give leaving this job a second thought. Even when she is almost overcome with exhaustion, she wipes the tears from her eyes, thinks of her family, and keeps working.
11:05pm
Taslima and her colleagues have been sewing for 16 hours. Their only break was for half an hour at lunchtime. So far, only 889 body warmers are finished. Taslima has needed to go the toilet badly for hours, but the supervisor hasn’t let anybody leave the room since 8:00pm. Instead he complains the whole time. “You’re so pathetic, work faster!” he grumbles. The rolls of green, blue, grey and brown fleece are getting thinner. Taslima hopes there will be enough material left to get the job done. Tack, tack, tack, tack . . .
16 September 2005: 1:10am
The rolls of fleece have all been used up. There are only small scraps left at the cutting table. The foreman screams at the cutters, “You fools! You’ve cut the pieces too large! I’ll be taking this out of your wages!” Taslima cannot bear it. She stands up and runs along factory aisles looking for usable fleece. What would Meena , her heroine, do now? Then Taslima spots the small roll of bright red fleece. “Over here! There’s some left!” she cries. She drags the roll out of the corner.
“That’s bright red!” the cutter protests.
“It doesn’t matter! Surely Germans like red too!” says Taslima.
“Men in red fleeces? Really?” says one of the cutters, looking to the supervisor for instructions.
“I don’t care!” spits the supervisor. “Just get it done so we can all go home . . .”
So they use the red fleece. Tack, tack, tack, tack . . . In a flash there are 11 bright red fleece body warmers. No sooner has my fleece come into the world it’s packed into a cardboard box, ready to be shipped to Germany. It might have been a horrible day’s work for the seamstresses, but none of them would give up their jobs for anything . . .
6
A World of Floating Metal Boxes: A Container Ship Heading for Europe
16 September 2005
For two weeks, a red metal container has been sitting in the yard of the textile factory on the outskirts of Dhaka. It is six metres long, 2.3 metres wide and 2.3 metres high. Day in and day out it has been loaded up with boxes of clothing fresh from the factory. It takes a long time to fill such a vast space. By the time it is full, there are thousands of items of clothing inside. Along with the body warmers, there are jackets, tracksuits and pyjamas, all made from fleece. The container has acquired a number of dents and a lot of rust during its lifetime. It has travelled non-stop around the world for the last eight years.
At about 10:00am, three final boxes of fleece body warmers complete the container’s load. It takes eight workers to close and lock the container door. They don’t call up Hassan to pick up the load this time: his tuk-tuk is far too small to carry this container. Instead, it is loaded onto the back of a filthy, well-travelled lorry. The lorry will travel down Bangladesh’s muddy streets, trying not to slide off the road, until it reaches the harbour in Chittagong. There the driver will offload the container, and instead of being loaded straight onto a ship, nothing will happen to it for several days. The container will sit on the dock, patiently, while the monsoon batters it. All too often, the factory staff work themselves to death to meet the shipping deadlines, only for the clothing to sit in the harbour, unmoving, for days and days. Has the container been forgotten about? No, it has not. For one particular customs officer, the container is all he can think about. There’s something wrong with the paperwork. A section about the contents of the container has not been filled in properly, which means it will not be signed off by the Ministry of Agriculture for shipping the next day.
21 September 2005
After five days of tense phone calls, the owner of the textile factory finally comes to the harbour in person.
11:05pm
Taslima and her colleagues have been sewing for 16 hours. Their only break was for half an hour at lunchtime. So far, only 889 body warmers are finished. Taslima has needed to go the toilet badly for hours, but the supervisor hasn’t let anybody leave the room since 8:00pm. Instead he complains the whole time. “You’re so pathetic, work faster!” he grumbles. The rolls of green, blue, grey and brown fleece are getting thinner. Taslima hopes there will be enough material left to get the job done. Tack, tack, tack, tack . . .
16 September 2005: 1:10am
The rolls of fleece have all been used up. There are only small scraps left at the cutting table. The foreman screams at the cutters, “You fools! You’ve cut the pieces too large! I’ll be taking this out of your wages!” Taslima cannot bear it. She stands up and runs along factory aisles looking for usable fleece. What would Meena , her heroine, do now? Then Taslima spots the small roll of bright red fleece. “Over here! There’s some left!” she cries. She drags the roll out of the corner.
“That’s bright red!” the cutter protests.
“It doesn’t matter! Surely Germans like red too!” says Taslima.
“Men in red fleeces? Really?” says one of the cutters, looking to the supervisor for instructions.
“I don’t care!” spits the supervisor. “Just get it done so we can all go home . . .”
So they use the red fleece. Tack, tack, tack, tack . . . In a flash there are 11 bright red fleece body warmers. No sooner has my fleece come into the world it’s packed into a cardboard box, ready to be shipped to Germany. It might have been a horrible day’s work for the seamstresses, but none of them would give up their jobs for anything . . .
6
A World of Floating Metal Boxes: A Container Ship Heading for Europe
16 September 2005
For two weeks, a red metal container has been sitting in the yard of the textile factory on the outskirts of Dhaka. It is six metres long, 2.3 metres wide and 2.3 metres high. Day in and day out it has been loaded up with boxes of clothing fresh from the factory. It takes a long time to fill such a vast space. By the time it is full, there are thousands of items of clothing inside. Along with the body warmers, there are jackets, tracksuits and pyjamas, all made from fleece. The container has acquired a number of dents and a lot of rust during its lifetime. It has travelled non-stop around the world for the last eight years.
At about 10:00am, three final boxes of fleece body warmers complete the container’s load. It takes eight workers to close and lock the container door. They don’t call up Hassan to pick up the load this time: his tuk-tuk is far too small to carry this container. Instead, it is loaded onto the back of a filthy, well-travelled lorry. The lorry will travel down Bangladesh’s muddy streets, trying not to slide off the road, until it reaches the harbour in Chittagong. There the driver will offload the container, and instead of being loaded straight onto a ship, nothing will happen to it for several days. The container will sit on the dock, patiently, while the monsoon batters it. All too often, the factory staff work themselves to death to meet the shipping deadlines, only for the clothing to sit in the harbour, unmoving, for days and days. Has the container been forgotten about? No, it has not. For one particular customs officer, the container is all he can think about. There’s something wrong with the paperwork. A section about the contents of the container has not been filled in properly, which means it will not be signed off by the Ministry of Agriculture for shipping the next day.
21 September 2005
After five days of tense phone calls, the owner of the textile factory finally comes to the harbour in person.
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