The Sundarbans

Since getting to Bangladesh, I had heard about the mythic Sundarbans mangrove forest in the south, the largest mangrove ecosystem in the world, and home to the legendary Royal Bengal Tiger. It remained on some sort of mental 'to do' as the river of life here in Bangladesh flew, drifted, tumbled and otherwise meandered along. All this changed when a French friend of mine Melody organised a small group of us to visit the Sundarbans on an eco-tour.

We converged at the airport midweek after work, and before a public holiday (the hindu durga puja). After some delay which gave extra time to sample some mishti (Bengali sweets), we flew from Dhaka to Jessore, then took a minivan for a couple of sleepy hours. There was a certain deep-seated pleasure from gliding on the soft, furry edge between wake and sleep. Eventually we arrived on The Boat around 1am to drift into an excited night-before-christmas type of sleep.

While we slept the little vessel chugged through the night, inching its way down the Pasur river. Upon dawn breaking, my bleary eyes met with a visage of panoramic stillness, a mirror reflection of distant treelines in the gently ebbing water. We had arrived in the Sundarbans, around 10,000 square kilometres of mangroves, a vast delta on the Bay of Bengal formed by the super confluence of the Padma, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers. From the air it looks like a world of capillaries and blood vessels; from the ground it's like you are stepping into a primordial interface between water, trees, and sky.

Our little boat was an exercise in rotund cuteness; squat yet charming, with green and orange sides. There were six tiny compartments down below that slept two each in a cosy fashion, while up top a mini deck provided a shared relaxation place. I felt a bit guilty that there were at least six crew there to support the eight of us, mostly crammed into the crew box-like section at the back. However these type of space constraints were pretty much standard in Bangladesh - maybe you just notice it more when you're on a boat for three days. The tour operator, Rapantar, was more than just a travel company, quoting from Travel To Care:

The company originally had its start as a development organisation under the name Rupantar, which means ‘social transformation.’ The central idea behind its work is that development practitioners use local social/cultural media to encourage change among its client villages. In plain English, these are music performances where the villagers gather not only for entertainment but to hear stories about the difficulties some members of their society face and how they overcome those challenges. Given the low literacy rates and difficulties in transmitting information between the remote villages of the Sundarbans, Rupantar has discovered a unique, effective and culturally appropriate way to spread ideas.

Over the next three days we drifted through various canals and tributaries, marveling at the expanses of sky and water around us, unheard of back in Dhaka. At one point we took on two armed guards - apparently to protect from pirates and tigers. Back in Dhaka I found a Daily Star article that suggested we were lucky to be protected by more than just sticks! As for the tigers, there are estimated to be around 450 left in the forest, but these are threatened by poachers and angry villagers. On the latter point, the villagers actually do have a reason to be angry - on average a tiger will kill a person every three days in the Sundabans - the exact duration of our trip. With their habit shrinking from illegal woodcutting, tigers have been increasing coming in contact with humans. There are some projects that provide alternative livelhoods to villagers to make them less reliant on extraction from the forest. From the tigers' side the SundarbansTigerProject increases research and conservation efforts in the area.

Eventually though it all had to come to an end, and as the sun set while we chugged along back to Khulna, I realised that the last three days had been the most peaceful and beauty-rich in Bangladesh. I hope to return someday!




Postscript: Praise Kid Garden

I took a day off and to stay in Khulna, another of our party Anne did the same. We visited a school that my wonderful Bangla teacher in Melbourne, Mary-Anne Hess, would donate the money from our classes to. I had always wanted to visit it and finally got the chance. The school, called Praise Kid Garden, housed and educated around 70 children from disadvantaged backgrounds - many from indigenous minority groups in the north of Bangladesh. It was started in 2002 by a NGO worker and Christian preacher Patrick Dias, who wanted to find a home for the many small children that he found local women were offering to him as they could no longer support them. Today he still runs the school entirely voluntarily, doing additional translation jobs as paid employment. He is an inspiring, warm hearted man who embodies a combination of love and determination.

Cox's Bazaar Training

About a week after Dad left, my project team at Concern Universal Bangladesh organised 5 days of training for partner organisations.  The training was part of the climate change and disaster risk reduction capacity building project, and comprised a few different sessions, one on proposal writing, one on learning and evaluation, and other on principles and philosophy of Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction (some info here).Myself and my colleague Kanika developed the proposal writing module, but this largely got delivered by our unit head Hamid.  Most of the participants were founders/executive directors of their organisations, which ranged from tiny to medium/large size, similarly there was a vast difference of experience in the room which was challenging from the trainer's perspective. 

