Diarist 61 is from our area and is married to a driver from a neighbouring District. Both are from poor backgrounds (hers poorer than his) and unschooled. They have a daughter and a son who were both in school (classes 8 and 3) when we started. The husband used to drive a public bus but changed to driving a bus owned by a garments factory and used to ferry staff to work: he says it is safer. The pay was about 11,000 taka month of which he gave only a small part to maintain the household (unlike many other Diarists). Diarist 61 doesn't know what he does with the rest and probably prefers not to know. He is not a very attentive father.
For some reason his parents were not keen to have the couple living with them, so they rented a room in a row of brick-walled tin-roofed units, paying 1,000 taka a month. Two years before we began with them, he had acute appendicitis needing an operation which caused an infection, keeping him hospital for two months. The costs were born by his own brothers.
This background has encouraged Diarist 61 to become steadily more independent-minded. Just before the diary started she stopped being a full-time housewife and mother and started cooking for the workers building a new hospital extension. She did three shifts a day, for breakfast lunch and dinner. But after she started this her husband gave her even less money each month.
In July 2017 she negotiated a wage rise from 160 to 200 taka a day but the next month her husband forbade her to work because their daughter was nearing marriageable age (he thought their family would be better able to attract a husband for the daughter if the mother was not working). Income contracted and in January 2018 they move out of their rented home into a place owned by her own brother, rent free. In May 20018 the husband sold inherited land to his sister - but the proceeds were stored in an MFI account in Diarist 61's name. By 2018 Diarist 61 was often sick and that has continued to today.
In January 2020 she borrowed 50,000 taka from MFI Grameen Bank and made an advance on homestead land next to her brother’s place. A year later she achieved legal possession of the land and registered it in her name. The 2020 Corona lockdown was difficult: her husband lost his job and turned to casual masonry work on building sites, and to farm labour. They got a little government-provided relief. He subsequently started driving again and, still later, gave up driving and became a mechanic at the bus garage. Later that year Diarist 61 sold her earrings (for 6,000 taka) to buy a phone for her daughter, who said she needed it for study, and in August 2022 the daughter started a course to become a pathology lab assistant. That led, the next year, to the daughter's marriage, a low-cost affair. But the marriage proved unstable and she was soon divorced. She decided to go abroad. Her mother sold her gold jewellery (for 78,000) to pay an agent and on the last day of March 2025 the daughter left for Saudi Arabia. The son is still in school doing quite well, and is now readying for the high school graduation test (SSC).
As this note has shown, not all transactions are included in our data set. What we can see in chart 01 is that somehow or other Diarist 61 managed to keep the household going on the partial wage of her husband and whatever work she could do. She then had to find other ways to finance the big expenditure on the homestead land and on her daughter's migration. The picture shows her on the homestead land she bought. In the shed she is gradually storing up bricks and reinforcing rod in the hope of being able to build soon,
