This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
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Why do children work? ‘To become big men and women’

By:   []

Date: 2022-04 

I am 17 years old. I work on the lake. I am not from this village, but I have lived here for eight years.

My parents passed away when I was a child. I grew up with my grandmother, who was very frail. She had a problem with her heart. She needed expensive medical attention, and the little money my uncle occasionally sent us was never enough. Sometimes we didn’t even have food to eat. I was going to school then, and my uniform, shoes, and other things looked like rags. I was always hungry and had a hard time understanding what they were teaching, so I didn’t want to go anymore.

One day a fisherman who had worked with my grandfather passed through the village. My grandmother asked him if he would train me like my grandfather had trained him when he was a boy. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave my grandmother. But I wasn’t going to school anymore and there was nothing for me in the village. I was about 10 or 11 years old that time. I have been living and working with him ever since.

My grandmother passed away last year. I am very sad about that, but I am also happy that she benefitted from me before she died. For the last three years I was able to send her some of the money I had earned. I feel very proud about that.

I am very grateful to this man. I don’t know what would have become of me now if I hadn’t stayed with him. I found fishing very hard at first. I missed my grandmother every day and wanted to go back home; all the more so because he would hit me if I did something wrong or he thought I wasn’t working hard. That’s one thing fishing and school had in common. The teachers used to hit us with heavy canes if we couldn’t say the times table or the words on the board, or if we didn’t know the answer to the questions they asked us. It was a reason I didn’t like going to school.
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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/why-do-children-work-to-become-big-men-and-women/
[2] url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
    
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