Everyday after the session would end the participants would generally change into board shorts (for the males, the females didnt have this option and remained in sari's generally) and hit the beach, seemingly becoming teenagers again and running up and down taking hundreds of photographs.  After all, we were in Cox' Bazaar, THE premiere tourist destination in Bangladesh, which seemed to mean vast amounts of fairly dubious looking hotels, billboards and stalls selling shells and other nick-nacks, not to mention the highest concentration of hawaiian shirts in the country.  But it quickly became apparent the real reason that people flocked here - the stunning beach, 125 km continuous kilometres of gently sloping sand.  Around twilight the golden light spilled over the water, which through reflections covered the whole place with luminous honey.  Being from Australia I am fairly spoilt with easy beach access, but for most of the Bangladeshis it was their only access to the dreamy space where ocean meets sky.  Interestingly enough I didn't see a single western foreigner during the week I was here, which seemed to indicate the efforts the government was putting into tourism marketing. 

I did get sick with some sort of virus bacteria, alongside a few others... there was a fairly uninspiring day when everyone else went off gallivanting to another more isolated beach and the infirm held close to their hotel rooms and even closer to their toilets and/or handkerchiefs.  Another incident occurred when three of the participants got stuck in a lift... an hour later they were freed, but a brawl almost ensured when angry participants clashed with hotel staff who had seemingly done little to free their friends. 

The trip ended with a looong overnight bus trip back to Dhaka (complete with the obligatory engine failure around breakfast time).  As we crawled back to the capital, and as I felt my sense of space shrinking to matched the crowded streets, I was able to fully appreciated the magical sense of space that Cox's Bazaar had, and the feeling of being around so many people were able to suspend their difficult lives for a few precious days to kick loose in the sand and run around like children. 

Dad's Visit

My dad visited me over the period September 6-10th, arriving on midnight of the same day I returned from Sri Lanka.  It was lovely to see him, and even more interesting in this different context - previously  I have been the one being led around by him in Thailand or China to hear his dispersion of wisdom... now there was an inversion and I found myself offering key insights about Bengali culture and opportune moments... how the circle repeats itself.  It's also interesting how when you show a visitor around for the first time in foreign place that you now call 'home', it casts a new kind of curious light on the surroundings which had now become common-place and invisible in the process of getting to know place.  It's a certain kind of unknowing.

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka.  The opportunity to visit came through an invitation to some youth climate change  workshops that the Sri Lankan Youth Climate Action Network (SLYCAN) had sent out. I had little idea about the workshops, but life is all about throwing oneself into new possibilities so I jumped at the chance..

I had one night in Dhaka after returning from Nepal before setting out for Sri Lanka.  Apart from the ritualistic sorting and repacking of dirty/clean clothes,  I was filled with a curiosity of what lay ahead.  A whole new country… Buddhist religion… years of civil war… string hoppers… I was curious about everything, and these musings almost got the better of me at the airport, where I dreamily left my passport behind on a shop counter after purchasing a ‘vegetable roll’.  Twenty minutes before my flight I was frantically searching as were airport security when it was found in safe keeping at the ‘vegetable roll’ establishment.  

After touching down in Colombo I caught a smooth 2hr taxi ride to 'Raveli Beach Resort' where some of the youth deligates were staying.  There I had the doubly novel experience of having a beer with an Indian, Jayasimha, who was not only vegetarian but was doing a presentation about the large impact meat consumption has on climate change for the Humane Society International (beer and vegetarians are rarely sighted in Bangladesh).  This is an issue close to my heart (and stomach).  I also met Vositha, a Sri Lankan activist who was finishing her legal studies and was the powerhouse behind the workshops and SLYCAN, running on few funds and even fewer hours of sleep. 

The next day we attended a journalists' workshop and I delivered a brief presentation on the Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction (CMDRR) project that I am working on in Bangladesh. It was my first presentation on it, and I tried the hardest to believe all the words I was saying - conceptually my belief was there, but practically I had little exposure yet to the  CMDRR approach in action. Post workshop myself and Jayasimha were dazzled by slick brand shopping mall... where sunglasses in glass cabinets were selling for hundred of dollars, next to countless shelves of designer clothing... the silent mantra around us was to fall in love with the Image, and consume its material counterpart, the Product. It was a bit depressing to be reminded again of the pulling power of unfettered consumption, so the only remedy was some ice-cream consumption followed by a beautiful sunset dinner at the classic Galle Face Hotel, overlooking the lazy ocean rubbing up against the shore.  

