Diarist 55 and her husband were born in another District (Komilla), and both are from poor backgrounds and illiterate. They married when she was 12. They moved to Gazipur District to work in a garments factory, disliked it, and came on to our area about 12 years ago, where she worked in a soap factory and he drove an auto-rickshaw. In 2016, a year before we took them on as Diarists, he had an expensive operation following appendicitis, and they have continued to face heavy regular medicine costs since. They were living in low-cost accommodation with two sons, the older one married with one child.
She gave up the soap factory job and decided to work for herself, making cakes. They built a small corrugated-tin shed on cheaply-rented land near our office (picture). She estimated their monthly income at that time as 8,000 taka from the cake shop, 11,000 from the rickshaw, and 3,000 from the older son's apprentice-like job as an office helper in an insurance company.
We were aware from early on that there were tensions in the family, but we weren't prepared for what happened next. In mid 2018 Diarist 55 decided to break with her family and go to Saudi Arabia as a domestic worker. It was hard to get news of her there, so we took the elder son on as our substitute Diarist. He left the office and started work as a linesman for a TV dish company and later changed again, to become a house-painter's assistant. But he quarreled with his wife who went back to her parents. The younger son began work in a glasscutter's shop.
Suddenly in February of the next year (2019) our original Diarist 55 came home, saying she had been ill in Saudi and hinting that she had got into some kind of trouble there. Local people managed a reconciliation with her husband, and things went more-or-less back to how they had been. They borrowed and bought a new rickshaw. But they were hit quite badly by the Covid lockdowns and they had to sell the rickshaw to settle an old debt. Then the elder son had a serious work accident, and revealed that his wife had divorced him. He married again without his parents' consent. Quarrels in the family resumed.
In April 2022 Diarist 55 again left for Saudi Arabia. The son told us she had debts that she hadn't revealed to anyone (including us). This time the family fully lost contact with her. Again we took on the older son as our substitute Diarist: this time he was living elsewhere, with his new wife, and working as a helper to our Diarist 72 (a painter).
The latest event in this extraordinary story is that in 2024 the original Diarist 55 again reappeared. It took us time to find out, but in January 2025 we took her on again as our Diarist. She is living with her husband and younger son (not working, sick). She has reopened the same shop and sells the same kind of cakes but now also does basic cooked meals at a very low competitive price.
In a sign that they have not returned to a traditional unified household economy her husband, though he is still driving the rickshaw, does not share his income with Diarist 55. Rather, he keeps his earnings to himself and occasionally contributes a sack of rice or some vegetables.
Chart 01 shows that when they were working (and not spending much) they ran a surplus most months. This was even true during Diarist 55's first absence, though not during her second. The annual salary report in the title bar above may be inaccurate, as a result. However, for February and March 2025 gross daily takings at the cake shop averaged 2,360 taka and costs for stock, fuel and other outgoings averaged 1,430 a day, leaving her with a net daily income of 930 taka a day ($7.75, or PPP $32). When Gojo visited in November 2025 we found her serving very cheap hot meals in addition to the cakes, trying to undercut the other workpeople's foodshops in the area.
