“Some of them are afraid of me”
Suzon, age 9

“I stayed too long. When I came back to work I found someone else in my place at the police canteen. My job had gone.

One of my friends suggested that I might be able to find a job as a tempo boy. I started at this work about 5 months ago. I have been working on this particular tempo for 25 days. I tend to change my tempo frequently. I find it very difficult to start work very early in the morning. Even if you are as little as one minute late the driver sacks you. When I have been sacked I might spend all day searching for another job, or I might find a tempo quickly. Usually the drivers help. Some of them are afraid of me. They are afraid that I could attack them with my mates.

Sometimes I’ll go to a local community hall to help with the washing up for a few days. I earn about 60 taka there for a day’s work. The money in tempo work is not so good, but the work is very interesting to me.

We tempo boys build up good relationships with rickshaw drivers and bus drivers. A few months ago one of the rickshaw pullers round here was attacked in the street by a mugger who wanted his money. Fifteen of us tempo boys talked to the rickshaw puller and offered to help him. Later on we caught the mugger and handed him over to the police. The police gave each boy 2 taka as a reward.

I supported one of the candidates running for the President of Bangladesh when these pictures were taken. In November 1990 I took part in the movement for democracy in Bangladesh. We were trying to get rid of President Ershad. Day after day thousands of demonstrators gathered on the streets. A lot of people were being killed. At that time I used to carry a small bottle of kerosene in my pocket and some stones. One morning the police had left their jeep near Rajarbhag and had gone off chasing some demonstrators down the road. I was with some 25 other lads of my age in the protest march. I poured petrol all over the jeep and set it on fire with a lighted match. Within a minute it was burnt out. We ran off to a youth club at Mirpur. The police did not catch us.”