The British Airways Hostess Who Built a Children’s Village in Bangladesh
I thought it would be nice to keep the theme of authors and their back stories in this month’s journal but was in a fog.
My mind wandered far and wide for inspiration. It seemed the warmer weather had slowed me down, which made me think of Bangladesh.
In 13 years living in Dhaka, my mother had met many interesting individuals, undergoing various projects.
Ann Hall, my mother’s good friend, had written a book when she had moved back to the UK, to raise money for an animal shelter, The Story of Cheeta (illustrations by Lesley Tidmarsh.)
It didn’t surprise me Ann had done this. She had always raised money in Bangladesh.
She bought next season’s fashion items, with buttons missing, from the back doors of clothing factories, fixed them and held pop-up fashion shows in posh living rooms in Gulshan. We all attended, knowing a bargain when we saw one.
Ann had unlimited energy for a good cause and was known for rallying her troops. I vividly remember her making me sit in a room full of women knitting pink jumpers for street orphans.
I wasn’t very good at knitting and could only produce a mound of squares to make blankets but I did note, when watching documentaries about Dhaka, little boys toiling in the heat by ferries, proudly wearing pink jumpers, clearly fearful of them being stolen.
It proved to me, if you are an orphan in the world’s most densely populated country, you value every asset.
If you watched Soccer Aid 2023 and saw the children attending UNICEF Hubs in Dhaka, a city of nearly 20 million people, you will understand the enormity of the situation.
While these thoughts meandered through my head, it struck me how daft I had been and I found my subject for July’s Journal.
Pat Kerr
My mother was friends with someone who had written a book about her work with the street children of Bangladesh.
That woman is Pat Kerr, the British Airways Hostess who built a village for orphans and homeless mothers in the tropical countryside.
My parents had arranged for me to visit the village Pat built, shortly after it had been established in 1989, with a group of interested expatriates.
Pat was not there that day but it was a joyous visit.
After a 3 hour drive from Gulshan, in a baking hot mini bus, we arrived at the neatly set out bungalows and were greeted by hundreds of smiling faces.
Every child wanted to hold our hands and proudly show us where they lived.
We were given a show of traditional Bengali dance and songs in one of the school rooms and I was particularly touched by a little girl with disabilities, who said I was nice and wanted to live with me.
A volunteer showed us the village orchard, Lychees were in season. When we entered the large dining hall, there was a mound of red shells brushed up to a wall at one end. Resident women were at its base, helping small children peel and eat the sweet fruit.
We were told every child would be taken in turn to the dining room for one to one time with the women and to partake in the treat.
We were then walked to the edge of the grounds and shown the village’s paddy field. A local man was there with his water buffalo and plough.
He was performing his task free of charge, in searing sun, on his day off. The volunteer told us there had been little opposition to the village being built and many locals were keen to help.
Others were also keen. Molly Reid once turned up at the BHAGA Club House after visiting the Village with a lorry load of biscuits, having struck an amazing bargain with the owner of a factory.
Since opening in 1989 the village has gone from strength to strength, despite discovering some alarming news about the land Pat thought they owned. It is all to the credit of her undeniable stamina.
Pat was a qualified Occupational Therapist in London before swapping her career to become a British Airways stewardess.
She had been on a four day stop-over, at a 5 star hotel in Dhaka, when she decided to venture into the streets and experience the city.
She found street orphans gathered around her, wishing to make her acquaintance and some spare change.
Bangladeshis are the loveliest gently smiling people, who genuinely want to know you, and the children clearly had an impact on Pat.
She decided to ‘give something back’ and took five months unpaid leave to work in an orphanage in the centre of Dhaka.
Families for Children, now a sister charity to the village, had 150 orphans in its care but it was clear to Pat the problem was much bigger. She instantly started fund raising amongst British Airways Crews.
She soon had British Airways involved as a whole and the full support of the Chairman, Lord King.
Pat formed a plan and found as many people as she could to help, buying 13 acres of land at Sreepur, a region accessed by dirt tracks.
What she did next was nothing short of a miracle. She persuaded Lawyers, architects and experts from British Airways to give their services free of charge.
By 1989 she had a village with land for farming and moved 600 children in.
The opening day was attended by President Ershad who, having discovered the village had no electricity or proper access roads, declared he would remedy both issues.
Pat took on poor women, who worked as the mothers of the orphans, cooking and cleaning for a small wage, saved for when they returned to their own communities.
She built schooling facilities and trained women living and working in the village to give them better prospects.
She took the children’s interests very personally and did all she could to encourage them to become what they dreamed of being.
One of her children came to the BHAGA Club for a swim after attending a Karate trial.
Pat makes sure all her children learn to swim.
Bangladesh is only 56.06% land to 43.94% water.
According to The Centre for Injury Preventions and Research, Bangladesh, 19000 people drown each year across the country, approximately 77% are under the age of 18. Pat knew this meant 40 Bangladeshi children drown each day.
Children who have grown up in the village have become Physiotherapists, Nurses, teachers, Sportsmen and coaches and self-employed mechanics to name a few occupations, after a rough start on the streets of Dhaka.
Having worked hard to publicise her cause, Pat had gained a lot of attention by the time she wrote her book, Down to Earth, with Susan Hill.
