ZAKI DOES NOT KNOW IT (because a butch aunt with a micro-loan can keep away a shark)

City Palli Dhalpur is a licenced slum 35-taka-far-by-rickshaw from Paltan, established in 1988 for homeless people, it has become the largest heroin distribution spot in Dhaka. But my impression was good, streets not so narrow, cement blocks houses, one sanitary for five households, one tube-well every ten. At the gate, there were five girls playing the popular game (in Italy, called "bell") which you draw on the asphalt with a piece of chalk six-seven-eight boxes, than -using a little stone- you have to jump up to the box where you threw the stone and come back. Four girls shared three little stones, and the last one was jumping up to a little piece of orange skin: this is my very first memory of Dhalpur. The second one: two black crows that eat a died rat just over a baby pink t-shirt spread out on a roof after washing. Third one: the micro-story of Zaki, but Zaki does not know it.

Zaki is a 6 months baby: according to me, he is more than 6, but the mother -Shobana- told me that he was born just 6 months ago. Even about her age, she said -twentyfive-: our women try to reduce their age, here they do not remember or they do not know and they guess. Their micro-story is sad, Zaki does not anything, but Shobana -who knows- is not discouraged. They live in one of the little block (ten-twelve sqm), there is also Souban, 5 years old, and Morjena, the elder sister of Shobana. Morjena is single, and she plays the role of the "dad" in this sad-micro-story. She works for Dhaka City Corporation, a public company involved in several services from washing clothes to building constructions: she is a cleaning woman. Where is the dad? The Shobana's husband is the village, somewhere in the north, far from his family, far from Zaki, because he left Dhaka, he deserted his family, he abandoned Zaki. Without a job, with one more son, he decided to run away just after the Zaki's birth. Shobana was alone, with two sons, thus the elder sister come from their village to help her. Theoretically, Morjena's income (6000taka, 63euro) is enough to cover all the expenditure (4500food,200school,1000housing), but the real problem is a money lender (or better, a loan shark) who is still waiting 20000taka (213euro) back.

Money lenders are able to provide 20000taka in ten minutes(every MFI/NGO requires a previous period of savings and a week for the loan processing). The interest is 5% every month that you wait to pay back the capital, thus after receving 20000taka, you will pay 1000taka every month up to be able to pay the 20000taka.

For Shobana and Morjena the emergency was a serious disease of another sister who lives in the village. They received 20000taka in ten minutes, but in ten months they paid back only half of the amount plus more or less the same amount of interests (1000*10months=10000taka). How did they find the money? They joined in HITAISHI BANGLADESH, "my" NGO, they started to save 50taka per week, they got a loan of 10000taka and in 40 weeks -paying 280taka per week- they repaid the loan. In the maintime, they saved also up to 4800taka. Now, they asked a second loan: but there is no business, it is only another loan to feed the shark.

Anyway, there is the serious possibility for them to be able to repay the money-lender. The micro-credit is helping them, a micro-loan should not be used to pay the interest for another loan, but it could work. This micro-story (made sad by the coward husband) is the story of milions of poor. They are not able to face an emergency, and thousands of taka in ten minutes is a big temptation for a poor family that maybe needs fast cash for a disease or a business opportunity (buy property in the village). Actually, the microfinance system helps them only ex-post-facto, but more and more microfinance institutions are implementing savings programs to improve the poor's capacity to face an emergency, building a brighter future for them.

About Zaki and his family...I cannot guess the color of their future, but a dad is not necessary to grow up and become a man -and a dad better than the one that you had got-, Morjena looks like a man and I think she will work as hard as a man and the loan shark will swim faraway. The main thing is that, now, Zaki does not know it: he sleeps, eats and plays with my behavioral-finance-experiment balls. Because tomorrow Morjena will wash clotehs, the shark will be further away and I will buy two new balls.

