While in Western forums, the convenience of forgiving the external debt contracted by less developed countries is discussed, this woman - like many other women, men and children in their country - continues, one day and another day, breaking bricks to hammer.
She is one of Bangladesh's many women who earn sustenance by hitting bricks with a hammer, until they are usable in the road paving.
Hit the bricks that were discarded for construction, for having fragmented during cooking in artisan ovens. With his work it makes it possible for the material to be recycled.
It works hard, from dawn to dusk and with hardly any rest. Supplement, with its effort, the lack of technology in a poor country, which needs to overexploit at its workforce to stay minimally afloat.
Break the bricks mechanically, with your eyes fixed on your hand and without looking at anywhere. It protects itself from the sun and rain with an old umbrella offered on earth.
If you ask if you like your work, you will surely answer you with a shy smile. And you can understand that this smile expresses his gratitude to have a job that allows him to gain his food.
If you ask if the work fatigue, it is almost certain that it will smile again. And you can know that it is unable to give you an answer that allows you to understand what is the value that it gives to the concept of fatigue you propose.
Because she knows that her work tires, but surely ignores that there is any other work at their disposal that can tire it less.
That is why he will tell you, without telling you, that it is better not to ask. He will tell you that you can take your photograph if you wish and, timidly, it will thank you for it.
He will look you in the eye waiting for you to take the memory of his gratitude for having stopped to talk with her. And you will wait for your way to wherever you have decided to go.
And you will leave. And you will accept, once again, that things are as they are and that there is no way that you arrive and change them.
Pepe Navarro
