STORIES
Rahal's Story
My name is Rahal. I am 3 years old I am going to let my teacher tell my story using my words. I play a lot where people throw their rubbish. There are lots of us children there, but I think I am the youngest as they are all bigger than me. We find food to eat in bags. It doesn’t always taste nice but we all eat it. My friend said I have to come with her to where the teacher is . She will give us rice and chicken to eat. I don’t have a mummy or daddy anymore. They used to work making bricks and one day they were fighting and I didn’t see my mummy anymore. My friend said she had gone to heaven. I don’t know where that is but I want her to come back soon as I am lonely. My daddy went away after my mummy. My friend told me he had gone to heaven too. I wondered why they didn’t take me as well and why did they tell my friend and not me? I cry a lot because our house has been given to someone else and I don’t have my bed anymore. I was crying and sitting where we play and the teacher came to me and asked me what I was doing. I couldn’t answer her because I was crying and couldn’t speak. She picked me up and took me to the water and washed me and gave me these pretty colours to wear. I am with this lady that the teacher said I should call aunty. She looks after me and the teacher brings food sometimes and I go to the school in the brickyard. I’m not so sad anymore but I still wonder if my mummy is going to come back soon. I hope so.
Rida's Story
Yeshua's Story
My Name is Yeshua. I am 15 years old. My parents were making bricks at the brick yard. They had completed the 1200 we have to make each day because I had worked hard the day before mixing the mud with water into clay so they had plenty to make the bricks with. It was windy the last few days and I had seen this boy flying a kite and I wanted to play with him and have a go with the kite. Because I had worked hard the day before they said I could go. So I went to the other field and met the boy flying the kite. I had seen him before and we were sort of friends. I asked him if I could have a go and he said yes and handed me the string. We ran together near where the brick kilns are and the kite was flying really well. I heard a shout from a man. It was the kiln owner shouting at me and he came over to us. The other boy grabbed the string from me and ran away. The owner shouted at me for not working and making bricks and dragged me towards the kilns. He said I shouldn’t be running around flying kites but making bricks. Then he pushed me into the hot ashes of the kiln and I fell to the bottom and burnt my feet and elbow. It was really hurting me and I screamed and another worker helped drag me out. I have been to the doctor that our teacher found for me and he said I have 3rd degree burns and he needed to cut away the dead skin and hope I didn’t need skin grafts. It was painful what he did, but after he put bandages on them and we had to buy tablets to help it heal. I have recovered now and can walk again. I thank my teacher Anita (alias) every time I see her at the brick yard school. She was the only one able to help me and the doctor.
Rida's Story
My Name is Rida. I am six years old. Our teacher came today Miss Anita (Alias). I was listening to her telling us about sums and things when this man, I think it is her husband, asked me to look at him. He had a camera . I looked at him and smiled and then I sort of got caught up in this daydream that if I could go into the lens and come out the other side I would be in his world and free like other children on the other side of the lens. I couldn’t take my eyes away from that round hole that was pointing at me because I knew that on the other side children like me had friends to play with in the park after going to a school, where you had a uniform. And family who gave them Seviyan cake to eat every day and at night when you go to bed special angels came and told you stories about unicorns and magic things, and then you would go to sleep and have dreams about the stories they would tell you. I told my teacher after and asked if I could go with the man with the camera. She said I couldn’t today. I walked away crying and hating the sight of bricks all around me.
Sahil's Story
Sahil's Story
My name is Sahil and I am 11 years old. I don’t have any brothers or sisters or a Dad. My Dad died when I was young and I live with my mom. I have to work all the time making bricks because my mum is ill and can’t work anymore. They said she had something called a stroke and it has left her looking strange and she doesn’t speak very good now. She used to say I have beautiful eyes and am very handsome. I liked it when she told me that. I got mud in my eyes a few months ago and they were really bad and stinging me. I don’t see very well now since that happened. My mum is worried about it because if I can’t work then there is nobody to support us and she is very worried. I wish I could read and go to the big schools that other children I have heard about go to. I think I would be clever and maybe be a doctor when I am older. I can fix my eyes then and make my mother well and we will be ok together. I would like that to happen ,but I don’t think it will. I have to keep making bricks
Cat & The Kids Story
Hello. I’m the girl waving in the front. They call me Cat because they say my eyes are like one. I like that nickname so I use it a lot. I am eight years old. Today is a good day. That’s rare. we are with our teacher and she is teaching us to speak English today. I can speak for all of us here, because we all feel the same. You can see we are all happy because our teacher gives us hope. She tells us if we want to break free from the prison of brickmaking, then we need to be educated. So we come here and try hard to learn everything. We can be children here not workers and we can put on clean clothes and for a few hours escape our reality. I love to learn things. I would like to learn to play the piano, but our teacher says we can’t afford one of those yet and we have to learn the more important things first like reading, writing and sums and history. Our teacher says history is important because we need to know about who we are and about the world. She says playing the piano is important too, but we need to know the other things first. We all like how our teacher is honest with us. I would like to be a teacher because we all love her and it is nice to be loved. Yes, I would like to be a teacher, a teacher who can play the piano.
