Slum clearance

On my way to work saw this small slum area being demolished. The people living there were told that morning that their homes were going to be demolished at midday.



Later that day most of the materials were being salvaged by anyone with a rickshaw-cart.


A few slums in the Mohakali area seem to have been cleared lately. I'm not sure if it's part of a larger programme of clearances. Either way it doesn't seem to have made local newspapers.

Aparajeyo Children's Day

As mentioned earlier, Aparajeyo has a children's day once a month where the children get to take over the school.

The manager at his desk


The manager and headmaster. It was older children who had graduated from Aparajeyo and were attending a private secondary school, rather than the project's current students, who were put in charge. Fitting in with the secondary school's two-shift system, boys took over Aparajeyo in the morning while the girls were at school, and the girls were apparently going to come and take over in the afternoon. They were still using lesson plans prepared by the adult teachers. Nevertheless both the students and the teenage teachers seemed to be having a lot of fun.







Having seen the school we visited the slum, Sujat Nagar, from which about 75 of the children at Aparajeyo come. It was accessed via a shaky, patched-up bamboo bridge. My first thought was how pretty the place was, at least from this side of the bridge.



Water and cooking facilities.




Members of the slum action committee. The committee apparently comprised 4 men and 3 women although the women were not around when we visited. They told us the main thing this area needs is daycare centres for young children.


An NGO-provided health service.


Education provision for the several thousand children living in this slum is extremely limited. Apart from the 75 attending Aparajeyo, 20-30 go to a BRAC classroom, and perhaps a further 30 or so go to a Proshika education centre. The nearest government school is 2-3 km away, and is likely to be difficult for the children here to access.

Streetwise project, Badda

My colleague Layli and I were invited to teach a couple of English classes. These were the best behaved children I have ever come across. Apparently this is because they have a lot of stimulation from various volunteers who come in and also receive breakfast and lunch at the centre.


Layli aggressively teaching colour words - 'This is BLUE!'

Kishoreganj

Last weekend went to Kishoreganj, a district a few hours away from Dhaka.

Dhaka's amazingly empty train station - most people seem to prefer buses.


The train was a bit cockroachy but otherwise fine.


BRAC school spotting has become my hobby - this one was between Kishoreganj town and an outlying village.




In the evening we went to a fair featuring a genuinely frightening "Game of Danger" -- a motorbike demonstrating the laws of physics in a shakily built circular wooden structure.

Slum myths

These are some of the things people come out with about slums which, as far as I can see so far, seem not to be true...

1. Everyone is equally poor in slums - There is enormous variation both between slums in Dhaka, and within each slum. Some people own several dwellings in the slum and rent them out to others. Others have family members sending money from abroad. These people still live in fairly bad conditions but their children's prospects must be much better. Karail Bosti, which seems to be seen by some people here as the city's teeming, flooded heart of darkness, has been described by others as the 'creme de la creme' of Dhaka slums, with better living conditions and richer inhabitants than some of the less well-known slums.
2. Slums are mainly peripheral - some writers on Dhaka slums seem to have the impression that, following evictions of many central Dhaka slums, slum dwellers have moved out to the periphery. In fact there remain several very large slums in the middle of the city, and anyway it is hard to tell what constitutes the centre. Areas like Mohammadpur (for example) seem pretty central to me, and although Mirpur is more suburban it's still very much part of the same urban sprawl.
3. Slum-dwellers are all migrants from rural areas - This is only true if you include as 'migrants' people whose parents or grandparents migrated. Most of the school-age children in the slums seem to have been born there. While there is likely to be some movement between different slums and between slums and villages, many people seem to have settled for the long term, eviction threats notwithstanding.

I also suspect the following to be myths - hope the survey will shed some light:

1. People in slums don't expect much for their children, or don't know what to expect - I reckon most people will have quite realistic expectations about the range of possible futures that their children could have, and will have a keen eye on 'escape routes' out of poverty and the slum.
2. People in slums don't send their children to private schools - There appear to be people paying substantial fees to send children to private schools both inside and outside of their slums. However these will probably be few compared to the number of children.

(Download my bibliography on slums: Zotero RDF | RIS)

Aparajeyo project, Pallabi

Another visit to a slum education project, this time run by Aparajeyo Bangladesh. This project has daycare centres, a nursery, "Centre Based Education" for primary classes 1-6 (for children of minimum ages 6-11), and a coaching group for older children who attend a public or private school. The organisation also pays 50 per cent of fees for children who progress from their project to secondary school. In total 401 children are enrolled. Apparently none are working; there is another Aparajeyo project which targets working children. The centre has children's management groups which identify problems and discuss solutions with the managers, and once a week is 'Children's Day,' when the children get to run the centre themselves.

This project was really interesting, although due to my bad planning and shortage of time, the visit was the worst kind of flying visit — a stage-managed glimpse of how the project runs with very little depth of insight. Hoping to return there during one of the Children's Days to see how that works.

Survey piloting - 2

Korail

A short boat trip away from BRAC Centre, Korail is the city's largest single slum.


Rent is around Tk. 900 (£7) per month. People cook on shared earth stoves and get water either from tubewells or communal taps.



We visited this small kindergarten, run by one of the slum's land owners. It went up to grade 2 but the children were aged up to at least 10. The government school is about 1 hour's walk away and difficult to get in to. Having finished at the kindergarten most of these children are unlikely to make the transition to further schooling. Fees here are Tk. 500 (£4) for registration, Tk. 150 (£1) per month tuition, Tk. 100 for grade 1 exam fees, Tk. 200 for grade 2 exam fees. Salaries for full-time teachers are Tk. 1000 (£8) per month.

There are also a number of small NGO schools in the area.


Though basic the school seemed well maintained, and was covered with instructional posters.

Cholontika Cluber Bastee, Mirpur

This turned out to be the really bad slum where I visited a BRAC school a week ago. Typical rent in the slum was Tk. 600-800 (£4-6). Each toilet was shared by 18 households. They got water from shared tubewells.

We spoke to one woman who was a landlord, owning 12 houses in the slum as well as her own (suggesting an income of around Tk. 8-9000 per month). She sent her daughter to an RNGPS where fees were: 1640 enrolment; 160 Tk per month tuition; 80 Tk exam fees. She had also spent Tk. 5000 on books and uniforms.