** Jainal is like a flower that falls before mature *
The little boy’s name is Jainal. What will be the age? Maybe 6 or 7 years. The round face is deep, the look in his eyes is more normal than the other boys and girls of the school. There was nothing extraordinary in it. Even though he looks different. Jainal’s father’s name is Nazrul, he is an autorickshaw driver by profession, and his mother Kamali Begum is a housewife. They are Bengali Muslim families. Jainal is the second among the four siblings. Her older brother is 10 years old.
At this age he had to shoulder the burden of the family due to lack of money. He has to work in a hotel for a small amount of money. The hotel is right in front of my school. I saw him working in the hotel every day. The reason for working in his hotel is that Jainal’s father left them and went to Dhaka. He got married there and started a new family. He does not support Jainal. They have 6 members in the family including four brothers, sisters, mother and (maternal) grandmother.
His grandmother is a beggar. In order to survive in this difficult world, she had to take a begging bowl in her old age because Jainal’s elder brother who is only 10 years old is not able to run such a big family on his own. At the age when he was supposed to study and play sports, he had to take the responsibility of the family. From what I have experienced in this short life, I can say, “Maturity does not come with age, maturity comes with the burden of responsibility, in terms of reality,” in hard reality the soft hands become hard. He learned to endure the cruel blows of society.
Jainal’s younger sister Fatema is 4 years old. I had the good fortune to go home after hearing about her illness. They live in the western housing slums. They didn’t even have a place to stay at home. I didn’t see anything except a single stove and a cooking pot. When I entered their house, Jainal’s two younger sisters were lying on the empty floor and they did not have a single bed. Somehow Katha was lying on the bed.
Among them was the little girl Fatema who had been ill for two days. Jainal’s 2 younger sisters Jannati and Fatema come to study with Jainal at the “Thomas Edison Learning Center”. If they didn’t get a chance to study for free, they might never have dreamed of going to school. For those who have to work hard to get three meals a day, studying is just a luxury. There were tears in the corners of my eyes when I left the house.
But they are grateful for the opportunity to learn from the “Eakok Attomanobik Unnayan Sangstha” with the help of DoPeace. Now Jainal’s mother dreams of building a future for her children. She wants her children to be well educated and have a good life. With the help of DoPeace, the “Eakok Attomanobik Unnayan Sangstha ” has stood by countless dropouts, extended a helping hand to them and benefited many families and dropouts.
Pinky Khatun, (Pre-Teacher)
Thomas Edition Learning Center
Eakok Attomanobik Unnayan Sangstha, Syedpur, Nilphamari.
