Early Marriage in Bangladesh

We have all heard of early marriage and arranged marriage and most of us probably agree that the arranged part could actually result in longer-lasting marriages.  However, the early part, in Bangladesh, is a result of several cultural and economic forces at work.  At least half of the babies born in a given year are born to girls under the age of 18.  Most Bangladeshis don't know, or pretend not to know, or ignore the fact that marriage under 18 is actually ILLEGAL for girls.  That doesn't stop them from doing it.  A recent article gives a good synopsis of the situation:

http://www.irinnews.org/report/95782/BANGLADESH-Online-birth-data-to-prevent-child-marriage

In the past few weeks, I've had the unfortunate experience of being involved (somewhat) in a case of early marriage.  In a previous post, I mentioned our housekeeper, Nazma.  Nazma moved into the "servant's" quarters that are located on our roof.  It is one small room with one bed.  She has a separate small room for a kitchen with a two-burner Coleman-style stove and the bathroom is shared with the family of the housekeeper  for the other apartment.  Nazma begged to be allowed to live here because she is a widow with three children who had been living off of her family for years.  Her husband was hit by a bus 10 years ago, while she was pregnant with the youngest child, Nahid.  Her family wanted her to re-marry, but she refused because she says a Bangladeshi man would not support children from another man.  Today is Nazma's 30th birthday.  Her children are 16, 13, and 9.   Nazma was married when she was 11 and had her first child, a daughter named Hasfa, when she was 14.

Anyway, living with the family you work for is a pretty sweet deal, if you are a poor Bangladeshi.  That sounds like a terrible thing to say, but you have to think of the socio-economic context of this country.  As part of the job, you get free rent and a furnished place and no utility bills.  Plus, she gets two new saris or shalwar kameez a year, sugar, tea, milk powder, and 10kg of rice a year and we help her out if she needs anything else - like when her son had typhoid fever a couple of months ago, we paid the doctor bills.  Additionally, she lives in a secure neighborhood inside a guarded residence.  That's not to make it sound glamorous.  It still blows to be someone's housekeeper, in my opinion, because I HATE cleaning.

When Nazma moved in, she brought Hasfa and Nahid.  There was a bit of back and forth with her family regarding whether Hasfa should come and live here or not.  At the time, they were living in an apartment (a room) in a building with other relatives.  In fact, her "brother" (I think he may actually be a cousin, not sure how they do kinship here) is a driver with the Embassy and had asked us to please consider hiring her because she was very poor and needed help.  He was primarily supporting her.  The issue with Hafsa revolved around the other family living upstairs in the other room.  The housekeeper, Anjou, lives there with her husband and small daughter.  The problem was that the husband was there most of the day and Hafsa would be there most of the day.  In other words, an unmarried, unaccompanied girl would be in close proximity to a male for several hours a day.

But, isn't she in school, you ask?  She is only 16 after all.  No, Hafsa has not been to school since Year 5, or 5th grade.  She attended one of the free elementary schools set up by Sheikh Hasina, but Nazma could not afford to send her after that.  And guess why.  Because by then she had her middle child, a son, Royshudin, to send.  Then Nahid got bigger and that was that.  There was never a question of sending the boys, all proceeds go to them.  Now, that is not to say that the family does not love Hafsa.  On the contrary, she is the only granddaughter/niece in the family and, according to her mother, everyone dotes on her.  Hafsa is absolutely beautiful and sweet, gorgeous smile.

The family decided to keep Royshudin living at the brother's place and allow Hafsa to come with Nazma because she could take care of Nahid.  While she and Nazma both accompanied him to school in the morning, she could go to pick him and his brother up at school and bring them back.  Royshudin took to spending the afternoons here and eating with the family.  Hafsa does all the cooking and cleaning for Nazma in their house, and helped her in my house as well.  Nazma doesn't do a lot of cooking here, maybe once every couple of weeks, but I think Hafsa spent time down here so that she wasn't near Anjou's husband.

It's a wonder, really, that she made it to 16 before being married.  A couple of weeks ago, Nazma and I were chatting in the kitchen and I asked about Hafsa.  She said Hafsa "no good, madam.  Hafsa very upset. She marry."  After a little more discussion, the story came out.  Nazma's mother, Hafsa's grandmother, had decided it was time for Hafsa to marry.  She is "big" now and if they wait much longer, she will not be able to find a husband.  Plus, the dowry will go up.  Furthermore, they say because she is big, she is expensive for her mother to continue to support.  Since she has no education or skills, her only option is marriage.  Nazma told me that she can't even read.  How is that possible in 2013??????