She couldn’t hide her embarrassment when her book signing, at Heathrow Airport, September 1992, was interrupted by Michael Aspel, who spirited her away to the This is Your Life studios.
More recently Pat was featured on a BBC Scotland documentary, which highlighted a situation which arose in 2019, when Pat was made aware 9 of the 13 acres she bought had been sold fraudulently and were protected Forestry land.
Never a quitter, Pat approached Bangladesh’s female Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, who graciously granted her a meeting.
She then packed 300 children into coaches and took them to Parliament and expressed the purpose and needs of the village to Sheikh Hasina in a speech she had learnt in Bengali.
The children put on quite a show and produced a secret petition, asking Sheikh Hasina to make Pat a Bangladeshi Citizen, so she wouldn’t have to keep reapplying for her visa.
(You can watch Pat Kerr: 25 Years On, BBC Scotland, via Google. It includes both the visit to Parliament and Pat’s Wedding Ceremony at Sreepur Village)
The landlord who sold Pat Forestry land was jailed but the problem he caused, having been considered by the relevant authorities, still remained.
Six months after her meeting with Sheikh Hasina, Pat received devastating news. The land would not be transferred or resold to her, as it would set a bad precedent. She then raced to secure a tenancy for the village.
For the time being the women and children of Sreepur are safe but Pat knows that there will come a time when she will no longer be able to run the village.
To this end she is shrewdly training previous residents, who have launched well into IT and Administrative posts and now have families of their own, to run Sreepur.
The sleepy backwater Pat chose for this venture has benefited since President Ershad was forced to make his opening day visit by helicopter. The farming hamlets, joined by dirt footpaths, have become a town with electricity and transport links, with more diverse job prospects and health care facilities for its inhabitants.
Down to Earth by Pat Kerr is advertised on Google as being available from:
Amazon UK
Transportstore.com
Abebooks.co.uk
Blackwells.co.uk
If you would like to know more about this incredible woman and her work, feel free to look up: https://www.sreepurvillage.org/
I for one have enjoyed reading about the women of the village learning to use online banking and seeing their beautiful hand crafted goods.
I really hope Pat’s children will be able to sustain her efforts in the future, with the help of their sister charity Families for Children.
I have only shared a few of the village’s stories but there are many more, Pat’s book is worth a read.
If you are here for more cleaning tips and recipes, look below.
Happy writing, Rachel
Mock Mishti Doi (Easy sweet Bengali Yogurt dessert)
This is an easy dessert, which I like flavoured with one whole green cardamom pod, placed at the bottom of the ramekin or three at the bottom of a larger pot. Some like it with rose water/cordial but, to me, cardamom is more authentic.
This recipe is an adaptation of a ‘windowsill yogurt’ traditional made by reducing milk with cane sugar and mixing in curd, but a simpler version Aunt Tarifa taught my mother.
The object of the exercise is to mimic a hot climate, using a domestic oven. That said, it is important to understand that you are setting the yogurt, not cooking it, so the oven must be turned off before you place the Mishti mixture in it.
Once set and refrigerated it goes beautifully with almond sponge cake or Indian sweets such as Gulab Jamun, which you can buy from Asian shops in most towns. If you can’t find them ready made, you can buy boxes of mix and make your own.
As a stand-alone dish, I could eat Mishti Doi all day long, though it is high in sugar content and probably best kept as a rare summer treat.
Recipe
1 500 gms Pot of plain live Yogurt
1 Medium can of Condensed Milk
1 Can of Evaporated Milk
1 Large oven-proof pot or 14 ramekins
Method
1) Preheat your oven to 400 F or Gas Mark 6
2) Whisk all the ingredients thoroughly until the mixture is smooth and frothy on top.
3) TURN THE OVEN OFF
4) Put the mixture into oven-proof container/s and place it in the oven.
5) Shut the door and leave it overnight. DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR TILL MORNING.
6) In the morning remove the set Mishti pot/s from the oven and refrigerate.
How to Clean Silk/Artificial Flowers Without Water
If you can’t afford to get fresh cut flowers every week but feel your rooms need a bit of colour, fake flowers and plants are a go to. In fact artificial house plants seem to be gaining in popularity and manufacturers are making more and more convincing items.
Like most things, they look great when they are new but as the dust settles can look tired. The main problem is they are difficult to clean without making them look even sadder.
Silk flowers are a bit of a pain to clean. They are often so delicate they couldn’t survive being hoovered and water could ruin their shape and colour.
Most people’s solution is to throw them away but once you’ve got to that point a little trick might be worth a try.
I take a clean plastic shopping bag and put a tablespoon and a half of bicarbonate of soda in the bottom of it. I then hold it tightly shut around the stalks and shake the bag, ensuring the baking powder has a good chance to knock the dust off the petals, then wave the rest of the bicarb off somewhere outside.
Bicarb is a brilliant deodorizer and is light enough not to damage delicate parts.
It’s good for similarly delicate objects. I clean my chiffon Christmas tree fairy using this method. It’s kept her going for 8 years.
Next Month Do We Really Need Cats? Various methods to remove cat hair from clothes and furniture.
Cauliflower and Beef Curry Recipe!