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She has 11 days off this year, and Tasnia Begum wants to use every minute of it. That's why the textile worker has decided: She will drive through the night. Actually, she would not do that, she says - too unsure alone as a woman, maybe even dangerous.
That's why she bought place number 1, right behind the bus driver. 600 Taka, about six euros, has cost the ticket. For the money, the 25-year-old sewn T-shirts for two days. Her employer: a company that used to supply H & M and now Walmart. Her place of work: an unnamed textile factory at the gate in the industrial area of Chittagong, a concrete two-million-population town on the Bay of Bengal, the second largest textile production site in southern Bangladesh.
It is 9 pm, the evening of 3 June 2019. The last working day before Eid, the feast at the end of the month of fasting Ramadan. Millions of Muslims are going home that day. The mood is reminiscent of the day before Christmas: Trains and buses are crowded, adults are stressed, children are looking forward to sweets.
Kazi Riasat Alve
Tasnia Begum is looking for a bus in an industrial area of Chittagong, which will take her to her home village for the Eid festival
Begum has bought her bus ticket weeks before. She has her mouthguard tucked behind her ears, against men's gazes and urban exhausts. She heaves her two bags into the rickety bus in the industrial area of Chittagong.
The more than 4,600 registered textile factories in Bangladesh, which account for 20 percent of total gross domestic product, are closed from today. For several days, 4.5 million workers are free. It's like someone pressed the stop button in this busy city.
Tasnia Begum, as sinewy as a twelve-year-old, sparkling and noisy as a class president, still says, "It would be easier to stay in Chittagong, even before the trip I think about how much it hurts to say goodbye."
Kazi Riasat Alve
Textile workers on the way to their jobs
Begum is not just on vacation, celebrating one of the most important holidays in Islam. She drives home to be a mother for two weeks a year. In everyday life, not just on the phone. One third of all textile workers, according to a recent survey by the NGO Oxfam Australia, live separately from their children. "I have no choice," says Tasnia Begum. "There are no jobs for me in the country."
Many parents live in the city to give their children a better life. It sounds like the narrative of Ascension, the generation contract of globalization, all over the world. But what is the price of this promotion for the families?
Among the developing countries, Bangladesh is considered a model of economic success: gross domestic product per capita has increased seven-fold over the past four decades; from $ 227 to $ 1698. In 2000, just under half of the now 161 million inhabitants were considered poor. It's about a quarter now. Depending on who you ask, the textile industry in particular has contributed to the country's upswing. Only China exports more clothing than Bangladesh.
Kazi Riasat Alve
On the holidays to the Eid-Fest all factories are closed. The workers then go to their families.
0.15 clock. The busy bus rumbles out of the industrial area. Before Tasnia Begum are 220 kilometers, seven hours on the bus, on the highway N1 high north. She drives through an agricultural state, plagued by famine, hurricanes and floods.
Migrant workers who have moved from the countryside to the city with their hopes for a fixed income in their luggage now travel in the opposite direction. With suitcases like chest freezers, feasting plates for feasting, frozen meat and gift bags with clothes. Status icons that emphasize that they made it. At least compared to their relatives in the village.
Factories pass in front of Tasnia Begum's window. On the facades fade brand names of European and American manufacturers: Macy's, Coats, Walmart. Bangladesh exports about half of its clothing to Europe. However, for many European buyers, "Made in Bangladesh" meant nothing more than a small printed sentence in the flyer.
Then, in the capital, Dhaka, the Rana Plaza factory collapsed, the country's biggest textile industry accident. More than 1,100 people died in the rubble, more than 2,500 were injured. "Made in Bangladesh" was suddenly synonymous with deadly working conditions.
The media outcry, according to various scientists and trade unionists, has actually improved the safety in the factories. More than 220 textile companies, including H & M and Primark, entered into the Accord security agreement with trade unions in the country for 1,600 factories. In the meantime one third of all factories in the country has fire detectors, water sprinklers and fire extinguishers. Some owners had to demolish dilapidated factories.
