The boys you can see in the picture are tea-workers’ children in Sreemongol area. Choose one of them and I will tell you that his mother works nine hours a day picking up tea leaves (it has to be done one by one), standing in the middle of the plantation by hot or cold weather, often under a heavy rain. She gets 30 taka a day for that (less than half a US dollar). His father gets the same salary working in the tea factory or in the fields. They live in miniscule one-room houses where 6, 8 or 10 persons crowd together, with sometimes cattle with them. Of course the house doesn’t belong to them. The children in the picture have been taken away from the tea gardens by catholic missionaries who try to give them education, the only thing that can get them out of the semi slavery situation they are living in. We have been called to go there and do something for them. We will try.
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