Tea Estates & Reflections on Poverty

One of the highlights in Srimongol is seeing and visiting the many tea estates in the area.  The tea plants grow on many of the hills, and there are often tea pickers working, picking the tea leaves that will be used to make the tea.  Pictures show it best...

Notice the tea picker in this photo?

A tea picker...

The tea grown in this area tastes great, and I'm definitely going to bring some home with me! 

I found it easy to look at the tea estates and the tea pickers and think about how beautiful it all looked, but then I found out that the tea pickers only make 48 taka a day (about 70 cents Canadian).  This was a bit of a sobering realization and it saddened me - 48 taka is barely enough to buy food to eat, let alone have anything extra to spend on other expenses of living.  This is an unfortunate reality for millions of people in Bangladesh. 

Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, and it is also the most densely populated.  As a result, labour is cheap, and so you find people like the tea pickers working extremely hard for very low wages.  And even still, there are millions in Bangladesh who are unemployed, and many resort to begging on the streets.  Nearly everywhere I go, I am asked for money (taka), and the condition that many of the beggars are in is heart-wrenching.  People with paralysis, missing limbs, birth defects, and blindness, the old and the very young (babies & toddlers) can all be found on the street.  Bangladeshis do give to beggars quite regularly, so a subsistence living can be made by begging, but it is painful to witness. 

Being here and seeing this first-hand is definitely challenging...gives me lots to process and think about.  At the same time, I am encouraged by the potential that Bangladesh has - the people here are not blind to the challenges that face the country, and bit by bit they are working to improve the situation here.  Many of our nursing students are passionate about doing this, and that is really exciting - they want to go and make changes in their country, be leaders in health care, and provide care to those who need it most and who are often overlooked.  I'm excited about the potential that they have to accomplish this!