally ready after losing my father. Her eyes were still wet for her loving husband. I saw her crying every night holding my younger brother.

We had nobody else. My father and mother had a love marriage so their families did not accept them. They came to Dhaka in order to survive and my father started riding a rickshaw. But after my father died, my mother alone could not earn enough money, even when she worked from early morning to evening. I saw how she suffered every evening with her body pain. I could not stand to see her struggle alone and I started working with my mother when I was only 6 years old.

My mother cried loudly holding me on her chest the first day I went to work beside her. She never wanted to take me with her to work there. My father always had a dream to send me and my younger brother to school.

I could hardly break 30 bricks a day and could only earn 30 taka on the first day. But now I can break up to 125 bricks and earn 125 taka per day. With my income, I am able to continue to pay for my younger brother Rana’s education. He is a very good student and this year he came second in his class.

For the last 6 months I have been working extra hours to earn more money. Two days ago with this money I bought a new bicycle for my brother, so he can go to his new class and tuition with the bicycle. Before that he used to walk a long distance and he got tired. My brother said when he grows up, he will get a job and he will never let me work here anymore.

_Rotna and her mother Rina Akter

My mother died a week ago. I do not have her photograph. She wanted to take picture many times but for taking picture you need money. If you come here a week ago I could take you home to my mother. She won’t let you come back without having lunch with us. Whenever someone came to visit us she always had given her portion of food. My mother had three pet cats and only me. No one went to her since she was sick. Every day after returning from work my father asked her why she was not dying. I have seen her dying every day since I was a child. I have a step mother and two step sisters. But my mother taught me to love them though they hated us always. The day my mother died I did not cry. I was happy, happy by looking at her face because she was smiling at me. My mother often used to say when I cry she feels ache in her heart, so I cannot cry; I cannot let my mother soul suffer a bit

_Ador (12)

After my father died in a road accident, it was impossible for our mother to manage three meals a day for us. She started working as a maid but still it was not enough money for us to survive.

One day my mother brought me to this factory for work but the owner did not want to take any more children into his factory. But my mother sat with me the whole day outside of the factory for this job forme and kept requesting the owner for a chance to live. Then he gave me this job six months ago.

In the beginning it was very hard for me to work the whole day with these big machines. Sometimes I had problems with this machine noise and I had problems breathing because of the dust all the time. I also had many accidents. A few days ago my hand went inside the machine and I was seriously injured. Today I am back to work again. I cannot just sit at home, I have to help my mother.

Now I am working as an apprentice. I get three meals a day here for my work. After a few months I will get 1500 taka per month. I am eagerly waiting for that day. I want to help my mother. She works so hard from early morning to late at night for her three children. I want to reduce my mother’s burden of poverty.

_Maruf

There is a Shakib who is the caption of our cricket team and he is a favourite player. There is another Shakib who is a superstar of our Bangla films. My name is also Shakib but I work in a factory from early morning to late evening to earn 500 taka a week for my family.

I have been working in this factory for the last five months. During this period of time I have been working as a trainee, so I don’t receive any salary. The owner of the factory only gives me 500 taka per month for food to eat three times a day.

I don’t have a father; my mother works as a maid and she cannot run our family alone. That is why my mother sent me to work. When I grow up, I will start my own factory. For that I am working attentively to learn this job

_Shakib 12

During the winter it’s very difficult for us to work in this underwater stone mine. Its takes an ability to hold one’s breath a very long time to go down into deep cold water and collect these heavy stones and come back. Sometimes it’s harder because the stones are heavier than I am. Oftentimes, I can’t even breathe when I enter the water as it is so cold that it will freeze your body in just a few minutes. But we are accustomed to that now! I don’t know how I have been managing for the last 40 days working in this area.

There are many children who are working in this industry. This is the only job here for poor people like me. Thousands of men women and little children are working day into night.

I never thought I could do this work when I first came with my neighbour. For the first few days, I only collected a meager amount of stones and earned only a little money. They pay for every stone you bring from the deep cold water.

