A basket
David: This is a very, very important object. They come in all sizes, small, big. This is portable. We don’t have ‘boxes’ but we have containers. Everything goes into this, anything at all. This is it – it’s all there…very, very, very handy! We use this very, very much. It's our box, our carrier, our anything at all!
Suruk: Back home, if a snake bites you…there are
still people today who could come and remove the poison straight
away.
Two years ago, when I was back home, a big snake kept coming and catching things like small chickens, so they called in the snake charmer, and it took him about an hour, but the big snake came out. It worked! And then you put the snake in one of those baskets, and you take it away.
Back home, when people have nothing to do, they make baskets or mats or something. For three or four months each year, during the monsoon season, women and men have little to do because they can’t travel, so they sit and make baskets and mats with the raffia and the bamboo.
A basket like this, you can use it for anything.
David, National Coalition for Black Volunteering
Suruk, Bengali Men's Group
