Diarist 55 in the year to July 2025:
Status: wife, mother, household manager Household size: 3 (she, husband, son)
Occupation: cake maker/seller, e-rickshaw driver Education: none (husband also none)
Major assets: e-rickshaw, tin-shed shop building
Net income year to Jul 2025: 171,703 taka (USD 1,431 PPP$ 5,344, or PPP$ 4.88 per day per person)
Balances at formal FSPs: unknown, under enquiry
main worry about her family, May 2025: my own heart and kidhey problems
Diarist 55 was born in another District (Komilla), as was her husband (she was married at age 12), and both are from poor backgrounds and illiterate. 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 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), and she is selling the same cakes from the same premises where we first met her. 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).
Diarist 55 at work, late 2019
Diarist 55, chart 01, balance
played no important part in their lives except, once, when the elder son gave money to the mosque after recovering from illness. This is clear from chart 02.
Diarist 55, chart 02, gifts
We have records of loans from 3 MFIs (ASA, BASA and Grameen Bank), of interest-bearing informal loans, and of howlats (interest-free loans). Altogether, up to the end of 2024, we recorded more repayments (827,566 taka) than loans taken (633,002) possibly because they had loans out from before we started, or because we missed some loans during the periods when we moved from one Diarist to another. The discrepancy applies mostly to MFI loans. Recently she has resumes repayments on them.
The largest informal loan was a composite loan from 7 different people put together in a hurry to pay the costs of the elder son's divorce, in early 2019. It was charged at 10% a month, and they repaid as soon as possible.
The other large loans were from MFIs. 80,000 taka came from ASA in late 2019 and was put towards buying the rickshaw. That rickshaw was sold and they went again to ASA for a repeat loan for the second rickshaw.
To deal with liquidity problems she several times went to clients of MFIs to take proxy loans - loans taken in the name of the account holder but on-lent to Diarist 55. Usually she would show gratitude by paying for the compulsory savings deposits made by the client. She took such loans from clients of MFIs ASA and BASA, and also used a loan taken by her daughter-in-law from Grameen Bank.
After she went to Saudi for the second time we recorded no fresh loans until she came back and took a small howlat from a neighbour for her son's illness, in February 2025.
Except for the period of Diarist 55's second Saudi trip they have repaid MFI loans more or less consistently. With her recent return, for example, she has been paying 2,500 taka most weeks to the MFI ASA.
Diarist 55, chart 03, loans
Diarist 55 went to MFIs for loans, primarily, but she also saved into the (compulsory) general savings accounts that all MFIs have. Her daughter-in-law, who also had a Grameen Bank account, and saved, used the higher-interest accumulating plan at Grameen Bank known as the DPS, which features monthly deposits for a long term (usually 5 or 10 years). Diarist 55 had a similar account at ASA.
Before she left for Saudi Arabia the second time, she closed two of her MFI savings accounts, including the ASA DPS, presumably for her secret planning for her trip. When she returned, though, she resumed saving at MFI ASA .
Diarist 55, chart 04, savings