Now I have learned one important thing in my life: “Poverty teaches you so many things and makes you so strong that you can do anything when you have a hungry stomach.”

_ Parvej

Will you beat me if I tell you the truth? Actually, I am a potato thief. My mother has a high fever so she can’t work. My father had a second marriage and then threw my mother and me away from our house. My father had beaten up my mother so badly that she cannot move properly any more. We somehow managed to sit on the roof of the train and came to Dhaka five days ago. We sleep on the footpath. From morning to afternoon I try to steal potatoes. If I manage to steal some potatoes or vegetables then I can sell them in the bazaar and get 50 taka to buy food for us. From yesterday afternoon till this evening, we haven’t eaten anything. I still cannot steal anything today. I am very hungry

_Mofizul (7)

I always feel hungry; all the time I only think about some white rice. I only feel less hungry when I am busy at work thinking I have to earn a living and feed four mouths. The last six months my father has not been able to work anymore because he lost his hand while he was working at the mill. He was the only earning person for the four of us.

After that accident I had to leave my school and join this work for feeding myself and my family. My mother wanted to go begging but my father did not allow it. He said “I will die before eating the rice from begging”. I have one sister she feels hungrier than I do nowadays. She always wants to hear stories from me about food. Last night, when she wanted some rice from my mother, my mother replied to her; “Girls should not ask for rice in this way”. I don’t know what the 5-year-old girl understood but she went to sleep eating nothing. She did not ask for food from my mother again.

I understand how hunger feels; I could not do anything without crying silently. The whole night I couldn’t sleep because my stomach was grumbling for some rice too. At dawn for some moments while I fell asleep, I remember I was dreaming about a bowl of rice that I was eating so eagerly. For the last two days our work has been closed so I could not earn anything nor buy any food for my family. Today I am working rapidly. I did not even take a break at lunch time so that I could earn a few more coins to buy more rice and maybe some potatoes. I promised my sister this morning that we will eat a lot of rice tonight. She might be waiting for me the whole day. I am also waiting to finish my work and go home. My father used to say; if you want to eat and earn a living, you have to give your sweat and your blood. He has given a lot of blood for feeding us. Now I am trying to give all my sweat to feed them at least once a day.

_Arif hossain

My sick mother cannot eat anything. Nothing tastes good to her except beef. She can only eat well if she gets beef in her lunch. I do not have enough money to buy beef for her. It is very costly. But that will not stop me from buying beef for my mother. Every day I get 10 taka for my evening snacks. All children buy bread with that money. But I save my six day snack money by not eating anything. With my savings, on the seventh day, I always buy a half packet of ‘Tehari’ (rice stuffed with beef) for my mother. When she eats it in front of me and says, ‘Babu it’s delicious!’ I feel my stomach is full of all the good food of this world.

_Babu

Always the same heartless scenario; working children suffering and my own reaction of inner emptiness that freezes my finger preventing contact with the shutter button. But even with all those sorrowful expressions followed by smiles when they give a look, these courageous children push me to overcome anything and then my camera clicks never stop.

– GMB Akash

 

‘Heroes of Life’ – are those incredible humans who always find their way to light and love. They had known defeat, suffering, and struggles, yet they possess a beautiful story in their hearts, which is worthy to share with the world.

Sharing 10 real life stories which will definitely melt your heart

Featured first on my Facebook page: GMB Akash

During my whole life I kept my mouth shut to be a good woman. I accepted my fate and all those abuses my entire life but I never could forgive myself. I was ashamed of myself but I couldn’t tell anyone; when at the age of 4 my mother’s own brother used to touch me in bad ways. My mother believed him and even gave me to him to take care of. I couldn’t fight back when my father’s cousin raped me while coming back from school at the age of 5. Crying in pain I told my elder sister. She said, “Do not tell anyone; people will call you a bad girl!” I couldn’t tell my father that the rickshaw puller he reserved for me for my safety to take me to school put his hands in the wrong places when he helped me to get down from the rickshaw. I Told my mother about it and my mother changed the rickshaw driver but she didn’t share it with my father and told me not to share it with anyone. She said, “People will call you bad!” I never could complain to anyone when my school teacher used to touch my back. I could never forget all the abuses that happened to me. I never used to go in front of my uncles when I became a young woman ever again. I was scared of every man in my life.