Interview with textile activist Kalpona Akter
"If you do not stick to it, you will not get any more jobs," says a manager of the textile company Tasnia Begum works for. In order not to jeopardize Begum's job, both her name and the name of her employer are anonymous. Begum works in one of the company's smaller factories. Here, however, nothing has changed, says the manager under the hand. Tasnia Begum says the same thing.
For them, the job still means a rise. Six days a week, nine hours a day, she says, she sews at the factory. She earns about 88 euros a month, 8400 taka. A quarter of them send them by mobile phone to their parents every month. "What are my options? I am not educated," says Begum.
Of course, she could work as a domestic worker again. "But I do not want to be a slave, not always ready if someone wants to do laundry, when I get home from the factory in the evening, the work is over, then I'm free."
Their freedom is a small room, four by four meters, and a shared toilet. The main problem is, says Begum, even if the minimum wage has doubled: all prices rose.
photo gallery
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Textile workers in Bangladesh: the dream of a better lifeIn fact, the cost of living rose 86 percent between 2013 and 2018, according to a study by the Center for Policy Dialogue, a think tank in Dhaka. This means that most textile workers can hardly afford their lives. As soon as they get more money, the landlords and the shopkeepers attract their prices.
"My life dream was different," says Tasnia Begum on the bus. "I wanted to live in a house, have a daughter and a son, look after my husband." At 18, she married, so she tells it. The man worked in the same factory, one floor below. But soon he stayed away, flirting with others. He left her. Then she realized that her period did not materialize.
"I'm pregnant," she revealed.
"Go ahead," he said.
Kazi Riasat Alve
Tasnia Begum on the bus on the way to her home village near the city of Brahmanbaria
7:00 am, 4 th June. The bus stops at a crossroads near the city of Brahmanbaria. The rice fields steam in the morning sun. "I'll be right back," Tasnia Begum says on her mobile to her mother. "Yes, I bring meat with you, comb her hair!"
Another half hour by car, past women scrubbing laundry in turquoise pools. The air is rainy. Begum's home village on the Titash River is home to about a thousand people, many of them small farmers, day laborers and fishermen.
The arrival in the village feels like escaping from the hell of industrialization into a green oasis. No dusty smog that sticks to the lungs. Bird chirping instead of the big city crowd, which laps like a tinnitus under every sound. The villagers see it differently. Poor be it here and lag behind, Tasnia Begum finds.
Kazi Riasat Alve
Upon arrival in the village, Tasnia Begum is hugged by her daughter Sadia Begum Mim, 7
As she walks into the courtyard between the corrugated-iron houses of her relatives, holding a plastic bag with beef in one hand, a girl in a red dress comes out of a house. Tasnia Begum wraps her arms around her daughter.
Sadia Begum Mim, born on the Eid morning seven years ago, is taller and more chubby than last year. The girl slides his little hand into his mother's. Then it stays silent and smiles, as if it does not know what to say to his mother, who stands turned up and emaciated beside him.
The moment of reunion and farewell has changed over the years, says Tasnia Begum. Four weeks after giving birth, she left her child at home for the first time. Her parents fed the baby with powdered milk and palm sugar. The next year, her daughter barely noticed that Tasnia Begum came back. As a toddler, she screamed. Meanwhile, the daughter has gotten used to it. They talk on the phone every two days: What did you eat? What did you play?
Kazi Riasat Alve
At the market near her family home, Tasnia Begum buys gifts for her daughter
But on Mother's Day, Sadia gets her shoes on the market with a heel, and the salesman angels her into the tulle princess dress from the ceiling. On these days, she is allowed to eat chocolate eggs and nestle in her sleep to her mother.
Some of the parents do not even come home. They stay in Chittagong, Gulf State of Bahrain and Oman. She can not afford a guilty conscience, says Begum: "My parents take care of Sadia, and I'm already sufficiently worried about the city." But she has to endure if her daughter is not brought up the way Tasnia Begum wants it to be.
