By Lisa Parvin
I met Swapna at her home on a crisp winter morning on my last day of field research in Jhalokati, Bangladesh—a district known for its beautiful rivers and guava gardens. The past few days had been hectic, and much work still needed to be done before completing my Master’s research on immunization coverages among nomadic children in Bangladesh. The long list of things that I needed to do before I was to leave Jhalokati in the afternoon went on in my mind like an earworm.
Then I met Swapna.
All my data collection worries were blown away, as I listened to stories about her “dream-like” childhood in a boat. It was as if somehow Swapna and I could defy the laws of physics and travel back in time to become a part of her life journey. I sat on Swapna’s bed, holding firmly to my recorder so I wouldn’t miss anything that my chatty interviewee had to say.
A 38-year-old mother of two sons, and oldest of five siblings, Swapna is the last generation in her family to be raised in boats. Swapna identified herself as a Mirshikari—the term for a member of an ethnic-minority and once primarily river-dwelling nomadic group known commonly as the Bedey. Following the Bedey tradition, Swapna grew up living in boats and had never lived in a house before settling down on land with her family in 2000. Swapna’s father, who was a stone seller, and her mother, who performed Shinga—a traditional way to treat arthritis that Bedey women are known for—lived in a boat with their five children.
Swapna reminisced about her childhood which she described as a wondrous experience intimately connected to nature and her surroundings. She and her siblings would get off the boat when it was anchored to a river bank. They would walk on land and play all day while their parents shopped in the nearby bazaar. At the end of the day, they would go back to the boat to eat and to sleep “just as birds” go back to their nests in the evening. The whole time she spoke, I kept thinking: Is she really describing a life in Bangladesh? A country where we both grew up around the same period?
Swapna and I are not that far in age; yet, our worlds could not have been further apart. While I was confined to a concrete house in the capital city with limited access to outdoor space and had a routine life, Swapna spent her childhood in the banks of rivers across the country with a responsibility and freedom unimaginable for someone at her age. Swapna, being the oldest sister, was given the responsibility to take care of her four siblings and the boat at a very young age—before she could even swim properly herself. Her responsibilities as an older sister continued for many years, and eventually, unlike her other siblings, Swapna missed her opportunity to go to a school.
When Swapna was only about one and half years old, she fell into the water. She would not be sitting in front of me today if she hadn’t been fortunate enough to have an aunt who noticed her falling and dove into the water to save her life. Swapna reminisced about her own experience, later, of seeing a loved one nearly drown when her younger brother fell into the water while he was under her watch in her parents’ absence. She was only about 12 years old at that time and was not a strong swimmer. Her brother was then about one and half years old. One afternoon, Swapna was busy chatting with her friend while two of her siblings were napping. She did not notice when her brother woke up and fell through the boat’s window. Swapna’s friend heard a noise of something falling in the water and alerted her. She dove into the water to search for him and found him struggling in the water. But she could not stay long and got back to the surface. Her aunt heard the commotion and asked for help from Swapna’s uncle.
Swapna and her siblings are among the fortunate few who survived a fall in the water and later in life got access to opportunities enabling them to move beyond their nomadic life in boats that neither their parents nor themselves wanted to have. Even though Swapna never had formal education, with her mother’s encouragement, she became a tailor. She now lives in a two-room house on her father’s land and enjoys having fruit trees in her backyard. If it pleases her, she eats them, or she sells them in the market. She plans to save money and build a home of her own in her in-law’s area within the next five years.
Swapna exemplifies a success story of women’s empowerment agenda that was put forward by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. With access to training and small capital, she was able to achieve economic and reproductive freedom, education for the next generation and a pathway to social integration with the broader Bengali community. Among those working in the realm of gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, there were reasons to be hopeful for the Bedey women and girls. Most of the settlements—with the exception of the temporary ones—had access to electricity and cell phones, boats had solar panels on them, children had access to education, many women were engaged in income generating activities outside their traditional work, and some had access to microfinancing.
But four years later—as a mother of a vibrant toddler and a global health professional—although I find comfort in reminiscing about the Bedey women’s resilience, hard work, and hope for a better future, I am haunted by the grim faces of mothers and their grief that often overtake these memories.
Not all Bedey children are fortunate to survive a fall in the water like Swapna and her brother, nor do they grow up to become adults. In almost every Bedey settlement, I met or heard stories of mothers who had lost children prematurely to drowning, vaccine-preventable diseases or to unknown causes. I still remember my conversation with a mother who was holding firmly to a vaccine card of her child who she had lost to unknown causes. As I was surveying the area to determine childhood immunization coverage among the Bedey children, she felt the need to show me the immunization record of her deceased child. In the same settlement, I met another mother who had lost a child to drowning; she then decided to settle down on land to keep her other children alive. During my fieldwork I found out that many of these Bedey families live in boats owing to their financial inability to build a home on land and not because of their tradition. In one particular settlement, most families that I talked to said they started to live in boats once their slums got destroyed by the government for some construction projects. Some of these mothers never lived in boats before, but had to move to this precarity since they simply cannot afford to rent a room on land. These mothers often are up all night pumping water out of the leaky boats making sure they are not sinking or children are not falling in the water–an effort that sometimes, tragically, fails.
Now as a privileged mother–with access to universal health care and safe child care, I ask myself: what is considered empowering by these mothers who lost children to untimely death from preventable causes? If they were the decision makers, what would their priority be? Are the current focuses on violence prevention, legal rights, economic and political freedom, education, skill building, sexual and reproductive health, sufficient for these mothers? The answer in my view is a resounding “No.” Every Bedey mother that I interviewed wanted to have access to reliable health care when their children got sick, but very few had it. If the goals for the women’s empowerment programs are to support women’s ability to make choices freely in every socio-political and economic realm of life; then these mothers’ demand for their children’s health and safety needs to be respected by those working to empower women.
Of the five targets for the Goal 52 (achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls) of the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations, only one focuses on women’s sexual and reproductive health—though a couple of others have some implications for women’s health; but none considers children’s health and safety. Can we really achieve women’s empowerment without ensuring children’s health and safety? Could these really be separated from each other in the development agendas? There are now efforts to incorporate and measure various domains of women’s empowerment in global health initiatives by various donor organizations (e.g., the Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health (CanWaCH). Similar efforts and considerations need to be reciprocated. Just as all global health initiatives should include some components of women’s empowerment recognizing its importance in achieving the global health outcomes, all women’s empowerment initiatives should include universal access to quality health and child care.
The Bedey women I met during my fieldwork were resilient and had empowering life journeys. However, the current piece-meal and single-issue agenda approaches to women’s empowerment in global development agendas are missing the mark in meeting their needs; we need complete biosocial considerations. Women’s empowerment is multifaceted and what is considered empowering is context-specific. The message from the Bedey women I met was resounding, that saving children’s lives is empowering for these mothers. The development community must rise to the task, and ensure these needs are addressed through consultative and empowering programs to help women and communities facing multiple challenges effectively float and flourish.
About the Author
Lisa Parvin is a global health professional, working to create equitable access to quality healthcare for vulnerable populations. Prior to pursuing her master’s in global health delivery at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, she worked as a research assistant at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Currently she works as a program coordinator at Fraser Health Authority, the largest regional health authority in British Columbia, that serves 1.9 million people. Her work focuses on leveraging diverse partnerships and community engagements to improve healthcare access for the immigrants and refugee populations in Canada. She is the Vancouver Chapter Lead for Harvard W3D, an innovative network of women in defense, diplomacy, and development.