Every woman dreams about their wedding and their husband. I was also not different from them. But all my dreams were crushed badly as well as all my expectations when on my wedding night I got raped again by my own drunk husband. Even I couldn’t say anything when he brought his friend to my room one night for money. During my pregnancy I used to pray to God, “Please don’t give me a girl because I know she will have to go through all these things I have been tolerating my whole life. But I became the mother of a girl 10 years ago. I never let her hide from my eyes for a minute. I took her everywhere. But I couldn’t keep my mouth shut when that night my husband brought a man into my daughter’s room. I started yelling and screaming insanely. All my anger that I had been carrying my whole life came out as my greatest strength. I couldn’t control myself and took the dagger to stab my husband and the man. They both ran away. I complained to the police and for the last year my husband has been in jail. People call me a bad woman. They say that to me because I had my husband put in jail. I don’t feel shame, rather I feel good when they call me a bad woman. It took 32 years to gather the courage to become a bad woman and shout out for my respect and my dignity._Nazma Begum

 

 

Last year I had a strange passenger in my rickshaw who was very worried about something. He was roaming around from one location to another in my rickshaw like a distraught and insane man for almost two hours. I was very afraid to ask him what the problem was that he is going through? I am a poor uneducated man and he was in a very bad mood. Finally, I discovered when he started to talk on his phone that his wife was in very critical condition in the emergency room. She needed the group type A- blood as soon as possible, otherwise it would be very difficult to save her life. After some time when he dropped his phone, with hesitation I softly asked him, “Baba, would you mind if I ask you to take my blood? I tested my blood last year for an illness and I am aware that I have the same blood type A- that you need for your wife. I am a very honest person with no bad habits and I pray 5 times a day. My only problem is that I am a poor man. Do you have problems taking the blood of a poor person and would you let me give my blood to your wife?” That man, whom I was feeling very afraid of asking a minute ago, started sobbing uncontrollably holding me closely. He hugged me so tightly that I could feel how broken he was at that moment.

Heroes are not born but they become heroes by their acts and deeds. A Hero is someone to whom you look up to when you are in trouble; someone who always bails you out of your troubles with a smiling face. There are still some good people left in this world who fill this planet with goodness, optimism and hope; people who make this world a better place to live in. Anybody can be a hero. Someone who helps an old lady or a small child cross a busy road or someone who earns coins for the sake of their mother’s medicines or someone who labours hard for his daughter’s food and education are also all heroes.

Yes, I am telling you about ‘The heroes of our time’; the heroes of our everyday lives and their journeys helping us with every drop of their blood and sweat in order to make our daily lives a little easier. Most are people who are performing acts of kindness or helping others and expecting nothing in return. Many have known defeat, suffering, and struggling yet they possess beautiful stories in their hearts; stories which are worthy enough to share with the world. Abdul Razzak, Fruk Mia, and Nurun Nabi are ordinary rickshaw pullers whose stories touched everyone’s heart. Their kind and heroic acts made them ‘heroes of our time’.

Here, I am sharing 10 real life stories of ‘Rickshaw pullers’ that have become the inspiration for thousands of people all over the world.

Featured first on my Facebook page: GMB Akash

It is very hard to drive a rickshaw with just my one arm. But I can’t stand to see my family in hunger and I want to continue my children’s education. I can’t manage to drive more than 4 to 5 hours each day with one hand. I can only save very little after paying the rent for my rickshaw. Sometimes I have so much pain because of trying to balance the rickshaw single-handedly!

Just 12 days before the accident that took my arm, I came from Sherpur to Dhaka to earn my dream. I left my two children and my wife Kohinur at our village. It was Monday night and it was scorching hot even during the middle of the night. There was not a single leaf moving. I was sleeping in my rickshaw van after an entire day’s work. It was around 2 am and suddenly a loaded vegetable truck smashed into my van and my left arm. After that I can’t remember anything for the next 25 days. I heard that the butchers from the closest market took me to hospital. They paid for my operations! My wife had to sell her earrings, the only gold jewelry she had as well as the two cows we bought with our 3 years of savings.

