by Shahnaz Ahmed in Culture & Lifestyle on 15th May, 2018
‘Beautiful!’
‘Heaven!’
‘Looks perfect!’
‘Are you in paradise?’
After posting images and stories on my personal Instagram page during my recent trip visiting family in Bangladesh, so many of my friends asked me how it’s been in ‘paradise’ and it really did look like that on my social. No lie, Bangladesh has some stunning scenery. But the whole week I was there I had a dull ache in my chest and I’ll tell you why…
Bangladesh, is beautiful.
Like really, really beautiful.
The people are too.
But it’s also POOR.
Like SERIOUSLY POOR.
On a vast level that’s incomprehensible.
A poverty so deep it’s hard to see a way out.
And it seeps its way into everything.
The air’s filled with dust and smells of open sewage.
Nothing looks pristine except nature.
People are rushed and hectic.
Products and services are inefficient.
Electricity cuts out often.
There is never, ever any queuing (The British in me is horrified).
Access to decent (or any) education and healthcare is limited. We struggle in the West with that so what do you expect there. The higher classes of society might have the privilege of a somewhat comfortable and fulfilled life but the reality still lives in your homes in the workers that help cook and clean who tell you about their lives when you ask, whose generations of families you end up supporting. The reality hits every time you step outside onto polluted streets and beggars with limbs missing.
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While walking through the incredible tea gardens just behind my grandparents house in Sylhet, I asked my cousins,
‘So, where can I get some of this tea?’
‘Well… you can’t. Not cheap anyway. All the good stuff goes abroad, to you actually.’
‘Huh?’
‘That’s why our tea tastes so bad’
(This is true)
‘The good pickings are sent abroad’
They giggled a little when they said that but I felt a bit sick. Because my privileged self had taken my entire life to realise something so obvious. Every time any of us from the UK go back to Bangladesh to visit family, it’s a given that you take a huge box of PG Tips with you. It’s what we all prefer and end up drinking because it tastes better than their tea.
I only just realised that we bring them back the tea we took!
‘What do you mean you can’t get good quality towels?!
Why are the kids clothes so bad?
Why has nothing gotten better since I was last here over a decade ago?!’
I couldn’t believe my own relatives were living a considerably lower quality of life than me when we’re essentially the same.
‘Naju…’ (using my family name, helping my privileged self to understand something they’ve lived with their whole lives)
‘Bangladesh being poor benefits the world. We make things that are cheap for everyone else. If our country got richer and fairer, prices would increase everywhere else. There are other reasons too. But it’s not an accident this country is hopeless.’
My heart sunk deeper.
All those H&M clothes, Primark, high street stores galore.
But not just high street, high-end brands too.
Made in Bangladesh.
80% of Bangladesh’s exports are clothes. Cheap clothes.
We’re all aware that buying them is bad. But seeing it directly affect my family is a whole new level of f****** low. I went from feeling sad to angry. Half of my suitcase on this trip was filled with gifts for them. We take back coffee, tea, good quality clothes, underwear, towels, toys for the kids, stationary, soft blankets for my grandma…Basically, everything we can buy in the west is a million times better than what they have access to buy. And yet they make it.
‘Are you sure you can’t get a blanket this soft from here?!’ I asked again while stroking the fleece blanket covering my grandma as she slept, that someone had gifted her from Primark.
‘No, definitely not. They just don’t make that here.’
I looked at the label.
They definitely bloody did.
Just not for them.
Is this really the only way we can get affordable things in the west?! Because my family, and the billions of Bangladeshis plus other developing countries serving us are living a lower quality of life for us.
Getting sick for us.
Dying early for us.
Living in s*** for us.
Literal. Sewage. S***.
Sylhet actually smells of s***
And the funny (not funny) thing is, my family are amongst the higher ‘classes’ of society here. Can you imagine what the lowest live in…I’m not saying Bangladesh’s poverty is entirely down to us buying a top from H&M every now and again, but it sure as hell isn’t getting anywhere thanks to a mixture of leftover colonialism, over population (lack of education), a demand for cheap products and services from developed countries, and a huge sprinkling of straight up corruption.Poverty shouldn’t exist — full stop. The kind where people can’t even have access to basic human rights. The poverty of billions of people’s lives are in the hands of the people at the top of the chain — us. And we need to constantly remind ourselves one thing: every action we take in the developed world has tangible consequences in developing countries. Yes, that means we have the power to create harm, but it also means we have the power to create good. We need to start taking small every day actions now.
Shop consciously, demand transparency, stay informed.
River Island says Labels Are For Clothes, Not People.
Jigsaw says they ❤ Immigration.
Brands respond to what we care about. We must care about more. We can’t demand equality here if there’s no equality there. We must demand more.I left two days before Bangladesh Independence Day on 26th March, and asked another cousin what they usually do for it.
‘Everyone knows Independence Day here doesn’t mean anything more than a day off.’‘What do you mean?’
‘We might have gotten our independent title, but there’s still a great hold over us. We’re not free.’
When she said that, she held up her open gripped hand as if holding an invisible ball tightly.To her, the country she lived in and loved was the invisible ball but I couldn’t help but feel like the hand gripping it was me. Since writing this, friends have come forward with some excellent resources to become more conscious and demanding buyers. One very useful one was Fashion Revolution — in particular their recent fanzine, packed with ideas and actions you can start doing today.
Shahnaz Ahmed is a Senior Designer and Creative at Livity, mother, and Founder of Knit Aid – a global social movement that empowers refugees through knitting. Winner of Cannes Lion's See It Be It programme, The Drum's Creative Woman of the Year finalist, and one of 21 Trailblazing Muslim Women.
