Kerre McIvor reports: ‘Half my life is over’,
Sapna is 14 years old, the eldest of four siblings.
She is a tall, slim, attractive girl, from Agra, India, whose favourite subject at school was English and who had dreams of becoming a teacher. She enjoyed school. She had friends there and she loved learning.
But then her dad got sick. He was a stone craftsman, grinding and chiselling blocks of concrete into the little elephants you can buy at just about every market in India for a couple of rupees.
There are no health and safety regulations in India and no laws regulating the use of breathing apparatus. And so, after years of breathing in the fine dust that swirled around him as he worked, Sapna’s dad is sick. So sick that he is unable to work. There’s no sickness benefit in India. No safety net for desperate people to rely on should the worst happen.
As the eldest, the burden of caring for the family fell on Sapna’s shoulders. And now, instead of going to school, Sapna spends her days soldering clasps on anklets. Literally thousands of glittery trinkets turn up to her family’s home every morning and from the time they turn up, usually around 6am, until the time she has finished the job lot, Sapna sits cross-legged in the courtyard of her family’s home soldering the clasps.
For every pair of anklets completed, she receives 0.6 of a New Zealand cent. She has to solder thousands of clasps to earn a pittance. But the money she earns is vital. The family needs to pay the rent. They need to eat. And her father’s medications are expensive.
Sapna’s days are long — the shortest is 12 hours; the longest, in the busy tourist season, is 16 hours.
This 14-year-old girl doesn’t have a favourite band or Bollywood actress — she doesn’t listen to music because the television doesn’t work and the concept of having the time or the money to go to the movies is beyond comprehension.
The concept of having a life beyond the courtyard is also something Sapna can’t imagine.
Sapna’s sister and little brothers are helping her as she works, but for them, this is work they do after school, to help out their sister. Sapna is happy her siblings, who are sponsored, can go to school. But she can’t ever imagine going back to school herself.
Her face is devoid of emotion as she says this, her hands never stopping soldering, pressing, moving on to the next anklet. Her voice is flat. I desperately want to give her hope. I can’t bear to think that this is what the future looks like for this bright young girl.
I tell her I went back to school when I was old. Maybe one day, later in life, she’ll be able to go back to school too. She looks up at me, and then drops her eyes back to her work. In the same flat voice, she says that half her life is over. The rest is in God’s hands.
We leave her to her work, work she’ll be doing long into the night. Even then, Sapna can barely afford to cover the family’s basic needs. She’s desperately trying to keep her father alive and her siblings in school, one anklet at a time. And I realise that trying to inspire this young woman to dream was cruel of me. She understands her reality far better than I. She knows she cannot afford the luxury of hope.
After we left the family, I asked the community development officer whether anything could be done to change the situation Sapna was in. Was there any way at all that the family could pay the bills, leaving Sapna free to go back to school? And thankfully, there is a glimmer of hope after all.
The economic development fund exists to set up parents in businesses or trades. If they can find the equivalent of $400, Sapna’s mum can set up a little grocery store. She’ll receive half the money up front, then if the stall starts to turn a small profit, she’ll receive the rest of the money to generate more profits.
There is a faint hope the family will be able to afford to live off the proceeds of the stall and Sapna will be able to go back to school.
However slim the chances are of success, it’s a chance worth taking.