When I came back from hospital, my only fear was how to feed my children. I am so grateful to God that he saved one of my arms and did not let me end up begging. God gave me courage to continue doing hard work and pulling this rickshaw._Deloyar Hossain (36)

It became dark suddenly and started raining heavily with strong winds and lightning ! Everyone was running here and there for shelter and searching transportation. I saw an old lady almost soaked with rain requesting rikshaw pullers to take her, telling them she had no money but she needed to go to Sadarghat. Everybody told her rudely to go away. Nobody was interested in taking her in their vehicles without money. Seeing that, I told her to come to my rikshaw. I took her and pulled her to Sadarghat. After arriving there she started crying. She said, “I heard my grandson is severely sick but I have no money at this moment to pay for your rikshaw ride. You saw how I was requesting a ride from everyone but nobody agreed to take me without money. I don’t know how to repay your kindness!”

Every day I help at least one person who has no money but needs to go to some place. Every night I give a ride to some disabled beggar to their home for free. These are the beggars who have nobody and who are very poor. I never say no and I never take money from them.

I don’t take money from people who are in a critical situation because one night my daughter, Fatema, was very sick and I had no money at that moment. At that time I used to work as a day labourer. I asked many rikshaw pullers and taxi drivers to take me to the hospital but nobody helped me. Nobody gave us a ride because I had no money. Covered only with a polythene sheet I walked 15 km to the hospital alone holding my 5-year-old daughter during that rainy, windy, dark night. That night walking all the way I was just thinking one thing: that I will at least help one person everyday who is helpless like me.

After that incident I started riding rikshaw and I never say no to anybody who has no money. After my work every night till midnight, I search for people who need help. I don’t know that my small effort will help people or not but I know that at least they will not feel helpless for that particular moment _Faruk

It always felt bizarre to me when my mother sent me to go to door to door asking for salt, chili, onion every day. It was almost impossible for us to cook without collecting spices from neighbors. Believe me, when I used to ask them for salt sometimes, from their looks it felt like I was asking for their heart or kidneys. Why shouldn’t they react? They were also poor and they knew that I had no ability to return their salt and chili that I was taking from them almost every day.

My mother is really old now. She is having a lot of physical problems. I drive a rickshaw the entire day so that I can manage to send her 4-5 thousand taka in money every month for her medicine and food. Between my jobs I try to pray for my mother 5 times every day. I never skip my prayers to God for my mother. My father died and left me along with my four other sisters when we were very young. I have been working the last 20 years for my family. I used to make only 15 taka a day when I was merely 9. I wished to grow up every day. I wanted to grow up in order to earn more money for my family. I have given marriages to my two elder sisters and my two younger sisters are going to school. I wake up every day at dawn for morning prayers and it helps me to drive the rickshaw for some extra hours and with that extra money I try to help with my sisters’ education. I could not go to school but I am trying my best to fulfill their own expectations for reading and studying as much they want. For that I can work every day some more hours.

I have nothing without my mother. My mother is everything to me. I visited my mother last month and took her a green saree. She loves wearing the color green. She never told me she loves green. But from the very beginning I have been seeing her wearing green sarees. You can’t imagine how happy she was seeing that saree. Her condition is not good at all. I don’t want to lose her too. She is the only umbrella over our heads. I always pray to God to please take me before her death because I might not bear the pain of losing her. – Nurun Nabi 30.

Last year I had a strange passenger in my rickshaw who was very worried about something. He was roaming around from one location to another in my rickshaw like a distraught and insane man for almost two hours. I was very afraid to ask him what the problem was that he is going through? I am a poor uneducated man and he was in a very bad mood. Finally, I discovered when he started to talk on his phone that his wife was in very critical condition in the emergency room. She needed the group type A- blood as soon as possible, otherwise it would be very difficult to save her life. After some time when he dropped his phone, with hesitation I softly asked him, “Baba, would you mind if I ask you to take my blood? I tested my blood last year for an illness and I am aware that I have the same blood type A- that you need for your wife. I am a very honest person with no bad habits and I pray 5 times a day. My only problem is that I am a poor man. Do you have problems taking the blood of a poor person and would you let me give my blood to your wife?” That man, whom I was feeling very afraid of asking a minute ago, started sobbing uncontrollably holding me closely. He hugged me so tightly that I could feel how broken he was at that moment.

