Poverty

I was getting upset with the fact that he hadn’t come. Twice, I had sent a message to him about his daughter’s absence. She hasn’t been to school for over a month and we would like to know whether we can count on her being in the class. There is a long waiting list and no need to leave her place empty. In my letter I made it clear that we would take her name of our register from 1 June if he didn’t come.

Soon after New Year he had lost his job – something about not being trustworthy with money – I am sure he deserved it; loosing the job that is.

Now he looked sick and I am glad his clothes covered his ribs so I couldn’t see how thin he was. In a matter-of-fact manner he told me that he had had jaundice and there was nobody else to bring his five year old daughter to school. What he shared was only what I asked. He was getting treatment from the local ‘kobiraj’ (Homeopath if you are kind, quack if you not) and was getting better, he felt. His daughter didn’t want to come to school, because others had food and she had none. The family consists of the man in my office, his daughter – a student, her mother, grandmother and great grandmother. Now the family has no permanent income. They eat once a day and he doesn’t have money to go to Dinajpur to get insulin for his diabetes.

He did deserve loosing his job. I think he had hoped someone would intervene so that he would get it back, but he would have been tempted to take money again, and there are too many others who can do the work and need the job, perhaps as badly as he.

We talked about how he might pay school fees; he was very realistic about his lack of ability to do so. I gave him the form we use to apply for stipends. No land, no income, five mouths to feed, it looks bleak. He got justice when he was fired, what can we give him now. I would have been so much easier had I never met them; as it is his daughter is a student at my school and I can scarcely deny that I know she probably goes hungry again tonight.

God, have mercy on us.