Suchona’s story(Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic examples of the violence that sex workers in Bangladesh face.) In Bangladesh, an MCC program called Pobitra brings new hope to women who are leaving sex work. Each of the former sex workers that MCC meets through Pobitra has a story. Here is one woman’s account of her life and how she entered sex work. Because of the degradation sex workers face in Bangladesh and the aim of Pobitra to help women put their pasts behind them, Suchona and other Pobitra participants are identified by pseudonyms. When my mother was pregnant with me, she found out her husband was already married to another woman. My mother left him and came to my grandmother’s house in Mymensingh, but my father found her there. When I was 4 months old, he took me from my mother’s lap and beat me, slapping me on my ear so hard I still can’t hear properly. My mother said he was angry at her, but because I was crying, he took his anger out on me. My mother said that after that, I was sick often and had to go to the doctor frequently to deal with pain in my eye and head. My father went back to his first wife. To earn money, my mother cooked food in a boardinghouse. Later she collected and sold firewood, made rice cakes and sold them and did housework. I studied up to level five in a government school. My mother had started cooking for a group of medical people. They realized that although tuition was free, my mother couldn’t afford school supplies, so they helped her to buy them. Then they were transferred. My mother lost her job and this extra help. We were starving, starving. I was crying a lot for food. When it was time to move from fifth grade to secondary school, which required tuition, I had to drop out of school. My friends made fun of me because I couldn’t continue. My mother married again, and things went pretty well for three years until she gave birth to another girl. My mother’s husband left, and the suffering started again. When I was 13, I decided this could not go on this way. A neighbor, who was a madam, persuaded me to do sex work. At first, the lady was taking me to her home, introducing me to other sex workers and talking about the money they were getting. I didn’t understand what sex was, but she was persuading me day by day. When I met customers in that woman’s house, I was making 50 takas (about 69 cents U.S.) per person. My mother asked me where I was getting money. I told her I was doing housework. Then my mother found out the truth and confronted me. I told her it was true. “I don’t have any choice; I have to buy food for you. I have to pay the rent.” My mother was sick at that time and was getting admitted to the hospital frequently. I needed to buy medicine. My mother tried to persuade me to stop, but I asked her, “How will you buy food for us? How will you buy medicine?” I met the man who is now my husband when he was a customer. He said he would marry me and not allow me to do sex work again, but I was afraid to leave the madam because she was powerful. The madam had many girls. She also was sending us places to work. When I was 16 she sent me to the forest, very far from the local area, to a man who was subcontracting me to other men. He kept me in a cemetery in a big hole in the ground. The area where I was had no houses, no trees, just the holes, but they were also covered, so people didn’t know that I and other sex workers were kept there. A boy guarded me in the day and in the evening men blindfolded me and took me many places. Sometimes they brought me back in the middle of the night, sometimes in the morning. When I was there for seven days, I tried to flee, but the men found me. They beat me a lot and cut my breasts. I apologized and agreed to go with them if they didn’t beat me anymore. I was in the hole for seven more days, only wearing my top. I had no shoes, no pants. I decided to flee again. This time I got to a house and was hiding behind a toilet when a family found me. The mother brought me clothes and listened to my story. She gave me food and a burqa (a long, loose robe with head covering worn by Muslim women in Bangladesh), so I could go out from that place. When I got back to Mymensingh, I hid from the madam. I found the man who offered to marry me before. We married informally. Although my husband didn’t want me to do sex work, I did some sex work on the side to give money to my mother. I wasn’t making very much. One day I met Farzana, one of my close friends from sex work who I hadn’t seen for a long time. She described how she started working at a place (MCC’s Pobitra program) where there is a lot of respect, a lot of love, but I would have to leave sex work if I wanted to work there. Farzana urged me to go to Pobitra and see for myself the respect and love that is there. I like all the things that are happening at Pobitra. My husband likes that I do not go out after office hours. My husband is good to me, but he is checking on me, talking to other men to see if I am doing sex work. He went to Pobitra’s husband training. After the training, he helped with the housework. Some days he washes my clothes, dries them in the sun and folds them nicely. I have learned some good skills. I can make blankets and do beading. My husband does not earn enough money to support us. When he works he earns money, but when he can’t find work, he relies on me. He does some rickshaw driving, some painting, some fish business, but that is very seasonal business. Telling my story to the women who come here, and listening to their stories, helps a lot to reduce my pain. I can tell other girls easily because I know their background. It helps a lot to reduce the pain. They are from the same places. I have nothing to lose. |
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