'Greens, greens, twelve kinds of greens!' Every morning the call rings through the neighbourhoods of Hili municipality in Dinajpur as 30-year-old Momota Begum hurries from lane to lane with a load of vegetables on her head. Her husband has been missing for a long time and sends nothing for the household, so feeding and schooling the children rests on her alone.
Momota lives in Hatkhola village of Panchbibi upazila in Joypurhat. She has two sons and two daughters; the elder daughter is married, the two sons study at a madrasa and the youngest daughter lives with her. They live in a small hut on a scrap of land given by her grandmother.
At dawn she gathers mixed wild greens, banana stem, banana flower and other vegetables from the fields and surroundings of her village, bags them and walks about 10 kilometres to Hili. From morning until noon, sometimes into the afternoon, she goes door to door. Some buy, some don't, and the small takings keep the household going. A day without work makes it hard to put food on the table, so she cannot stop even when exhausted.
Nahida Akter, a housewife in Bhimpur village in Hili, said she sees her every morning walking so far with the load on her head and helps when she can. Moazzem Hossain of Mohila Collegepara said he had rarely seen so determined a mother, and that people with means should stand by mothers like her.
'I gave birth to my children, I have to raise them,' Momota Begum said. 'My husband left me, but I am their mother.' However hard the work, she said, seeing her children smile makes the pain go away.
Photo: David Stanley / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0); a representative picture of a vegetable seller
Source: Dhaka Mail
Comments
(0)