Hello everyone back in Singapore. We’ve finally arrived in Singapore; I’m updating from an Internet terminal in the Dhaka airport. The computer here is really laggy and I miss broadband already.
Most importantly: Everyone is safe.
Wish us luck for the next 7 days!
Team Go-Far2009
Bangladesh in 6 more hours
Between places and the yearning to go home
Despite having spent almost 30 lakhs (300,000 Takas) to land a job in Singapore, the 29-year-old still dreams of coming back. “The financial burden is great, he says, “But I have no choice, my sisters are still schooling and my father has retired. I keep thinking, thinking of how to come back here to work.”
Some parting shots of Molaksu and friends:
Delwar
Zakirul, also a Bangladeshi migrant worker in Singapore, wasn't around when his wife gave birth to their first son three years ago. He calls home regularly
Hi all,
Can you believe it — we will finally be setting off in a few hours’ time! Guess we would be in Dhaka by the time most of you will read this entry. Actually, this is an attempt to keep my fingers busy so that I won’t be compelled to stuff more things into my steadily-ballooning backpack. But I would also like to reflect back on the weeks of preparation and research that have led us to this point. I believe that most of us would have a general idea of what we’d like to accomplish.
Although I lean towards the optimistic side in envisioning that things will go smoothly and we will be able to get whatever interviews we had initally planned, I know that it’s most likely that things will derail.
In fact, it has already derailed — the torrential rains and flooding. How brilliant. I’ve a feeling that we’re in for a great adventure.
For me, I admit I’m not used to uncertainty, and I have the fear that I would idle around with nothing productive to do, because there’s no fixed plan. That’s scary because in Singapore, everything is planned. I mean, just look at the National Day preparations. I lost count of how many rehearsals and previews they have (my brother and cousin devote Saturdays to this since like, the month of May?) Even going for a haircut may warrant an appointment the day before.
I would think and the greatest lesson is not adjusting to the rain, the language or mosquito-infested planes, but to ditch this mindset of ours and learn to cope with the unpredictable.
Good luck, be nice to each other, and have fun!
Some links which I thought might help in our story ideas. Click on them to go to the sites.
Video on immigration/education
Slideshow on tourism in Bangladesh
Al-Jazeera video on the acid attack on Bangladeshi women story posted by Joon-Nie earlier
Many more videos on YouTube and other video sites if you look carefully.
This is not related to Bangladesh but a site I like going to for inspiration:
http://mediastorm.org/
Get ready to sink or swim in Bangladesh!
As we are all busy with our packing, Philip shared with me this piece of news.
Hmm… maybe we need to pack our swimming trunks in?
Just kidding!
Enjoy your packing and pack well. Looking forward to seeing the Bengali sunrise.
Cheers,
Shi Xiong
Gently down the (angry) stream
Major Tributaries and rivers, trans-boundary sources
I recently picked up this book called “Rivers of Life”, a critical review of the Flood Action Plan (FAP) in Bangladesh by local journalists. The FAP is a multimillion dollar, ambitious disaster-mitigation strategy undertaken by the Bangladeshi government since the last decade. It was initiated after two major floods in 1987 and 1988. I found it quite a refreshing read aside from the usual run of the mill government, NGO and academic reports because of it includes not just success stories, but failures as well.
Same flood, different perceptions
“English only has one word, flood, whereas Bangla has two: flood is either called barsha (normal flood) or banya (abnormal flood)”
Through foreigners’ eyes (I’m a guilty party as well), floods are problems, and flood waters a nuisance meant to be disposed of as quickly as possible. Western intervention to the FAP actually proved more disasterous than beneficial, turning once arable farm lands into permanent drylands for flood intolerant, western style agriculture. From the farmer, fishermen, women workers, boatmen, urban elites, military, agronomists and gov. officials, floods mean diff things. Essentially disaster mitigation is a power play among diff interests groups, not just within Bangladesh, but also with its neighbours.
