Get Up...

I'm not sure if it's the frail old women trying in vain to cross the street...

It could be the children who lead their blind fathers, brothers, uncles between traffic jams, begging for money...

It could be the tiny children roaming the streets with a cement bag filled with plastic on their backs, looking to fill it even more...

It could be the family that lives across the street from my office... not in a house, not in an apartment, but in a poorly constructed tin shed on an empty, weed-infested block no bigger than the average bathroom... right across from Habitat for Humanity, anyone think our job is done yet?

It could be the little kid I play with on my way to coaching every now and again... he's too shy to speak to me, but the little giggles let me know that for those brief moments, he's having fun instead of dodging cars and trucks and rickshaws while scampering across Gulshan Avenue, trying to hustle money out of foreigners...

It could be figures I deal with every day... over 1,000,000 families without adequate shelter in just 1 District... 20,000,000 people in inadequate housing in Dhaka...

It could be the scene I witnessed last night, a few kids getting beaten senseless by local shopkeepers, tears and screams mixed with the sound of the stick connecting with flesh and bone...

It could be the old man laying in front of Gulshan Mosque, both legs poorly amputated, face down but hand up, waiting for alms from the exiting congregation, in obvious pain with every movement...

It could be the story I read on Rich's Newspaper Clipping wall, where a rickshaw driver was beaten to death because he wanted 8 taka instead of the 5 his passengers gave him... that's a murder over less than 5 cents...

It could be anything at all; last night I felt overwhelmed...

Anyway...

I don't mean to give the impression that my days are filled with sadness, far from it.  The successes at work, my coaching, playing ball in the evenings, parties, Aussie club get-togethers, Hash Harrier Runs, and general socializing are all  major parts of my life in  Bangladesh...

I just can't help feeling like I could be doing more... I'm sick, I know...

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Comments

Carly said…
Pierre, your blog is always inspirational...alas, after reading, I always feel a bit guilty about not really posting about the deep and heavy side of life in Bangladesh on my blog!
January 31, 2008 at 9:29 PM
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