Diarist 46 and his family have had a bumpy ride. When we met him he was a boatman, ferrying people across the river to Kapasia market, using his own boat (pictured). He lived very close to the ferry ghat in a rented room with his wife and 3 young daughters. He is from a poor northern District and came here around 2000. He tried to send his parents money through the Mobile Money company bKash once in a while, but that created a problem with his wife, a local woman, who resented how much of their small income went back to his distant village. They quarreled and split up several times only to come back together. In 2020 after one of the biggest arguments they reconciled only after he filed a police case against the chance that she might abuse him. Just before the Covid outbreak they employed a lawyer to try to write a formal agreement setting out how they might live together. But Covid made things worse, and finally in October 2021 his wife left him for the last time, taking the daughters. He went back to his village home and was based there, doing some farming on land he inherited or travelling to other Districts to get construction labouring jobs. He says he is looking for a second wife. In mid 2025 he came back, however, and got a job driving a new mechanised ferry on another part of the river. He seemerd more settled since then, but in March 2026 he quarrelled with the boat owner and lost the job. Since then he has been riding a rented rickshaw.
Part of his domestic problems were caused by his occasional drinking and - maybe - drugtaking (his wife certainly thinks so, and in 2018 we recorded a bribe he paid the police to drop a charge of using marijuana). His behaviour has been erratic and that has led him to buy and sell boats erratically. In 2017 he had a boat stolen but recovered it after some cost and trouble. His wife, as a local person, had better connections at the Boatmen's Committee than he did, and she was able at least once to get the Committee to ban him from the ferry route. Again, because he wasn't local, he found it difficult to borrow on the local informal market, though he did save money in the Boatmen's Saving Club.
In chart 01 we can see the low volumes of income and the frequent monthly deficits when he was trying to support his wife and 3 daughters. After the split with his wife and his move north and his land acquisition, he has been financially, if not emotionally, better off.
