Restarting from the roots

Starting every morning, Kalu Hijra had spent most of her life walking from shops to doorsteps, collecting money.
However, that changed for her couple of years ago.
A resident of Konabari's Bymile area in Gazipur city, Kalu now wakes up at the break of dawn, gears up with her farming tools and sets off to the fields with her associates.
"We now cultivate crops to earn a living," said Kalu.
Kalu with 30 of her associates rented 10 bighas of land from Osman Mia, a local, and started a vegetable plantation.
The land used to be a brick kiln which the government demolished about five years ago.
With advice from local farmers' leader Delowar Hossain, Osman decided to lease it to Kalu and her peers, looking to bring a positive change to their lives.
In return, Osman gets a fraction of their produce.
Over the past few years, the once barren land transformed into a vivid vegetable garden, blooming with freshly grown onion, pumpkin, radish, tomatoes and many other such local varieties.
"Kalu and his team have done pretty well so far. However, they would do even better if the authorities assist them," said Delowar.
With the yield being promising so far this year, Kalu and her associates now look to expand their work, urging the authorities to provide them with the necessary assistance.
"Earlier, neither did we have a place to stay, nor work. But that's changed now," said Hashi, one of Kalu's peers.
Embracing the change, Kalu and her friends now live with dignity, with no one calling them names or driving them away from the doorsteps, said Jharna, another farmer working under Kalu's leadership.
Visiting Kalu's field and examining the quality of their production recently, M Rafiqul Islam Khan, deputy director of Department of Agricultural Extension in Gazipur, said, "We want to help the members of the hijra community who have taken up agriculture. We plan on training them and will be providing seeds, pesticides and fertiliser from next year."
Comments