The next morning I had some time to relax and spend by myself - precious time in a packed schedule of people people people.  Wandering along the beach and in the hotel I discovered some interesting facts about the way romance is negotiated here.  Like in Bangladesh, public displays of affection are seldom seen (though perhaps slightly more common here), and on the beach the canoodling is usually done behind a massive umbrella, or a rocky outcrop.  Meanwhile, at the hotel something else was going on... series of couples were presenting themselves to reception to then disappear for just a few hours. Later the hotel manager explained to me that the beach umbrellas were for people who 'could not afford to stay in my hotel'.  Aside from the lovers, the beach had considerable slum areas which were my first realisation of the poverty residing outside of the fancy hotels and shopping malls in downtown Colombo.

There were some more workshops over the next few days covering a range of broadly climate related issues.  I presented two - one on the crucial need for creativity in addressing climate change, the other on photography and social change.  An inspiring mix of young people attended the talks, and it was refreshing to speak about bold new worlds being created rather than dwelling always on the critique of the current.  I was particularly inspired by the two sisters behind the events - Vositha and Vishakha Wijenayake.  Polar opposites in personality, they somehow brought the events together, with particularly Vositha's persistence with getting things across the line.  Despite some disorganisation and some attendance issues - that is common when everything needs be done at the last minute with not enough people -the workshops themselves radiated a quiet authenticity and carved out a modest series of spaces for immodest ideas to be discussed and new worlds advanced.  I hope that the SLYCAN network was emboldened by the workshops and will organise more!


Socially too it was lovely to focus on quality, not quantity.  Spending time with the two sisters, and their friend Kaveesha, over cool drinks on quiet beaches, amongst the sway of palm trees and the nocturnal sighs of the ocean, was a beautiful relief to big dinners of Australian volunteers in dusty Dhaka.

There was a final, painful episode of the adventure that should be chronicled.  On the last day I was leaving for Kandy, a stunning town nestled in the forests above Colombo.  Running for the train, I slipped and fell on the railway tracks and ripped my right toenail.  Eheu! Bleeding and hobbling, I made it to the train brandishing my ticket (it was actually for the urging of someone on the platform that I needed a ticket which made me dash across the tracks in the first place), and tried to nonchalantly cover up the pooling blood.  This train lasted an hour, I then transferred to another train, this time for 3 hours.  I really tried to concentrate on the beautiful scenery passing by and not the growing pain in my foot.  However a very generous woman (who turned out to be a nurse) spotted my injury and insisted on taking me to the hospital in Kandy... which turned out to be overfull, so after visiting three private clinics, we found one that could take me in.  They prodded the toenail which was hanging on by about 8-12mm of flesh... meekly I said that we'd known each other for a long time and that could I keep the toenail... no it needed to come off apparently... I suggested that anesthetic would be a good practice, they said yes, they could provide it but its extra time and money, and by way of concluding the decision making they pulled off the nail then and there.  Words cannot really describe the pain, which was extended through forcible scrubbing of the exposed raw nail bed.  Bandaged up, I hobbled off finally to my actual destination - the temple of the Holy Tooth Relic (Sri Dalada Maligawa), which is said to have housed a tooth of the Buddha.  My mind was on toenails (or lack of them) instead of teeth, but it was nonetheless an interesting temple to explore.

When I arrived back in Colombo, Vositha, Vishakha and Kaveesha took me under their wing like the hobbling, bleeding bird that I was and treated me to lovely last dinner on the beach (on the way my contact lens blew out of my right eye into the sri lankan night yielding an otherworldly half-glow to my vision).    As the plane took off at early next morning (there was not a chance to sleep in between unfortunately), I could not help feeling grateful for the chance to visit this peaceful place, which seems like a little pocket outside of time.