I gave my blood at the emergency room and it took 2 hours for everything. But during those two hours I felt like a very special person to everyone as well as to myself; something I had never felt before. That man didn’t ask me if he could give me money because he didn’t want to buy my blood; rather he asked me if he could call me ‘Father’. I never felt so precious and valuable before that moment. Giving my blood that day changed my view of seeing my life as a poor inferior man. I don’t feel poor anymore knowing that I have the same blood to save a rich person’s life_ Abdul Razzak

Poor people like me have no rest in their life; no retirement. Our lives are miserable. We have to work even just before going to the graveyard. If I will not work even one day my whole family have to suffer for that whole day. I am 65 years old and for me now riding rickshaw during this heavy rain is very difficult work. Sometimes my whole body gets wet even though I wear a plastic coat. At those times I feel so cold that I can’t breathe nor even stand-up. When it’s raining with heavy winds then it’s even more difficult for me to pull the rickshaw because I need a lot more energy to drag the rickshaw through the wind. My plastic coat protects some parts of my body but my face, hands and feet get wet all the time. My hands and feet get so severally cold that they feel bloodless and numb. 

I don’t stop riding rickshaw during the rain because at that time some passengers give me extra money. Yesterday, a father was looking for a rickshaw with his daughter for going to school for a while. There was no rickshaw on the street because it was raining heavily. I was sitting in a tea stall’s shed beside the stove to warm myself up. I was very tired and cold. I was not able to ride anymore that morning after getting wet from the early morning rides. But when I saw they are getting wet and waiting for a long time, I could not stop myself even if I was already so cold and weak. I took them to school and the father and daughter were so grateful to me. When I reached the front of the school, the girl took a 500 taka note from her father and gave it to me and told me dadu ( grand father ) buy something for yourself. I took iftar and bazar for my family with that money. 

During this Ramadan I still need to work. And I cannot be fasting. I was fasting during the first Ramadan. But my wife and two daughters never miss their fasting nor prayers. If I will fast I will not be able to work and earn for their Sehery food. I hope Allah will forgive me for my sacrifice and will grant my family blessings for their fasting and prayers_ Borhan Uddin

We always wanted a daughter. But we have three sons. I often told my wife only fortunate have daughter. I am working as a rickshaw puller for more than thirty years. Most of my passengers were bad tempered. They always scolded me. One morning a father hired me to take his daughter to the college. He requested me to be careful in the road. He told his daughter to hold the rickshaw tightly. Before we left he told me to go slowly so the girl may not get hurt. On our way after sometime I heard the girl was crying insanely. I tried to look back and wanted to ask her if everything was okay. She scolded me and warned me not to look back. After a while she asked me to stop and started calling someone by her phone. She was screaming and crying all the time.

I understood she supposed to escape from home with a boy. He did not show up. Suddenly she jumped from the rickshaw, left the money in the seat and quickly went to the train line. I was about to leave, felt sorry for the father and thought it may be good not to have a daughter. But I was not able to paddle further; I heard her father was requesting me to be careful. I parked my vehicle and ran for the girl. She was in the rail line, moving like a sick person to harm herself. I went near to her and requested her to go back with me. She yelled at me, called me uneducated stupid, in between she kept crying insanely. I was afraid to leave her in that empty place. I let her cry, as much as she wanted. Almost three hours we were there and rain was about to come. Before the rain starts she got up and asked me to bring the rickshaw. We did not talk about anything. In the rain I paddled quickly. I dropped her near her house. Before I left she stopped me and said, ‘Uncle, you should never come at my place again, never tell anyone you know me.’ I lowered my head and returned to home. That day I did not talk to anyone, I did not eat anything. I told myself it was better not to have a daughter. After more than eight years, very recently I had an accident. I was kind of senseless. Public took me to the hospital;. When I got back my sense I saw the girl was working near me, she asked me how I was feeling, why I never went to meet her. It was hard for me to recognize the girl in white dress, in spectacle and stethoscope. My treatment went well. I was taken to a big doctor. I was listening to her telling him, ‘Sir, he is my father’. The old doctor told her something in English. Then she touched my injured hand and replied him, ‘If this father did not support me in the past, I won’t be able to become a doctor’. I was lying in a narrow bed and tightly shut my eyes. I cannot tell anyone how I felt. This rickshaw puller has a daughter, a doctor daughter. – Bablu Shekh (55)

