Allow me to introduce Hanan Howlader. He was my neighbour when I lived in Dhaka. My family lived in a one storey house with a flat roof next to small lake. Hanan lived in a small enclosure with many relatives right on the lake. They tended the water pump.

It was natural and inevitable that we all got to know a little about each other, especially as we had three young children. In fact, Hanan has one girl a year younger than ours.

After three years in the house, we moved on. But Hanan suddenly popped up in Male at the cafe where I went every morning. It was an amazing surprise. Turned out he had got a job looking after the cleaning of the office and retail block where the cafe was (the STO Trade Centre).

We would chat every now and again but I moved to another part of town and another cafe, so the chats became far more infrequent. This time in Male, I bumped into him three times in one day, so I felt I had to write something down about him.

In the morning I met him in the STO Trade Centre as I went for a meeting, and he was able to show me into his office. Just a few metres square but an office. He has risen from supervisor to Site Manager. Sharing the space was a Maldivian woman. Hanan explained that there were just four Maldivians in the cleaning firm: the owner, the MD and two women who did the books. All the other employees are Bangladeshi. When he first came, 8 years ago, he managed 12 Bangladeshi workers. Today he oversees 80.

Over those eight years and increase in responsibility his salary has gone up from $110 a month to $370 a month. “Now it’s OK”, he says, rocking his head back with a shy grin, “Now is good”.

In the afternoon I met him when he barped the horn of the minibus he was driving, stacked with full bin bags, and I was on the back of a motorbike. His grin came across the passenger seat and out the window to me, “See I told you I drove the car didn’t I?” it proclaimed, shy and proud.

After dark we ran into each other on the street. I was walking back to my room for dinner, he was on a bicycle, holding his phone light for a torch, and going between the various venues where the company have got new contracts to clean. I knew of the unbelievable hours he was doing when he first came to town but now I found out he is doing no less. He starts at 5.30 am and goes on until 9 pm..or maybe 10 pm. If there are many sites working at once or there are issues to attend to, his day may extend to 11 pm or even midnight. Does he get a day off? No. He has a few hours to himself on Friday, after about 6.30 pm.

For 8 years he has worked every single day he has been in Male. In those 8 years he has been back to see his family in Dhaka three times. He will stay, he says, another five years without going back home and then return for good. His daughter will be 14 years old. He will have seen her three times since she was one year old. “Now is good”, Hanan says, “Now is good”. Damn, what do we know?