Nepal

Leaving the no-place of the airport on 16th August, my colleague Kanika asked me whether I had noticed some differences between Kathmandu and Dhaka.  Once I opened my mouth in reply, surprisingly the observations poured out.  Firstly the diversity of the faces that we passed by – they ranged from south Asian, to east Asian to central Asian, in wide ranging palettes.  Secondary there were women everywhere!  I think I had acclimatized to the 70/30 to 80/20 ratio that you see on the streets here in Dhaka, and now this had been thoroughly overturned.  Moreover, there were women zooming by on motorbikes! Driving them rather than sitting side-saddle behind a man.  Crazyness!  Thirdly, as my eye scanned the roads and horizon, I became aware that my gazes was going up AND down through space – there was actually depth to the landscape!  (Dhaka shares with Melbourne the consistency of a flat plain).  Here valleys opened up between buildings and statues glinted on hilltops.  A fourth difference was actually seeing Western tourists – suddenly they appeared in the streets and out of the shops, walking turtles with their oversized backpacks and brand new hiking shoes.  In Dhaka the foreigners are generally NGO workers who flit between their office, their apartment, and the expat club in cars with tinted windows.  There’s not a backpack to be seen.

The first week was for work, with the five-strong Concern Universal team splitting into two, I was lucky enough to go on the scenic venture to Makwanpur, around 7 hours winding drive from Kathmandu.  Deep, lush vistas opened up around our packed little vessel as it wound it’s way around hilltops and through valleys.  The clouds which hung heavy at our level eventually opened up, and unpaved roads turned to slush. At one point I was introduced to an anti-bog technique of weighing down the car as much as possible when climbing the hills.  This involved various random people jumping in our car, hanging off the sides etc, which surprising worked to get us up the hill in bouts of terror and laughter. 

The Makwanpur District itself was beautiful, with a low-lying, unassuming river offering a peaceful expanse alongside paddy fields and the humble settlements of the town.  The next day there was a sharing meeting that brought together various local NGOs and government around the key issue of Disaster Risk Reduction and climate change.  It was good to see many young people attending (even if I couldn’t understand the Nepali).  I was a bit disappointed to see the lack of participation in the meeting but this is all part of the learning of how things are run over here.  Over the next few days we visited various schools and an NGO that had been implementing a DRR education project there - encompassing infrastructural changes (earthquake sensitive buildings etc) as well as community empowerment (local student and community clubs for sharing stories and co-learning). See report here.

Back in Kathmandu we visited an NGO that had an interesting arrangement between an community organic cooperative assisting to fund the local school which had an environmental curriculum. See report here.  There was a National level sharing meeting with many interesting speakers on climate change and disaster risk reduction, which drew many audience questions and responses.  It’s so hard to know the impact of these events, the extent of how far the ripples go out.  I hoped for the best.

The work trip ended after a week, and I was able to find myself again, which was a bit of a relief (I was the only one who didn’t speak Bangla or Nepali…).  Some of the Nepal AYADs had a spare room and were generous enough to let me stay in it over the next few days where I explored Kathmandu.  Sharmila, a generous model-turned-university-lecturer, showed me around her university, which included a visit to the fine art faculty where I was over-joyed to see actual art being created by a range of long haired characters which reminded me of studies at my art school.  They were very different to the paintings that you tended to see in the Thamel tourist area (such as 'Himalayan range', 'Woman in tribal dress carrying water jug', 'Himalayan range with water jug woman' etc).  

Despite a growing cold (a present I think some of my departing colleagues bequeathed to me), I managed to briefly escape Kathmandu and made it to Bhaktapur, an hour’s drive away with a beautiful old town centre crowded with dilapidated, beautiful temples and maze-like cobble-stoned alleys.  Groups of women would look down on me and other foreigners from their ancient wooden shuttered windows; a wave would return a smile.  I spent a delightful afternoon playing with children whilst sheltering in a shrine from the rain.  Another few elastic hours were spent talking with curious locals who invited me back to there home – two teenage daughter shared a room which was divided into their two choosen disciplines of science and management, with the textbooks piled high on either side.   Eventually though, it all had to come to an end, and on 29^th August I flew out and back home to… Dhaka.

Barisal Field Trip

My team at Concern Universal had a second field trip over July 2-5th, this time to a southern district called Barisal.  The trip formed part of our 'Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction' project, which involves working with 67 partner NGOs to build up their capacity to deliver their own community programs better.  Half of the trip involved this capacity building training, while the other half involved visiting a few villages and schools in which two partner organisations ran various education and training programs.   I was lucky enough to go this latter trip, and we were joined with representatives from the five partner NGOs that were from Nepal and they had traveled down to Bangladesh to join in this visit.