On roving rivers
My first contact with such a phenomenon was in Eastern Nepal, covering a post-Kosi flood conditions story. Around August 2008, the Sapta Kosi River (Sapta means 7 in Nepali, 7 tributaries) which is a transboundary water way between India and Nepal, one of the Ganges’s biggest tributaries, reversed its course. What I saw when I visited the flood affected areas was bewildering- vast tracts of land which used to be river beds now stand dry, while those parts now filled with water used to be settlement areas. It wasn’t hard to imagine the horror, the scale of nightmarish destruction, even though it was almost 1 year since the river breached its embankments.
A flood ravaged village in PaschimKusa, Nepal after Kosi River changed its course overnight
Temporary shelter, Kosi flood affected area, April 2009
Eye infections, like what this boy had, were common among people who lived in shelters on sandy, desert like land (which used to be the river bed)
Scary no? Roving rivers. It’s just unthinkable to be living with so much uncertainty, i mean to build your home near a ticking time bomb, with virtually no strong warning systems in place except that of nature. (eg. animals scurrying into houses) But rich alluvial soils near rivers are just too valuable to give up on. So for Bangladesh’s case, roving rivers are unfortunately a big problem, with the Brahmaputra shifting 100km westwards in the past two centuries. There’s a lot of geography involved, like how Bangladesh’s river source originates from Himalayas, one of the youngest mountain systems. And reason for rivers’ instability is due to the large amt of sediments that the 237 rivers carry downstream, 2 billion tonnes a year in total! Intriguing..
Murky political waters
I got the impression that water politics is quite a major issue in international relations among Southasia when I was in Nepal. Nepal always seems to suffer great thirst despite its amazing geography of mountains and river systems, and locals often point the finger of blame at India for controlling water sources in dam building projects for their own benefits and giving others the shorter end of the stick. These same arguements were also levelled at India from Bangladesh, which is geographically disadvantaged due to it being the furthest down away from Himalayan river sources. The establishment of Farakka Barrage at the Ganges just before it enters Bangladesh, for instance, has long been a point of contention for both countries because rivers, agriculture, and life around it means so much in economic terms.
It’s really tough, I feel, managing rivers and mitigating floods. Should it be more before the fact preventive or after the fact mitigation? And as for preventive measures, how so such that you don’t upset the delicate ecological balance and still be sustainable and lasting? When you tamper with nature, it’ll bite back with two times the vengeance.
And how so, when a cyclone comes every now and then to sweep away all the foundations and efforts?
Has flood and disaster migation lowered in priority in this climate of global financial recession?
A Nepali journalist once said she wished to specialize in the “water beat”, even furthering her studies in that. It seemed like a very obscure idea to me back then, but now I could totally understand -I could practically spend an entire life time reporting on water issues, but now i only have a week or two’s time.
And so finally, a post on my progress
Almost a decade later, there’s this one scene at the end of the nineties tornado thriller Twister I can’t forget. Helen Hunt and her male sidekick going full speed in a jeep on the heels of this maniacal twister, latching themselves to the beams of a house on what looked like their car’s safety belts, and releasing in the eye of the storm, a flurry of silver pin balls meant to capture the intensity of the twister.
Sounds crazy? I think that’s what my next few sojourns in Bangladesh would feel like. Probably minus the silver pin balls, the safety belts and the suarve male scientist companion. Probably plus a lot of waddling around in water, swatting out hordes of mosquitoes and ‘hahs??’ in deciphering the thick accents. (On second thought, the safety belts may stay judging on my past experiences riding Bangladeshi rickshaws)
My areas of research in GOFAR are mainly on 1) climate change and climate migration 2)Humanitarian situation of rohingyas in the context of economic recession 3) Comparing the fates of shipbuilding and shipbreaking industry in times of crisis.
