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Nyla Obaid - My Blog
Nyla Obaid - My Blog
Rupali's Story- A Child's Combat Against Poverty
Related to country: Bangladesh

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

[Author's note: The events in this story have been replicated exactly as is. There is not once instance where the written word has diverted in any way from the actual event, including names, personalities, locations etc.]


Upon my last visit to Bangladesh about three years ago, I befriended my aunt's little maidservant. Rupali was about 7 years old, and served the house doing small chores, running errands, and mainly being a playmate and a best friend to my cousin (about 4 years old).

Born into a small Bengali village, the youngest of 7 children, her parents just didn't have anything to feed her with. They gave her to my aunt as a servant when she was a mere 3 years old. She earned about $10 monthly ($9 of which she sent back home to help her parents out) and was allowed food/shelter in our household.

Many a time, I would see her stare with envy at the makeup I owned, the clothes I wore, or even the books I read. Rupali was never afforded any of those luxuries.

Her daily schedule went from getting up at dawn, boiling water from the family, hand-washing the entire family's clothes, making the 12 beds in the house, sweeping and mopping all the floors, helping my little cousin take a shower, feeding my little cousin, running to the store for necessary things- to her one passion, the one hour of X-Files that she was allowed to watch at night with the rest of the family.

Rupali could have been the poster-child for poverty.

Except, one day, my aunt caught her trying to read one of my cousin's picture books. My aunt, a soft woman, with a small child of her own, claims she had a revelation. From that point on, all of Rupali's duties were excused and delegated to an adult maid that came in three times a week and was paid fairer wages. For the first three months, my aunt herself undertook Rupali's education. She learned her Bengali alphabets and numbers, and even basic counting principles!

My aunt then sent Rupali to a public school, a term, which in Bangladesh, means a low level of education offered for free and attended to only by the very, very poor. Rupali flourished under this system, as well as a strict discipline under my aunt's wings.

She would wake up in the morning, make herself lunch, go to school, come home, wash her school uniform (as she only owned the one in the sweltering heat of Bangaldesh) and study for three hours. She would then babysit my cousin for a bit, and at night, still be allowed to watch that one hour of X-Files with the family at night. Her schedule started to look much more like that, of a normal child.

When I spoke to my aunt a few days ago, she said that Rupali was now reading and writing at a grade 4 level. She spoke of Rupali's hopes to start her own store in the community, selling knick-knacks that make it easier for maidservants to fetch things on their errands instead of having to run all the way to the closest department store.

From what I remember of Rupali, three years ago, she was vibrant and outgoing - and very, very intelligent. I think she can achieve even better than the store, if she wanted so.


...Rupali's story is so far a success, but the problem remains common in Bangladesh. Parents have more kids than they can afford in the poorer communities. Urbanites and the nobility, like my aunt, accept child servants and pay them slave-wages. They are robbed of a childhood, and never get out of that vicious cycle of poverty- not without the kind of education Rupali is getting.

In Bangladesh, what my aunt did with Rupali is very uncommon, and laughed at. The neighboring women think my aunt is making a bad decision. They say, "if you educate her, you're going to lose her. Look at MY servant- I've had her since she was 6 years old and 20 years later, she is still with the family. And I STILL have to only pay her $10/month."

My aunt smiles and shakes her head. She already knows the solution to poverty, what the world is seeking.

She says, "I dont' want to keep her. I want to break the cycle of poverty for her and her family, and that is only possible, through education."

[Photo: The picture shows Rupali happily posing for my camera, after having put on makeup with my makeup kid. She wanted to light a candle to her face, in order to "have it shine brighter for the picture"]

October 15, 2008 | 10:43 PM Comments  0 comments

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