Papiya asked me to leave before she become weak to leave me. She told me to go somewhere, where she will never be able to come, or find me again. None of us cried. We knew that was the last time we were seeing each other. I moved from my neighbour’s village silently. I walked very slowly to remember everything of my life. I and Papiya used to go to school together. The field I was passing was the place where one day I fainted after seeing a snake. Papiya was always brave, she took that snake in a stick and throw into the water. I laughed a lot by thinking about all those stupid things. Both of us are very poor. Many days, our families are unable to eat anything other than rice. During flood we starved countless days. And then Papiya was chosen by a rich family, she will be able to take care her siblings and sick mother after her marriage. I wanted to be selfish, I wanted to tell her to come with me and fly somewhere. But then I could not. I wanted to see her happy even at the cost of leaving me. When I explained her how much I wanted her happiness, she did not respond. She only asked me, ‘is that the suffering of food is greater than suffering of love?’ I was silent and when I saw tears in her eyes, for the first and last time, I lovingly touched her cheeks. It’s been six months, I am in the city, riding rickshaw and sleeping here and there. Papiya is married and gone far. In this life, I will never be able to love someone as like I loved her. When we were giving SSC exam she gave me an amulet so I never feel fear. This is the only thing I tied in my hand and carry all the time. We promised that we will never meet each other again, we will never talk. Half of the year has gone. She will never know that in my mind every second I am talking to her. I talk to her, question her, laugh and cry with her. It’s hard to stop this, it’s hard to forget. – Rafiq (19)

If I had not started pulling a rickshaw in 2014 for the first time in my life, my education would have stopped at that point. I started driving a rickshaw when I was in class eight. Now I am doing a diploma on Textile Engineering of Garment designing in Dinajpur.

This time I came for ten days to drive a Rickshaw during Eid festival time. During this Eid festival people pay a little more. After earning 10 thousand taka in 10 days I will be going back and continuing my education. I need 6000 taka for each semester and 4000 taka for other expenses for my education. My institution gave me 60% waiver when they came to know that I am driving a rickshaw to support my education.

I am the only one from my entire village who came to Dhaka to drive a Rickshaw to pay for education. In the beginning my friends were laughing at me all the time, but I made them understand how important my education is and after my graduation I want to be a textile engineer. My friends are so proud of me nowadays and two of them want to follow my path to continue their education.

My mother worries about me a lot, after I came to this big city. My mother calls me several times a day and keeps asking me what I eat, what I am doing, which makes me so weak and fragile. I sometimes feel like going back home for my mother. That is the reason most of the time I keep my mobile phone switched off so she can’t call me and I can be stronger and continue the rest of the days.

Yesterday was Eid day and I worked until late at night, I missed my parents so much. This is the first time I passed my Eid without my mother. This the first time I could not touch my mother’s feet and get blessings from her after returning from prayers._ Akheruzzaman 18

My mother always hid something from me. I also tried to find out what she was hiding from me. In village when we went to any function, people pointed at me and talked to each other by saying how unfortunate boy I was. When I told that to my mother, she cried nervously and asked me what I came to know. I said, ‘nothing’, then she hugged me and asked me never to believe anyone. Whenever she spoke those things I felt very afraid and assured her I will never believe anyone. One day I heard my father fighting with my mother for spending money on me. He blamed her for being a bad woman, blamed for caring for a child whose mother left him. That day I came to know, I was three months old when my biological mother left me. My adopted mother brought me at home without any ones support. When my mother knew that I heard everything, she cried a lot, she took me on her arms and told me that she was my mother, asked me not to believe anyone. I was ten years old, only understood I was the problem for my mother; Only understood everyone believed I was an unfortunate boy. After some days of that incident I flew from my village.

