Breaking chains with a pen: a child's dream about education

Sat Nov 30, 2024 2:21 PM Last update: Sat Nov 30, 2024 2:51 PM

A recent study found that 47 percent of child laborers in Bangladesh were not attending school. FILE PHOTO: STAR

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A recent study found that 47 percent of child laborers in Bangladesh were not attending school. FILE PHOTO: STAR

During my time as a volunteer for the UK Bangladesh Education Trust (UKBET), I had the opportunity to provide academic mentorship to a few children. These children were not ‘normal’ in any way; they were gifted. Like warriors marching relentlessly toward the battlefield, these children were armed with a weapon mightier than swords: a pen. Equipped with the pursuit of knowledge, they fearlessly walked into an unknown life: a life of hard labor.

One of them was Hamza. In a cruel twist of fate, wrongly thrust into the harsh world of child labor, Hamza grew up working with his uncle in their chotpoti shop. While many of us aspire to grand ambitions, Hamza’s dream was simple: He longed to know what it was like to sit in a classroom, to be given homework, to call himself a student instead of a worker. He longed to play football with the schoolchildren he watched through the bars of the school gate. For most of his nine years, he believed that dream would remain unfulfilled.

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When I first met him, I was warmly welcomed by the incessant clatter of Ceylon olives hitting the tin roof of their room, followed by Hamza’s beaming smile. From that moment on our journey together began. I taught him how to convert proper fractions into percentages, while he taught me to see life from a whole new perspective.

The first few months were admittedly challenging. Sometimes I sat patiently waiting for Hamza’s arrival amid the turmoil of the daily hardships faced by those living within the crumbling walls of the slums. Mothers shouting vehemently at their children because they had lost a pencil they had worked so hard to buy, the sound of rickshaws arriving as fathers entered their homes with barely a few hours of earned income – it all seemed too overwhelming.

Gradually it started to get easier. Over the course of six months, Hamza, along with his colleagues, guided me to capture the essence of life from a more humble point of view. In our first lesson, as usual, I brought small gifts. To my surprise, Hamza stubbornly refused to accept it. When asked why, he told me he had never received a gift from his family, let alone from a stranger. I probed further and asked him about birthdays, to which he replied that he didn’t know when his birthday was. After all, there was never an opportunity to celebrate.

We often forget that the children who spend most of their lives on the sidewalks are real people, with hopes and dreams similar to ours. We pass them every day, without really noticing, to the point where it becomes so routine that it fades into the background. If we fail to fulfill our responsibility to show care where it is needed, and if we don’t make even a small effort to be dutiful citizens, who will?

Looking back, some of the conversations we all had were truly unique: like the time Hamza and his siblings ecstatically asked me if I had ever gotten on a plane, or when they argued with each other for 15 minutes about the price of my iPhone, Ultimately they came to the conclusion that it was Tk 10,000, which they also said was enough to purchase an entire commercial aircraft.

Needless to say, there exists a Hamza in every corner of our country: a child whose talents, qualities and dreams have slipped through our fingers, lost to the eternal chains of child labor. Ambitious children with hopes of becoming someone are washed away by the waves of dangerous labor due to societal neglect and ignorance.

In this scenario, Hamza was fortunately rescued by the nonprofit I volunteered for. Unfortunately, this is often not the case for the victims of thousands of child labor cases to which we tend to turn a blind eye. For every Hamza rescued, there are still thirty Hamzas left bound by the brutal grip of forced labor.

We often forget that the children who spend most of their lives on the sidewalks are real people, with hopes and dreams similar to ours. We pass them every day, without really noticing, to the point where it becomes so routine that it fades into the background. If we fail to fulfill our responsibility to show care where it is needed, and if we don’t make even a small effort to be dutiful citizens, who will?

The effort the children put in every time they picked up a textbook, their competitiveness to get higher grades than their peers – all this pointed to a potential that has been almost permanently lost. To think that the talents and skills of such curious young minds are in some cases continually underutilized is itself an injustice. According to a recent studyMore than 47 percent of child laborers in Bangladesh were out of school, and from my own primary research, 73 percent of them indicated that they wanted to receive some form of education at some point. Despite their ambitions, they remain in the hands of often lagging employers.

As the next generation moves forward and many of us are fortunate enough to benefit from education, let’s take the initiative to take initiative. Let us strive to bring about positive changes in society, even if it is small acts like offering an extra bottle of water to someone in need. Or maybe even something simpler, like a warm smile and a gesture of empathy for a child in these difficult circumstances. While these may seem insignificant to many of us, it can make the whole day for them.

I no longer teach Hamza or his siblings, and as far as I know his family has moved to a remote village in search of better opportunities. Although I don’t know what he is up to these days and if he still thinks planes cost Tk 10,000, I certainly hope he was able to find a way to realize his dreams and ambitions – maybe just starting with the chance to sit down in a classroom.

Wajahat Shams Wajih is a two-time winner of the Daily Star Award for Excellence for his outstanding performance in IGCSE and International A Levels examinations. He is also a Bronze Awardee from the Duke of Edinburgh (DofE).

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

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