BY the time Babu passed his fourth birthday his mother had died of rabies and his father of asthma.
BY the time Babu passed his fourth birthday his mother had died of rabies and his father of asthma.
He grew up alone on the streets; his bed a patch of concrete next to Bangladesh’s national football stadium.
His aspiration was to become a footballer but he never made it inside the stadium gates. He didn’t even own a football.
Babu had even less chance of fulfilling his second ambition -- to be a pilot.
Now the boy -- who featured on the front cover of The Herald’s Saturday magazine in January, 2010 -- is the latest victim of a life on the streets after being killed in a road accident.
The youngster was photographed squatting outside the stadium near where he and his friends kept watch over each other, to try to avoid the inevitable police beatings and the gangs that steal children.
The feature was run as a fundraising campaign with Concern Worldwide, and thanks to the generosity of readers it raised more than £10,000.
Babu told us: “I would like a roof.” He never got that. The accident killed him instantly and the Concern staff had to identify him at the morgue.
Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh and the world’s most densely populated city, has between 20,000 and 50,000 permanent pavement dwellers. Most of these men, women and children are environmental refugees who have fled flooding in outlying parts of the country.
It is one of the world’s most polluted cities and deaths from respiratory disease and road accidents are common on the street. The smog is so thick it blocks out the sun, and every road is clogged with rickshaws, buses and cars.
Just months before we met, Babu had been kidnapped in the middle of the night and taken across the city by a man he had never seen before.
Locked in a room for three days with little food or water, he was then sold for 4000 taka, about £35.
“He was selling me to another person when I started screaming and crying and a policeman came and caught him,” he told us.
“I was so very afraid. We can’t all sleep at once in case the gangs try to steal someone.”
Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, estimates that 400 women and children fall victim to trafficking in Bangladesh each month.
Most are between the ages of 12 and 16 and are forced to work in the sex industry. Some become domestic slaves, and boys are often taken to the Middle East and forced to be camel jockeys.
The only respite from the noise and filth was from 9am to 5pm, when Babu could access one of Concern Worldwide’s nine day-centres across the city.
The centres support more than 1000 pavement dwellers each day, offering a place for them to rest, wash and cook. Children under five are given nursery education and lunch, allowing their parents to work.
They also run savings schemes and encourage young people into vocational training courses to offer them an escape from the streets. The project is called Amrao Manush, meaning “we are people too” in Bengali, a name de-vised by the pavement dwellers.
Parents try to protect their children as well as they can. Mothers tie their toddlers to their bodies with their saris -- little deterrent to the organised criminal gangs, known as mustans. One woman used a padlock and chain. Babu had no-one to tie himself to.
AKM Musha, Concern’s country director said: “This is very very sad and unacceptable but this is the harsh reality for the children living on the street in Dhaka City.”
- www.concern.net/donate
- Read Lucy Adams' January 2010 article about Babu's life in Dhaka
- View Marc Turner's January 2010 Dhaka audio slideshow
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article