It was fascinating and harrowing to visit some of these villages, one of which was barely 500m from the Bay of Bengal.  During the massive Sidr cyclone in 2007, waves over 6m had pummeled the coast, including this village, which was devastated.  However through participating in some of disaster preparedness activities that the NGO was running, they were able to slowly build their resilience.  This included raising houses on mud platforms, building portable cooking stoves that families could take after disasters, using coconuts as floatation devices, and developing early warning systems.  Two years later the village was hit by cyclone Aila, but because of these interventions, damage was reduced.

During meeting the villages, seeing their preparations, and hearing their stories, I was moved by what these people had gone through, and the sheer tenacity and hope which they approached their situation.  They weren't going anywhere, and it was impressive to sense some of the pride that they had in their community.

It seems in start contrast to the clamouring and complaining that I am reading about in Australia regarding the carbon tax.  Over here, no one is debating climate change - their are no Lord Moncktons deniers spreading the seeds of doubt.  Millions have been facing a changing climate, and increasingly severe natural disasters, for decades, and thousands of NGOs, research institutes, and community initiatives have been quietly working away at methods of adapting to the onslaught.   At these times I cant help but to feel ashamed of my own country and our bubble of illusion that we are desperate to prop up, despite the fact that our denial is actually costing the lives and livelihoods of people here in Bangladesh. 

Further trip details are here.

Kolkata Trip

Myself and two other AYADs (both called Victoria) took the opportunity to sneak away from hot, dusty Dhaka to evener hotter, dustier Kolkata for a brief holiday.  Actually it was a wonderful trip, and break away from both work and social routines.

I had first visited Kolkata in 2004 on the first Friends of Kolkata volunteer trip, and had many challenging, moving and beautiful experiences teaching photography to children and learning about the inspiring work of the Centre for Communication and Development and the Institute of Social Work which I volunteered at.  I returned again in 2007 with a new group of volunteers.  But I had never had much time to just wander around the streets and take in the sights (and smells!).

Most of the trip is conveyed in photos below.  But a few interesting observations can be made about Kolkata compared to Dhaka:
- It was interesting to see many more women on the streets, as shop keepers etc.  Dhaka has few.
- The Western influence is much greater - more trendy street wear, and in particular women wearing jeans which is pretty rare in Dhaka, more western shops and cafes. 
- There seemed to be far more activities around and on the street - more vegetable sellers, more cold drink stalls, more coconut juice-wallas, more risque underwear street stalls, more people lying in the shade, more goats playing acrobats.  Driving back from the airport in Dhaka I was thinking 'where were all the people', something which I never would have thought I would say about Bangladesh.
- It has a beautiful, mesmerising flower market next to the river banks which remind me a little of Varanasi.


I hope you enjoy the photos!

Training trip – Bogra

I’ve just come back from a training trip to Bogra, in the north west of Bangladesh.  The training was for resource mobilization and monitoring/evaluation for 15 or so of our partner organisations – to essentially equip them better to deliver their programs on education, health and disaster preparedness mostly.  It was basically all in bangla so the content largely went over my head, apart from the odd word here or there.  I was doing photo and video documentation of the training so at least I could feel useful in some way... 

Unfortunately on the second day I got quite ill with some sort of nasty viral fever which left me largely bedridden for a couple of days, with aching muscles and a temperature.  Just when I was thinking things may be getting better, another disaster struck – while being in a bout of feverish delirium, my camera fell from its bag and my brand new $650 lens broke (or rather ‘bent’, not a good thing for a lens to do)!  I had discovered the low-point of the trip.  

From there things picked up a bit, I started to recover, and I had a nice last night chatting to co-workers and answering various Australia related questions, being the expert representative.

It was ultimately inspiring to meet so many people from different organisations, big and small, that are working at a grassroots level towards poverty alleviation.  I lost track of all their projects - but they gave me hope.  Another positive thing was that I able to make some beautiful photographs.

On the way there:

During a field visit to one of the partner organisations and their village:

During the training at Bogra:

The Dhaka Streets (I)

To indulge in gratuitous stereotypes, anyone who has traveled amongst Asian countries knows the broiling pot pouri streetlife that makes anglo-saxon streetscapes seem like ghost towns.  Dhaka is no exception.