In the afternoon, Sadia clings to her mother and cries. She came back too late from playing. "You get very dark when you play so long in the sun," roars the grandfather and pushes the girl. "Why are you scolding her like that?" Begum yells at her father. He mutters something and apologizes. "I'm the smartest in the family," Tasnia Begum later says, "even my dad kisses in front of me."
Kazi Riasat Alve
Tasnia's mother Jamena Begum and her father Firon Mia prepare food in a small cooking area
Her family respects her. She says it is not shame that Tasnia Begum is the only one of the family to live apart from her husband or that she works so far away. "It would be easier for her to remarry," says her mother. "But the dowry gets more expensive, she's already a wife and a mother." Tasnia Begum waves away. She is tired. And now, after she finally gets home, she gets a headache, her back pulls, she is lethargic.
Tasnia Begum's parents, cousin and cousin, married in 1971 in the corrugated ironworks where everyone lives. Two of her six children died. The first son gambled away the money of the family. And Tasnia got sick. She had a fever, cough, no appetite. The family borrowed money, they tell it, also to pay Tasnia's hospital. The debt amounted sometime to over 3000 euros, 300,000 taka. One third have Tasnia Begum already paid back to the "money sharks", the lenders.
She does not have medical reports showing that. But their history coincides with studies and surveys from all over Bangladesh: many families are in debt and fail to repay the sometimes horrendously high interest rates of the lenders.
Kazi Riasat Alve
Mother Jamena Begum cooks in a small corner in the house
Comparing Tasnia Begum with the older women of the village, the country's statistics are reflected: The lives of women in Bangladesh have improved over the past 30 years. Today, fewer mothers die at birth and fewer children. On average, women today have two children, compared to five earlier. And in the textile industry alone, 80 percent of women work.
But for Tasnia Begum, this work is not an emancipatory act, not an investment in the future of her daughter. She sews against her parents' debts.
When Tasnia Begum wakes up on June 5 with headache and body aches, Eid al-Fitr. The end of the fasting month. Men with starched shirts stream to the open prayer place in the village, carrying prayer rugs under their arms. On the streets children buy ice cream and balloons and shout "Eid Mubarak". Sadia is allowed to put on her new shoes and the pink tulle dress.
Kazi Riasat Alve
Tasnia's daughter Sadia dances together with friends
Bangla music rattles in the courtyard of the family. A few cousins have a loudspeaker box turned on. The teenage cousins do not dance, they look down, giggle with their hands over their mouths. But the little girls, Begum's daughter Sadia, her friends and cousins laugh out loud, they jump around. They circle the wrists and hips, like the dancers from the YouTube videos.
They still have a few years left. At the age of twelve, Sadia will be fully involved in the household, says her grandmother. At 18, probably earlier, she will marry. Maybe her daughter will start as a seamstress in one of the factories, "the main thing is that she's not the same as me," says Tasnia Begum. "Then she is lost."
This article is part of the project Global Society, for which our reporters report from four continents. The project is long-term and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
What is the project Global Society?
Under the title Global Society, reporters from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe will be reporting on injustices in a globalized world, socio-political challenges and sustainable development. The reportages, analyzes, photo galleries, videos and podcasts appear in the Politics Department of SPIEGEL. The project is long-term and will be supported over three years by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).
Are the journalistic contents independent of the foundation?
Yes. The editorial content is created without the influence of the Gates Foundation.
Do other media have similar projects?
Yes. Major European media such as "The Guardian" and "El País" have created similar sections on their news pages with "Global Development" or "Planeta Futuro" with the support of the Gates Foundation.
Was there already similar projects at SPIEGEL ONLINE?
SPIEGEL ONLINE has already implemented two projects in recent years with the European Journalism Center (EJC) and the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: The "Expedition The Day After tomorrow" on Global Sustainability Goals and the journalistic refugee project "The New Arrivals" Several award-winning multimedia reports on the topics of migration and escape have emerged.
Where can I find all the publications on the Global Society?
The pieces can be found at SPIEGEL ONLINE on the topic page Global Society.