S.L.U.M. (because the children are children everywhere and maybe, here, more)

Yesterday, I tried a Dhaka slum. I am here for this reason, not for food and restaurants (even if I am a great gourmet -and Regina and I could write a best-seller-food-guide-book). I spent all the morning in Geneva Camp, Shymoli, in a day-visit with SafeSave. Next time, I will speak about this funny microfinance experiment (64 collectors that with their smart-phone visit every day slum’s poor looking for their savings). But, now I cannot stop my mind that thinks and re-thinks to the children of the slums. I think that I have never seen more people than Mumbai, I am almost sure that I have never seen more children than Bangladesh, and –anyway- never so many children in so small space.
Technically, a slum is a urban area overcrowded where the houses are 4x4 metres block of cement (if you are lucky) or plate and bamboo huts (if you are very poor –but if you are very poor but lucky, you have also a tin roof), in every house there is a huge family or more than one, the streets are so narrow that you can see the TV shows of your neighbors (I know, it’s a paradox but often there is the TV inside the cement or bamboo), there is no privacy, your kitchen is a fire spot in the narrow street because you cannot cook where you live, sleep and work but you have to cook where the people walk, the rain falls and the children play, your bathroom is a common bathroom that you have to share with your hundred neighbors (I cannot guess a ratio N°Toilet:People, it is better to not know).

This disaster is a slum. I don’t know the meaning of the word, I prefer imagine that S.L.U.M. is S for Smiles, L for Lights, U for Under the same sky , M for Morning.
Smiles, because before I had to start to remember the structure of the streets and the houses but the very only thing that I fixed in my mind is every single smile, maybe it was a subconscious strategy that my brain used to survive during the visit, maybe it is their strategy to survive in that hell or –simply- they smile, better than us.
Light, because “Where is the light?”, during the day the streets are so narrow that only a little slice of sun could penetrate inside, okkey there is electricity (usually it is free, it is the government that pays), but in a place where the sun doesn’t work properly because of the smog and the electricity works yet less: where is the light? I cannot imagine the night in a slum. Their no-lights day is our dark night, so for our standard there is no color or definition for a “night in a slum”.
Under the same sky, under different stars, because billions of people are under the same sky, there is also one sky, the same one, but different stars or better same stars that look like different. We live under the same sky with the lucky stars, we use to look the stars when we are in love, in trouble or drunken on the beach. We don’t need to ask more, but we love ask for a better future. They live under the same sky with other stars, they don’t care about the sky and they don’t ask stupid things to the moon. They should ask more for their future, but they work more, eat less and smile however, under the same sky with the same stars that for them are different because –maybe- if you work, eat and smile, you could stop to believe in the stars (especially, because the stars had been really with your destiny if you live in a slum).
Morning, because it is the most important part of the day. They don’t use to look the stars, but they need to hope that every morning is a good morning to get a daily job, to look for a buyer, to sell the rice or finding food. Their destiny is a daily destiny that every day takes a different way, and your way is good or bad according to your lucky morning, it is not because of the stars.

Children, I started to write this post about the children, and now I lost in the labyrinth of things to write, as the real slum, where you cannot go alone without getting lost. I have an idea, because I cannot tell you the experience, writing, especially writing in English, thus I try to make a list of “things that children can do in a slum”, according to the snapshots of yesterday that mind could not forget.
- The little boy with the red t-shirt, the withe smile and the green kite (that it cannot fly in the slum, but –for him- it sounded good) who was running across the streets singing “Sheila Ki Jawani” (a Bollywood’s hit parade song);
- The little girl with the pink dress and the white smile, the little girl with the blue tshirt and the white smile and the little boy with the pink tshirt, the white smile and the blue ball, who were following the little boy with the kite;
- The very little girl with a grey dress sleeping in the arms of a mother who was attached hundred little golden paillettes to a red scarf.
- The very little girl with the big black eyes who was playing with an air balloon listening the sound of the fingers –of her elder sister- scratching the air balloon.