The Long Road From Nalikhali
By Dr Tom Corcoran
Published by ETHNOMAD
After failing English in her final school examination, a young Garo woman must leave her village in search of work. Doshumi’s journey reveals how language, poverty and geography are narrowing the futures of Indigenous children in northern Bangladesh.
Doshumi thought she would pass English. She had never spoken the language to anyone.
When we talked about her examination, she explained what her confidence had rested on. Her teachers, she said, did not themselves speak English. She had learnt a little, enough to hope that the questions would cover the material she knew. She passed every other subject.
Without English, she could not obtain the qualification she needed to continue her education. She could try again, but her family could no longer afford to support her at home. Around Nalikhali, her Garo village near Bangladesh’s northern border with India, she saw no opportunity to earn a living. She went to Dhaka.
A cousin found her a placement in a salon. It was called an internship. For seven months, she cleaned and helped out in exchange for food and a place to sleep on the upstairs floor, but she received no wages.
Eventually, she left and returned to her sister in Dhaka, hoping to find another way forward. She still wanted to study. First, she needed work that paid.
When Doshumi described her schooling, she began with the children who had started alongside her. There were twenty Garo children in her small village school. Twelve went on to the same high school. By the end of the junior years, eight remained. Four passed the examination that allowed them to continue. Of those, only Doshumi and one boy stayed until the final examination. Both failed English.
These are the classmates and transitions as she remembers them. Some may have continued elsewhere; their journeys still need to be traced. But along the route she followed, the group narrowed from twenty to two.
Doshumi had stayed through the years when others left. She had reached the examination, passed her other subjects and expected to continue. Then a language she had studied without ever speaking it became the barrier she could not cross.
Doshumi, dressed in pink, and her sister Sushila prepare to dance at a Garo welcome celebration in northern Bangladesh. Wearing traditional woven dress, feathered headdresses and ceremonial ornaments, the sisters represent a younger generation carrying Garo culture forward through movement, music and community celebration.
Her experience brings a wider question into view. Across Bangladesh’s Indigenous communities, how much of a child’s education is spent negotiating the distance between the language of home and the languages through which opportunity is granted?
The circumstances differ between communities and households. Some children grow up confident in Bangla; others encounter it principally through school. Poverty, geography and access to teaching affect their prospects in different combinations. Doshumi’s life does not represent all of them. The difficulties she describes, however, belong to a problem Bangladesh has already recognised.
The country’s 2010 National Education Policy acknowledged children’s right to mother-tongue education and the need for special assistance for marginalised Indigenous children. Learning materials were subsequently developed in five Indigenous languages and distributed from 2017. These steps helped children start school in a language they understood. Beginning is only part of the journey.
A child must continue through successive classrooms, teachers and examinations. For a Garo pupil, that journey may involve A·chik within the family, Bangla as the principal language of instruction and English as another compulsory subject. Learning across these languages can open a much larger world. It also requires sustained teaching, with help available when understanding begins to falter.
Doshumi finished school having attended English lessons but never held a conversation in the language.
She hoped to recognise what the examination asked of her. If the questions stayed within the material she had learnt, she thought she could pass.
There is a considerable difference between that preparation and the ability to read an unfamiliar passage with understanding. Yet a student may not discover the extent of the difference until the paper is placed before her.
A family with money can pay for additional lessons. A relative who knows English can explain a difficult sentence. Books, internet access and somewhere quiet to study offer further help. Without those advantages, a pupil depends much more heavily on what the school provides. The examination records the answer. It leaves the conditions of learning largely out of sight.
For Doshumi, the consequences followed quickly. Her family could not afford another period devoted to preparing. She had to earn, and a cousin's opportunity took her to Dhaka. The salon offered food and a place to sleep. For someone arriving with little money, those were substantial reasons to accept. They were also the terms on which she remained for seven months.
A worthwhile training placement should leave a young person better equipped to earn a living. Doshumi’s account leaves questions about what instruction she received and whether paid employment was ever in prospect. She described cleaning and helping out, without wages.
The arrangement kept her fed and housed. It gave her no earnings to save towards tuition, accommodation or another opportunity. Her immediate needs were met, but the means to change her circumstances remained out of reach. After seven months, she decided to leave.
Young Garo students perform a traditional dance in northern Bangladesh, practising knowledge passed down between generations. Their schooling brings another set of expectations: learning across languages and passing examinations that can determine whether they continue studying or leave to find work.
That decision deserves as much attention as the hardship. Doshumi had assessed what the placement was giving her and concluded that she needed something more. She returned to her sister and began looking again.
Family connections made both moves possible. A cousin helped her find the salon; her sister offered somewhere to go when she left. Such relationships can provide protection where a young person has little money and few alternatives. They cannot always provide the income, teaching or qualifications needed to move forward.
Her older sister, Sushila, regularly works at the Garo Experience in Nalikhali, cleaning guest rooms and preparing traditional food, much of it over an open fire. Her cooking draws on years of watching and working beside other women: learning to judge the heat, prepare ingredients and recognise when food is ready.
These are skills acquired through practice and responsibility. They feed people and help her earn when work is available. They also carry knowledge between generations without a classroom or certificate.
Doshumi’s examination result tells us little about the wider learning through which a person becomes capable within her own community. But recognising that learning must never become an excuse to offer Indigenous children less formal education. Doshumi wants access to further study and a profession. She should have the teaching required to pursue them.
Nor should she have to justify her ambition by promising to return and serve her village. She is entitled to build a life of her own. What matters is whether education gives her more freedom to decide where that life will lead.
At present, the need to earn threatens to make the decision for her. Work could finance another examination attempt. It could also consume the time required to prepare. Food, transport and somewhere to sleep have to be paid for before tuition. A pause in education can lengthen as immediate demands take precedence.
Doshumi has not given up. When we spoke, we made a plan to help her prepare for English again. She told me she expects her next examination to be in February 2027. There is time, although her confidence is low.
Preparation will need to begin with what she understands. She needs someone who can explain a sentence, listen to an answer and help her work through a mistake. She needs to hear and use English often enough to approach an unfamiliar question without depending entirely on whether she has seen it before.
The plan must fit the life she is living. Lessons have to accommodate work and travel. Studying requires time, energy and somewhere to open a book. Those ordinary conditions may determine whether she can make use of another chance.
Passing would clear the immediate barrier. Further study would bring new questions about courses, fees and how to support herself. One successful examination cannot settle all of them. It would allow her to take the next step.
When I think back to the twenty children Doshumi remembers starting school beside her, I wonder how each would tell the story. A childhood shared in one village became a succession of departures, until only two remained along the route she followed. We now know something about what happened to her. The others deserve to be heard.
Following their lives would help us understand where schooling became difficult, what families did to keep children attending and when the need to earn overtook the possibility of continuing. It would give substance to a national discussion too often conducted at a distance from the households in which these decisions are made.
That is where the wider Indigenous education story must be found: in particular schools and families, across communities whose differences matter, listening carefully enough to establish what they share.
The Garo Record will follow those questions alongside Doshumi’s efforts to continue her education. Her future remains open. Dhaka may yet offer paid work, further study and a profession. Nalikhali may remain home, become a place she returns to, or hold a different place in the life she makes.
She should have room to discover that for herself. For now, she is looking for work and preparing to face English again. She has already left home, spent seven months working without wages and started over at her sister’s.
When we next speak about her education, I want to hear what she has learnt and what she hopes to study. We have spent enough of this conversation on what it has cost her to keep trying.
