Dunya

Dunya feels she was thrown away to become a worker at a young age. Her present life is cold, lonely, and sad. 

She was born in small hut on a dead-end street. She grew up with the fear of being struck down by the plague or learning that parts of her hut had been destroyed. 

Dunya had to share with her four siblings a dirty, flea-ridden room. The room was infested with rats and mice which came every night as unwanted visitors searching for food. Dunya's parents lived also in this tiny hut in a village called Wakaho. The hut was made of sticks and mud, with dirt and moss clung to the grooves of the corrugated iron roof. 

Dunya's soft, brown complexion radiated kindness but she was a lone wolf. She preferred her own company and she did not like socializing. She was a humble girl and she was able to face danger without flinching. 

She heard her father talking to her mother so she stopped washing the pots and she paid a close attention to what was being said. Her father was always talking in parables. 

"Listen, Mama of Dunya, a man wants a horse that will cost him a month's wage, so he decides to steal a horse instead. As he begins to ride off with the horse, it throws him, and the fall breaks his leg. Now he has neither the horse nor a job."

Dunya's Mother paused a moment and replied, "There is a plan in life's situations; life is neither all good nor all bad. This man might return to a just life. We should forgive and rejoice when a sinner returns to a just life, right?"

Dad laughed and said, "You are an angel! But angels are immortal beings who serve intermediaries between Heaven and Earth. You are not immortal, but you are still my angel on earth." 

Dunya loved her parents, but she also knew that death is not something we only face at the end of our lives. She was afraid to lose her parents. She would not be able to look after her four siblings. Even though she believed that the soul lives eternally, in a place where Death cannot exist, she couldn't contemplate her parents' deaths. Her parents always told her that the best people see death as rest for the body and deliverance of the soul into heaven, but as a ten-year-old girl, she couldn't face the idea of death. 

Dunya subscribed to the idea that life is fleeting and that she should therefore focus on enjoyment of the present. But living for the moment had only pitfalls too. Dunya was going to be sent tomorrow to another home to be a servant for the rest of her life. Her parents said that they had no other alternative. They explained to Dunya that they live in desperate poverty and cannot afford to care for their six children. She was going to be a servant for life at the age of ten!

Her parents knew that one of the major threats to a normal childhood is child labour. But as the father says everyday, "Beggars can't be choosers." 

Dunya is going to be sent to work as domestic in exchange for housing and food. She is going to live a slave-like existence full of domestic chores. 

Dunya's brothers will never face the same destiny because sons are seen as a bigger asset for the parents, whereas daughters will become part of their husbands' families. Dunya is going to be sold as a domestic servant. 

The next morning, a man came to take Dunya.

A new day starts. Dunya finds herself sleeping in a new house kilometres away from her family. Dunya can't see her hands in the darkness of her new shack made from palm bark and zinc on a new landscape. But she feels them because of the pain from wounds on her thumbs caused by the knife she uses to trim garlic plants all day. 

Dunya is woken up at four in the morning by the members of the new family. She does not go to school. In the rush to get to work, Dunya does not have the time to eat breakfast. 

Dunya has to face bad weather, mosquito bites and cuts and scrapes from having to pull the plants out from deep in the mud. Little by little Dunya has lost her self-esteem. She feels separate from the her parents, her siblings, and the rest of the society. For Dunya, life seems like a tunnel with no exit.

Dunya's parents are from a rural area with no education and see no alternative but to send Dunya to live in another family as a servant. Dunya needs to work to help feed her family. 

Dunya toiled without a break from four in the morning until midnight, and was also charged with cooking, laundry, cleaning the floors, washing dishes, and caring for the children of the new family. Dunya has no days off and was only allowed to eat once a day. 

The members of the new family frequently berated her and beat her with a shoe when she broke something or when one of the children cried.

Many girls like Dunya in our sad world encounter physical and verbal violence, isolation, and seven-day-a-week labor that begins at dawn and continues until late at night. And none of these girls attend school.

Poverty is one of the main reasons of child labour. Life consequently becomes a day to day struggle for survival of the poor. As a result, Dunya starts work instead of attending school. Dunya's parents believed that girls should share family responsibilities by assisting their parents with household chores or occupations such as farming at an early age. 

Gender is also a crucial factor as girls are mainly expected to look after their siblings and take care of the house. And Dunya always took care of her own siblings at home. 

The change starts within each one of us, and ends only when all children are free to be children. 

Indeed poverty is the major precipitating factor, but education, rigid social and cultural roles, economic greed, family size, geography, and global economics all contribute. 

We must stop child labour. We must protect children.

It is up to us ALL to end child labour.