When I arrived to the city, I was just ten. The place, it’s people and my life was strange to me. When I was crying by sitting alone in the bridge, Falan, Sumon , Jewel called me and let me to sleep with them. During first night I cried a lot, no one stopped me and some cried with me too. I did not cry for the mother who left me, I cried for my mother whom I missed every minute, even missing now at this moment. I cannot forget her, she is always here, in my heart. Every year I go to visit her. No one else likes to see me except her. When I enter in the house Ammu holds me like I am a little baby. I feel awkward and tell her not to love me this much. Last time she cried a lot, told me how much she prays so I can find happiness and love. I told her I have found enough love. I have friends who have no one just like me. We earn and spend together; we fight during day and sleep on each other’s hand at night. I have my own family now, a different family, where we do not have to tell anyone who is our parents or where do we belong. We just have us and enough love. – Raju (17)

 

An estimated 693,000 Rohingya have been driven into Bangladesh (as of April 2018). Over half of them are children who have fled following an extreme escalation of violence, with most now living in flimsy plastic tents in overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar. When hundreds of thousands of terrified Rohingya refugees began flooding onto the beaches and paddy fields of southern Bangladesh, it was the children – who made up nearly 60 percent of their number – who caught most of the attention of many people. The momentum and scale of arrivals make this the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis. Over 1,400 children have arrived by themselves after witnessing the deaths of their parents and loved one. Today, there are an estimated 720,000 Rohingya children in Bangladesh and Myanmar, in dire need of humanitarian assistance and protection – and looking to the outside world for help.

Children deserve to grow up in a world free from fear, surrounded by those who love them—enabling them to live life in all its fullness.  The world would be shocked by seeing the conditions that the children living in the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar are facing, instead. Make no mistake that this crisis is a children’s emergency. These children’s worlds have been torn apart brutally. They have gone suddenly from living in a community where they know the neighborhood, having close friends, a routine, a good variety of food and safe places to play to a chaotic, overcrowded and frightening unknown place. Many are orphaned and lost, living in a perpetual state of anxiety. After all this, we cannot expect Rohingya children to overcome the traumatic experiences they’ve suffered when further exposed to insecurity and fears of violence in the camps. But at least we can pray and ask for help for these children’s safety and a better future.

Sharing here with you some heart-wrenching images of Rohingya children who have experienced unforgettable misery, violence, pain and anguish in their short lives. These images will melt your soul forever. Alone, distressed, terrified but hopefully not abandoned by the world at large.

Featured first on my Facebook page: GMB Akash

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the beginning of my career I have been working for those people who are living on the edge of society. When I started working with these people I surprisingly discovered that – life has taken all colours from them, but they are still cherishing every moment of their life with colour. Colour is their courage; colour creates enthusiasm for them to fight in order to live for another day. A person, who has nothing, has colour in life. In the beginning of my career, I took all black & white photographs of those who were colourful.  I found out poverty, sorrow and depression become vivid if I skip colour from their lives.

Sharing a few of my colour works and the people who always inspired me to become a colour photographer as well as to live a colourful life.

 

Presently, I have been working in colour. A street child, a labourer on a road or even a homeless lady – all of them have colour. People who are fighting everyday to live life are heroes to me and these heroes represent colour. Their skin tone, their clothes, their living places all are colourful and powerful. They are deprived from all happiness in life but yet they are treating themselves with colour. While I discover the truth I learned to capture the mood of colour on them.

By capturing these colour moments, I have learned that –a few hints of red, blue and yellow gives inspiration to our lives. People who are fighting for survival without anything in this world are healing their pains by indulging in colour.