Dear Michael,
I am writing from a small cramped wooden slum. It’s on the pavement next to a very busy road. I am in Bombay, Bombay is a bustling city and there is too much pollution. Bombay is very congested,
Half of the population have no services or jobs; most people who live in the slums make traditional cloth and clean them. Most people have migrated from neighbouring towns, citys and countries. Like kuru where the river was polluted which crippled the fishing trade. The main reason that people moved away from kuru is the textile market for new opportunities and jobs, because Bombay is the centre of commerce. Most of the people who migrate live in rural areas.
I have seen up to eight people in one family living in a tiny shanty with hardly any food or water. Every one in the shantys work e.g clean clothes or make cloth. Even though there are over a million shantys in India they are actually illegal but the police don’t tend to do anything.
I get my food from the mahilamilan which means women together, they teach us a class every week and we learn things like maths and English. In turn me and many other children collect scrap metal to sell, we give all are money to the mahilamilan so they can buy food and water.
I am hoping soon that a shanty next to the railway will be come available for me and my family to move into then we will be able to have electricity, an upstairs and even a kitchen! I live in the biggest slum in Asia, we have pits for toilets and water is only available for one hour a day.
But we do go to school and we learn basically the same things as the mahilamilan teach us. We work four times a week then we go to school three times. My dad does work he rolls cigarettes and sells them from our shanty and my mum roasts nuts on our fire but we just barely scrape enough to buy food and supplies like clothes and wood
The government are supposed to be building more accommodation made of brick and not wood, the city of Bombay is very modern and expensive because the government spend all their money there but shanty towns like Dharavi are the poorest in the country
I hope England is ok where do you live? And do you work often?
I hope to see your reply soon
Yours sincerely
Barry Thompson
This is my home that is my dad going to
Fetch water for the family>>
