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24 November 2009 Do they know it's Christmas?
GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN in Sreepur Village, Bangladesh RUBINA turns the card round and round in her hands, peering blankly at the Christmas trees on the front. Maybe they are foreign houses, she ventures after a while, giggling. It is clear she has no idea what the shapes are, though she stuck them to the card. In Sreepur village, Bangladesh, the Muslim women who make what are probably the UKs most ethical Christmas cards are certainly aware that Christmas is coming, but they have only the vaguest idea of the trappings that accompany it. I dont really know what all these things are on the cards but I think the boxes may be presents, Rubina suggests, hopefully. Maybe Christmas is like a Christian Eid [the big Muslim festival marking the end of Ramadan]? The 20-year-old is sitting cross legged in the late afternoon sun outside a simple village house, patiently sticking bits of coloured paper and strips of wheat straw onto a hand-made square of paper. It takes her about 20 minutes to finish one card and at the end of the month she will be 2,000 taka [about 18 richer]. It may not sound much, but to a young woman who married at 13 and had the first of her two children within a year, it is the difference between a life of grinding poverty and self-sufficiency. I didnt even finish primary school, she says. When I got married I had no income and my husband was only earning about 100 taka [88p] a day as a labourer. Life was so difficult. We could barely afford to eat. Then I saw an advert for people to make cards and so I applied and now everything has changed. Finally we have some savings and we are trying to decide whether to buy a cow or a small piece of land. She peers at the card again, with its brightly coloured representations of Christmas trees topped by stars, as if seeing it for the first time: It is very beautiful, she says. UK consumers certainly think so: they are snapping up this years output of 36,000 cards as fast as the villagers can produce them, even at 12.50 for a packet of 16 cards (plus 1 p&p). But they could not have done so had a young British Airways stewardess not got a little too merry at a room party on a stopover in Dhaka in 1981 and announced that something should be done for the poor who thronged the streets of the Bangladeshi capital. Pat Kerr does not remember volunteering, just waking up the next morning and being reminded by her colleagues that she had. Now in her 50s, she has spent much of the last three decades working to improve the lives of woman and children in one of the worlds poorest countries. The result is Sreepur Village, about 65 km from Dhaka and home to about 100 destitute women and 500 children, many of them abandoned. We heard so many stories of women who had been beaten and abused and who were sleeping on the streets with their children and we thought What can we do to empower women and children to get a better life?, Pat says. What this does is gives them a chance and what we so desperately want to do is to keep mothers and their children together. It was about 20 years ago that they first hit on the idea of employing women in the local community to make Christmas cards for the UK market. Since then the business has slowly grown until today it provides enough money to house, clothe, feed and educate those living in the village for an entire month [It costs 24,000 a month to run the place: the cards this year will generate about 28,000.] The cards make a huge contribution and it such a wonderful activity. It is not just about the money, it is about building a community relationship. The cards are little works of art in themselves, but what makes them so irresistible to ethical consumers is that almost all of the money [about 95 per cent] goes back to the charity. The cards cost the charity about 33p each in materials and labour [the women are paid about 10p per card]; British Airways flies them to the UK free of charge; volunteers distribute them. In a market in which many charity cards return less than five per cent of their sale price to the good cause they are supposed to be helping, this is truly remarkable. A short walk from the main compound, across a vivid green paddy field, 32-year old Amena and her neighbour Alima, 19, are working on their own batch of cards. They work quickly and methodically, snipping off tiny pieces of the dyed wheat straw into the shapes sketched out on the design sheets sitting on the low tables in front of them. Ive been doing this for nine years since my husband was electrocuted in an accident in a factory, Amena says, carefully applying a dab of glue to another tiny dot of straw and applying it carefully to the card, where it becomes a bauble hanging on a bright blue Christmas tree. We were married when I was 11 and I had our daughter, Tania, when I was 15. When he died, we were left with nothing. Suddenly, he was dead and we were all alone. I went from house to house asking for help because I had a daughter to look after, but none came. So we went to Dhaka to look for work, but I couldnt afford to live there and that was when I heard about the people making cards. They gave me three months training and now I spend four hours a day making cards. I make about 36,000 taka a year, which is enough for me to live on. The more cards I make, the more money I earn. Without this, who knows what would have become of us? Life on the streets of Dhaka, I suppose. I think this saved us. The decoration of the cards is the job of 50 women from the local community: when they are not working on the Christmas orders they turn out birthday cards and other popular designs, providing year-round employment. The paper itself, and the printing, is the work of another 20 women living inside the charitys main compound. Abused or abandoned, most of those housed by the project have been sent there by other human rights groups to save them from a life of destitution. They generally stay for up to five years, until they have acquired the skills they will need to strike out on their own. Boys stay till they have held down a job for six months, girls until they have been happily married for three years. They live in dormitories, with the children supervised by one of the women. Scattered around the immaculate compound are various low brick buildings housing education, health and craft projects. In one large workshop, several of the women, all wearing uniform light blue saris, are making the paper that will be used for the cards. Locally grown jute is chopped up, boiled and dyed; outside, the rough sheets stand drying on wooden frames in the sun. They are pressed and taken to a print shop in another building, where more women cut and fold them into cards ready to be sent out to the army of women who will apply the designs. Some of the designs which adorn the cards are sent over from the UK; others come from the pen of 27-year old Maya. She was seven when she arrived at Sreepur, abandoned by her mother who had remarried after the death of Mayas father while she was pregnant. The new man did not want her around, and that was the end of it. I felt bad, I asked mother Why are you bringing me here? because everyone wants to stay with their parents, she says, and there are tears welling in the corners of her eyes. People told her to bring me here. I felt bad at the time but I was also thinking that maybe I would have a better life and an education. Some of the other mothers looked after us and later Pat said she thought I was a good designer and a good worker, so they said I could work here. She sits cuddling her 13-month-old son Probal, the first child from her marriage to Probat, who she met when he was working at Sreepur. They were married five years ago and now live in a small cottage on the edge of the village. If I had stayed outside with my stepfather I would not have had such a good life, she says confidently. Maybe he would have sent me to work in someones house or I would have had a bad marriage... And she looks down at Probal and the tears are gone and she is smiling.
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Case study Shahanz, 27, paper maker
My husband Sento Mia left me 12 years ago when I was pregnant with our first child. We got married when I was 15 but right from the start his family did not like me. It was a love match; we met in the garment factory where I was working. I come from a poor family so when I was 10 I had to go to work in the factory to earn some money. It was not much though; about 500 taka a month [about 4.40]. His family was always hitting me and using bad language to me. Then I found I was pregnant and they told him to leave me. I went to the doctor and said I didnt want to keep my baby but there was a lady there who told me it was a bad idea. She told me about Sreepur and said I would be better there. As soon as I arrived here, I started to feel better. I didnt really know what would become of me but anything was better than what I had. They showed me the paper making workshop and taught me how to make the paper. We use the local jute, chop it up and boil it and then I dip the wooden frames into the pulp and make the sheets. We dry them outside in the sun and then iron them in a press. Sometimes we dye the jute first to make coloured paper. I kept my baby and now I rent a house in the village and live there with my son. I work here and they pay me well, much more than I could ever have had in the factory. I get 4,500 taka a month [40], which is a good wage here. When I came here I did not know much about Christmas: I had seen snow on the television and I knew who Father Christmas was but I had never seen a Christmas tree, just the mangoes and the other trees round here, so I did not know what it was. But I'm really proud and happy that people like the cards we make. And my life is so much better now than I could ever have imagined when my husband left.
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