Rehana's Story
My name is Rehana. I am 12 years old. What can we do. What can we say. You think I want to be making theses stinking bricks in this Dunbala (poop) den with all the other Bachas (kids) that are forced to work here? Not at all. I want to run away, but where to go. What to do. I am twelve not twenty. I wish I was dead sometimes and away from here. Then I hold on to my dream that someday I will break free from this and I will have a husband and a child of my own and I will never let it be trapped in the brickyards like we are and we will live happily and do normal things. I have a green dress and a red dupatta and shalwar kameez (a top with pants). They are always dirty from the mud and I never feel clean. If someone would take me away I would like to go , but I can’t, my mother is old and weak and I have to look after her with my brother. I swear one day I will burn this place down.
Zoya & The Kids Story
My Name is Zoya. I am six years old. I’m the girl standing up. My teacher asked us to tell her about our life here making bricks. Because I am the oldest ( by two weeks ) I said I would speak . I have a brother . He is disabled and can’t make bricks. It’s hot every day. The heat on the bricks burns our feet. We can only do this job in the morning because you can’t stand on the bricks because they are too hot. I am showing Sameer how to turn the bricks. He doesn’t keep his line straight. You have to turn them so as the sun dries them the same all around before they go into the kiln. In the afternoon we will have to go and mix the earth with water to make mud so it can be made into bricks. It takes a long time to do. We use a tapa to mix it and then put it onto wheelbarrows. We get very dirty and I don’t like it. The wheel barrows are too heavy for us to move, so we mix mud, fetch water, turn bricks and sometimes fill the brick mold, but mainly our parents fill the mold, because all the kids are too slow doing this as it is boring and we often daydream and our parents would shout at us . So not many kids fill the molds. We have to work a long time from the middle of the night until it gets dark and we only get to eat one time a day. On the days that the teacher comes are the only days any of us are happy, because our parents let us go to the yard where our teacher is and we have lessons and draw and have nice rice food to eat. Sometimes our teacher might bring something special. We all asked her if we could have mangos one time because she was telling us about the fruits that grew on different trees and she asked us all if we could eat any one of them which would we choose? And we all said mangoes and we all kept saying please teacher can we have a mango. She said she would ask brother Kevin. When she came next time she had a whole basket full of mangoes and we all had some and they were really sweet and juicy. It was the best day ever that I can remember.
Anita's Story
My name is Anita. I am three years old. I am going to let my teacher tell you about me.
When Anita’s mother was seven months pregnant her husband was working in the brickyard at the furnace. It was a very hot day, 44 degrees, and with the heat of the furnace around him, it caused him to have an epileptic fit and he died from not being able to breathe. This greatly upset her mother who was not sleeping and worrying all the time after this. She went into labour early and there were complications. Because she was weak, the mother died and Anita had no one. A neighbour who had helped with the delivery took the baby and told me the next day when I came to the brick yard. I looked after her and kept her with me at my home, naming her Anita after her mother. I gave her tinned milk and after a few months I found a family who agreed to take her and I help them with food and clothes. Some of the other girls bring her to the class. On this day I had treats of lollipops for the children. This was the first time that Anita had seen one and she was not sure what to do with it. There are so many children like this where I go to teach at the brickyards. It leaves me feeling overwhelmed at times. Then I see this beautiful, little, innocent face looking back at me and it gives me strength to carry on. If I don’t then they would have no one.
The Teachers Story
Hello. I am The Teacher. The children call me Ayesha. I am here with some of the 120, children that I try to look after and educate at the Brick Yards in the Faisalabad area. I have been doing this work for nearly six years with very little resources. When I get extra money I buy shoes, clothes and food for them. We have the school on the carpet you can see and sometimes we can get a tarpaulin cover to shield us from the sun. It goes to 48 degrees and we can’t study without the cover. I am in desperate need for more book’s pencils and teaching equipment. There is no other school available to these children because they are pushed aside and forgotten about by the authorities. I call them Faisalabad’s Forgotten children and there are thousands more like this in the brick yards in Pakistan. If I had more money, I would set up more schools for these children. We have to remember that this generation is trapped in slave bonded labour. Only by being educated, encouraged and having a feeling of self-worth instilled in them, will they have any hope of breaking free from this cycle of poverty and entrapment. This is my aim, my hope. This is what I am working to achieve for my children and all that come to me. Others too.