No hurdle big enough

When children of her age usually look for any excuse to skip school if there is a little rain or the neighbourhood street is swamped with rainwater, seventh grader Taslima Khatun swims across not one, but two canals to get to her school every day.

This has been her routine for the past three weeks as the two shallow canals -- one about 200 feet wide and the other about 300 feet -- swelled up after the Mahananda river recently flooded low-lying areas of Char Anupnagar union in Chapainawabganj Sadar upazila.    

Born to an impoverished family of eight siblings, this 14-year-old resident of Natunpara village in the upazila, where school dropouts and child marriages are rife, knows it all too well that education is her only tool available to overcome the odds.

This is why Taslima never complains of the five kilometres distance she has to walk, and lately swim, to and from her school each day.

These days, when she gets out of the house for school, she brings along her school uniform and puts her school books and stationery along with the uniform in an aluminium cooking pot. When she reaches a canal, she floats the pot and swims behind it until she reaches the bank of the canal. She crosses the second canal the same way before reaching her school.

Taslima then goes inside a room in the school and puts on the uniform. After the school is over, she puts the wet clothes back on and starts her arduous journey back home.         

Mahtabuddin, the headteacher of her school, Anupnagar Girls’ High School, said Taslima never misses a day of class, even after the canals swelled up.

It is difficult for anyone to cross two canals two times daily and he was overwhelmed to learn that the two overflowing canals on way to the school could not stop a young girl like Taslima from attending school.  

Three other girls -- Sultana Khatun and Parul Begum of seventh grade and Runa Laila of eighth grade -- of the school from nearby villages have also been crossing the canals now and then to attend school since the area was flooded, but no one could beat Taslima’s attendance record, the teacher added. 

Asked why attending school this way is so important to her, Taslima said after her father passed away, her elder brother, a mason, went abroad to provide for the family. But the money he sends home is not enough.

Due to poverty, none of her siblings except a younger brother, who is in third grade, has ever gone to school and her three sisters were married off at early age, she said, adding, “We are very poor. I want to continue my studies to educate myself so I can get a job after finishing my education.”

One of her sisters, Nasima Khatun, said their mother and all siblings also want to see Taslima carries on with her studies as a means to succeed in life.