Reflections on Bangladesh – Reciprocity

“Good morning, m’am! How are you?”

This is how I am greeted every morning, always accompanied by bright, friendly grins. Everyone greets me like this, from the housekeeping to the regular staff to the manager to the guard at the guest house gate. When you see them smiling at you, you can’t help but smile back. I do try to get them to stop calling me “m’am”, but they have trouble getting my name right – just like I sometimes have trouble getting theirs – so we’ve given it up as a lost cause.

Everyone I have met so far in Bangladesh has been lovely to me. You might think that it’s because they’re hotel staff and it’s their job to be so nice, but the people I have met in the districts outside Dhaka and the people I have met in the villages are just as friendly, helpful and eager to please. Perhaps it is just because I am a foreigner, but then again I know lots of people in different countries who aren’t so nice to foreigners.

Today Rabiul, an employee at my guest house, walked me to the supermarket. Despite my protestations he insisted on carrying my groceries for me. He walked me back to the guest house, and later showed me the rooftop garden as well as the as-yet-incomplete conference room at the very top level. And we got to talking. I found out that Rabiul has been working at this guest house for about 10 years – ever since he was 19. He mainly works in housekeeping and maintenance, which is why he gets to wear his own clothes instead of the white-shirt-black-pants uniform of those who work in the dining area (even more nice people who delight in feeding me and attempt to teach me Bangla). His working hours – indeed, the working hours of all the employees here, it seems – are from 6am to about 11pm every day, sometimes even midnight. I’m not sure if he gets a day off – I hope he does – because I’ve seen him around pretty much every day since I got to Bangladesh last Sunday night.

Rabiul, like many of the other Bangladeshis I have spoken to, is fascinated with Singapore. “Singapore is very good country. Very clean, very nice. Very good. I see it on the TV.” He pats his pocket where he keeps his wallet. “I want to go there. But I don’t have enough money yet.”

That too, seems to be common to many Bangladeshis. They dream of going to Singapore like fashionistas dream of going to Milan at Fashion Week. It is as if Singapore is the land of milk and honey that they all want to flock to. One teenager in a village in Sirajganj even asked me, “Aren’t you disgusted with our village life? Singapore is so good.”

“Go to Singapore if you want. But only for holiday, if you can. Don’t work there,” I say. “There are a lot of problems in Singapore for migrant workers. Don’t work there. You have a good job here, and friends. Stay here.”

The response to that, too, is uniform. They each smile and nod at me, or say, “Okay, I know.”

I wonder if they do.

The thing is, although Bangladesh has been so terribly nice and welcoming to me, I cannot say the same for Bangladeshis in Singapore. In Bangladesh, I feel sometimes as if I’m being treated like a princess. In Singapore, they are treated as little better than slaves. Agents cheat them, employers deny their rights, the Ministry of Manpower shuts its eyes. Far from striking it rich in the land of the plenty, when they return to Bangladesh many of them would be even worse off than they started; instead of earning money in Singapore, they return to Bangladesh with next to nothing in their pockets and a bundle of debts. The truth is that for many migrant workers, Singapore is not a goldmine, but a hellhole that just happens to be quite nicely-decorated.

They deserve so much better.