Our one-time funder, UNCDF, once asked us to find examples of youngsters who combined studying with earning for their families. That prompted us to take on Diarists 66 and 67 in 2017. Diarist 66 was 21, unmarried, but managing things for her sick father, her mother, and her underemployed older brother (28). She worked 8am to 6pm six days a week at a clinic in the Kapasia market, taking samples, for a monthly wage of 5,000 taka. At the same time she was a student at a local college, studying for a BA. The clinic gave her time off for the most important classes. She paid about 1,000 taka a month to the college for fees and materials. Her brother was a motor mechanic but didn't get work every day: he usually managed to contribute about 2,000 taka a month to the household. He had dropped out of school after class 5 because of poverty. Her father has severe asthma and his medication and treatment are ongoing and expensive, but he is a talented singer and makes some income through that. They have an old home on their part of a shared multi-family homestead. There were no other assets. Diarist 66 handled all the money that came in.
Late in 2017 we heard that the family had found a suitor for Diarist 66 and in April 2018 she quit her clinic job and married. Her husband is from Barisal, a southern District, and Diarist 66 went to live with his parents in an unfamiliar and somewhat isolated village environment while her educated husband worked for a pharmaceutical company in the capital Dhaka. Her parents-in-law required her to help with the farming and we heard say that she was unhappy. By early 2019 she had persuaded her husband to let her go back to her parental home where she got her old clinic job back and continued studying.
But we had transferred our 'Diaryship' to her mother, as from April 2028. The two women made a formal handover of household cash from the younger to the older (so it was not fresh income). The new household started with 3 members (the mother, father and older brother of the original Diarist) but soon grew bigger, first in January 2019 when the original Diarist came back, and then in April 2019 when an older daughter of the new Diarist split from her husband and came to live with them along with her baby daughter. She had long been working as a nurse in the same clinic where her sister worked. Their mother, the new Diarist, took work as a cook then turned to brickbreaking.
Then at the end of 2019 the first Diarist 66 had her first baby and from then on split her time between her parents-in-law in the countryside and her husband in the city. The couple's relationship was good, we heard.
Just as Covid arrived, the new Diarist 66 borrowed heavily and spent money on building materials for a rebuild of their home. That year they looked for a wife for the son, found one, and he was married in May 2021, receiving a good dowry. He and his wife lived with his mother but because his work as a mechanic declined for lack of demand at the garage, (he said) he turned also to fish trading. The new home was completed.
In 2023 our first Diarist again sought to live with her parents, disliking both the remoteness of her in-law's home and the hassle of living with her always-at-work husband in Dhaka. But she clashed with her new sister-in-law (her brother's wife) and within a month moved to a rented place nearby. Happily, her husband got reposted to Kapasia, our local market town, so they are living together again. Meanwhile her sister had also moved out of the family home into rented accommodation, so as of now (May 2025) our substitute Diarist 66 household has five members: the elderly couple and their son, daughter-in-law and 2 year-old grandson.
The biggest source of income recently has been from the old man's singing, with much less coming in from his son's fishing and vehicle mechanics. Diarist 66 confided in us 'he's a bit lazy, and he says he has howlats that he has to pay off'. She has a poor relationship with her daughter-in-law. For these and other reasons, it is surmised, she attempted suicide in mid-2025 by drinking toilet-cleaning fluid. She was quickly hospitalised and has recovered, at least physically.
