During the rainy season in the remoter villages of Bangladesh, children often arrive at school soaking wet, lugging their soggy, wrinkled books on their shoulders. So West High student Sami Safiullah traveled this past summer to his ancestral village to donate a school-full of backpacks.

Now back at West High to start his senior year, Sami says the backpacks were a big hit, even if the backpacks' contents — a toothbrush and toothpaste — were received with more skepticism. The subtleties of Bangladeshi hygiene were new to Sami, who was born in Utah to Bangladeshi parents Safi and Shaheen Safiullah.

Photos he brought back from the subcontinent show an outgoing, enthusiastic American young man brushing his teeth in front of rooms full of baffled elementary school students. But he says he thinks he made some headway to encourage them to take care of their teeth.

The adults, he says, were excited he traveled so far to visit them. His grandfather had been a tax commissioner in the village of Shaktala and had fought in the 1947 war of independence from Britain. "But they were confused why I was spending time teaching them about sanitation when I should be coming to their houses more to eat with them," he says.

The homes he visited often had a shelf full of Pepsodent, but if the toothpaste was used at all it was saved for special occasions, he says. There was usually a shelf full of Lux soap, too, but these were also often covered with dust.

Sami surveyed the village and found that 40 percent of adults don't wash their hands on a regular basis; most washed their hands either with water only or with water and ash or water and soil; 67 percent don't dispose of their children's feces in a latrine; and 44 percent had no access to latrine facilities.

He hopes to return to the area soon to help build enclosed latrines, working again with his extended Bangladeshi family. Originally he had hoped to launch his project through Save The Children, but he says he never got a reply to his inquiries. Eventually he would like to turn the family-run charity, Students for Bangladesh, into a nonprofit organization.

Sami raised over $2,300 from friends, family, West High students and Salt Lake businesses and organizations, including the Muslim-Jewish Alliance, whose refugee relief coalition helped inspire his desire to help the four villages surrounding Shimarkanda Primary School. The money provided 300 backpacks, the dental supplies and 170 mosquito nets to prevent malaria.

---

E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com