Made on Earth by Wolfgang Korn Read Free Book Online Page B

I’ll slam the door in your face!” That’s what it’s usually like here: the young seamstresses – all between 16 and 30 years old – are not treated kindly by the management.
    Taslima works on the second floor where over 80 sewing machines stand in two long rows. She settles herself at her workstation right in the middle. This is where she will sit for the next eight to twelve hours doing nothing but sewing. There’s already a stack of pre-cut fleece pieces piled behind her: for the last two days her department has been trying to fulfil a massive order for fleece body warmers. She takes the back section of a fleece and places the right hand front section, with a pocket already sewn into it, on top. Tack, tack, tack, tack , she’s already stitched the shoulder. She sews the pieces together down one side. Tack, tack, tack, tack. And now the same for the left hand side . . . Taslima’s glad to be able to work at a sewing machine. For the first half of the year she was only a sewing assistant. This meant she had to help five seamstresses, but was only paid half of what they were. She learnt quickly however, and when a seamstress from her group left – suddenly she had a sewing machine of her own.
    Tack, tack, tack, tack . Taslima sews the collar on, and then sews up the bottom of the fleece. The zip is the final piece to be sewn in. The first of the countless fleeces that she will make today is finished. No one has even told her off for being late! Sometimes, when a seamstress is late for work they dock her wages, but Taslima has been lucky today. The workshop is packed, badly lit and there’s barely any fresh air. As the monsoon season has just come to an end, there’s water everywhere. It smells of mould and it’s unbearably hot. The mere effort of breathing makes you break into a sweat, and if you’re working hard, the sweat runs in small rivers down your back. By the second or third fleece, Taslima’s hands are working automatically. In her mind she flees this dark, sticky room and runs back to her family. They live outside in the countryside, a three-hour drive away by minibus. Every two or three months she gets a couple of days off so she can travel home to visit them. Often when she’s there the whole community gather at her uncle’s house to watch the only television in the village. In Bangladesh there are approximately six televisions for every hundred people, and in the countryside that statistic is even lower. Whole villages watch TV together – it’s a social event. Bizarrely, up to three quarters of airtime is taken up by advertising. It’s insane to think that so many adverts are shown in a country where over half the population live on less than €1.50 euros (around £1 pound) a day, and will never be able to afford new cars, mobile phones, posh mustard or designer cosmetics.
    On the other hand, public television channel BTV shows lots of interesting programmes, including Taslima’s favourite show, a cartoon series called Meena . Meena is loved by girls and young women across Bangladesh. The 10-year-old protagonist, Meena, is a brave and outgoing young woman. She likes going to school, is the smartest member of her family and fights the oppression of women in Bangladesh. She campaigns against young girls getting married, and raises awareness about issues such as the lack of education that women are given, or the fact that girls are rarely taken to a doctor when they’re ill. Girls and women usually watch TV on their own. If any men are about, they usually complain about what the women are watching. They don’t like programmes like Meena . They want their women to stay at home, obey their husbands, and if they must work, to hand over their wages with no questions asked.
     
Low Pay, High Risk
11/12 April 2005
In the middle of the night, a nine-storey textile manufacturing company collapses in Savar, a suburb of Dhaka. The building must have been poorly constructed, as it had only been