Nazma's family is in Barisal district, in southern Bangladesh near the coast.  When Nazma first moved to Dhaka, Hafsa stayed with the grandparents.  About two years ago, she came to Dhaka to be with her mother.  She loves living in Dhaka and hates the rural living.  I guess that's understandable for a teenager.  Now, the grandparents have found a suitable husband and are determined that she will marry.

Nazma told me that Hafsa did NOT want to get married.  She wanted to go back to school and travel around the world.  I told Nazma that Jeff and I would pay for Hafsa to attend school.  Later, Hafsa said no, she was embarrassed to go to school with little girls.  By a stroke of luck, I happened to watch the BCS championship with a handful of Bangladeshi Notre Dame alumni (I was the only one rooting for Bama), one of whom is a human rights and legal advisor at BRAC (a local NGO that is HUGE and very successful and has its hands in a lot of pots).  She immediately got on the case and called Nazma and started looking for options.  They tried to find a technical school that Hafsa could attend where she could learn some skills, but that would require her going back to Barisal, where she didn't want to go.  They were really working hard and fast to stop the marriage, talking to Nazma and making sure she understood it is illegal.  Jeff and I even offered to take Nazma on as a daughter.  Bangladesh won't allow foreigners to adopt, but we said we'd just pay for her needs as if she were ours.

The day came when Nazma said her mother had put her foot down and said it was time.  Hafsa had been refusing to eat and was laying in bed crying all day for several days.  So, the grandmother said to lie to her, tell her she was coming to Barisal, but they were not going to force her to marry.  It may have been none of my business, but I told this human rights advisor.  She got on the phone with Nazma and convinced her to at least tell Hafsa the truth.  So it was that Hafsa left, defeated, to go to Barisal to marry.  She was to be married in four days, on a Friday.  For me, I felt that I had done all I could do as an outsider.  It is the family's decision, and not mine.  Several alternatives had been given to them, but they still felt that marriage was the only option.

Next day, I asked Nazma how it was going for Hafsa and again tried to persuade her to let us that we would take her on, and she wouldn't be a burden on the family and could still live with her mother.  Nazma said no, the grandmother said "Madam is good" but Hafsa needs to marry.  Feeling totally worthless, I at least offered to help Nazma go to the wedding.  That's when I realized that Nazma was not supportive of the marriage, either.  She was almost crying when she said it would be too hard for her to go and see it.

As this story cycles, we hit yet another up the next day.  Apparently, Hafsa had cried and refused to eat in Barisal, and even threatened to kill herself.  The grandfather and brothers put their foot down and said no, she will not marry and she was supposed to come back to Dhaka.  I was so relieved!  As I'm sure Nazma and Hafsa were.

Three days later I had still not seen Hafsa, so asked Nazma where she was.  "She married, madam."  And that's it.

So far, they've only exchanged rings, but the ceremony will be in the summer sometime.  The boy, 22, has also said that Hafsa will stay with the grandmother for one year before he takes her into his home - a fact that upsets Nazma because she's given away her daughter and she'll still have to pay to clothe and feed her for another year.

On top of that, the boy's family has demanded a huge dowry - or at least it sounds huge to me.  At first, they wanted 60,000 taka.  Nazma said no.  Then they said give us a motorcycle.  Nazma said no, she's giving her only daughter.  As it stands now, they agreed on even more, I guess the boys' family demanded it and Nazma's parents were feeling desperate to get her married.  Now they will pay 50,000 taka plus a motorcycle worth 200,000 taka.    That's about $3140 USD.  A fortune in Bangladesh.  Luckily, Nazma worked for an Indian lady some years back who really took a liking to Hafsa and promised to help pay for the marriage.  She has given $50,000 and the wedding jewelry.  The rest of Nazma's family is helping to gather the remaining 2 lak (1 lak = 100,000).  For our part, I am torn on this one.  I don't support this marriage at all and don't want to give any money to help it.  Nazma has not asked for help with the dowry.