The wettest areas seem to be Chittagong and Barisal (regions closest to the Bay of Bengal), receiving >2500mm of rainfall a year
Lots of sources call Bangladesh a “riverine” country. It just means a large land mass of Bangladesh is actually deltaic. Three major rivers namely the Brahmaputra-Jamuna, Ganges, and Meghna run through this flood prone Southasian nation. According to an article from The Geographical Journal, these waterways drain a combined catchment of some 1.55 million square kilometres, 11 times greater than Bangladesh’s land mass. Hence periodic floods have become such a regular routine, part and parcel of the lives of 20 per cent of the country’s population.
I hope to explore how collective pressures of financial crisis and environmental issues (i.e. climate change) aggravate the already vulnerable situation of local climate migrants. This a timely issue given the frequency of cyclone occurrence in Bangladesh, with the most recent Cyclone Aila on 25th May this year killing 200 and rendering 500,000 homeless in Southwesten Sundarbans. Flood rehabilitation efforts should be still underway and it would be interesting to document this in the context of financial recession.
An article from the New York Times estimates that almost 500,000 people, roughly the population of Washington, D.C, flock to the banks of the Buriganga River in Dhaka each year to escape floods and in search of new livelihoods. With the lost of property and farmland, not to mention mounting problems of the lack of clean water and disease outbreaks, what will the fates of flood victims in this downturn? Will there also be increasing job competition between urban dwellers and climate migrants settling in Dhaka’s slums?
Among news of El Nino’s early arrival, there have also been forecasts of impending droughts in Bangladesh. Warmer seas usually lead to greater occurences of cyclones in the monsoon (caused by warmer sea breeze, quicker convection currents, faster precipation and faster wind velocities). Is this co-existence of droughts and floods in Bangladesh a sign of climate change?
Agricultural productivity in rural Bangladesh is also declining as salinity in water tables rise with each inundation. What will this entail for food security then, especially in times of recession?
There’s already a storm brewing on my desk- and they’re in swirls of white- weather and climate notes. More findings coming up soon..
Cox's Bazar, at 120km, is the longest continuous beach line in the world.. But a tad too sleepy, i feel
Performed in 1971:
My friend came to me, with sadness in his eyes
He told me that he wanted help
Before his country dies
Although I couldn’t feel the pain, I knew I had to try
Now I’m asking all of you
To help us save some lives
Bangla Desh, Bangla Desh
Where so many people are dying fast
And it sure looks like a mess
I’ve never seen such distress
Now won’t you lend your hand and understand
Relieve the people of Bangla Desh
Bangla Desh, Bangla Desh
Such a great disaster – I don’t understand
But it sure looks like a mess
I’ve never known such distress
Now please don’t turn away, I want to hear you say
Relieve the people of Bangla Desh
Relieve Bangla Desh
Bangla Desh, Bangla Desh
Now it may seem so far from where we all are
It’s something we can’t neglect
It’s something I can’t neglect
Now won’t you give some bread to get the starving fed
We’ve got to relieve Bangla Desh
Relieve the people of Bangla Desh
We’ve got to relieve Bangla Desh
Relieve the people of Bangla Desh
What a stark contrast to Cat Stevens’ hippie tribute to ‘Katmandu’:
A poem about a pair of lovers, separated by the treachery of war and violence by Jibanananda Das.
If I were
If I were a wild-drake
Wild-duck, if you were
Somewhere on the horizon on the bank of Jolsirhi river
By a paddy field
Amidst slander reed
Resting in a tranquil nest,
Then on this Phalgun night
Watching the moon rising at the backdrop of Jhau branches
We, leaving the scent of low-land water,
Would have floated ourselves in the silvery crop of the sky -
Your wing touching mine, my wing feeling your blood beat -
Blue sky studded with numerous stars like the golden flowers of Khoi field,
In the green thick nest of Shirees forest
Like the golden egg
Phalgun moon
Perchance the sound of a gun-fire:
Our sharp movement,
Pumping ecstasy in our wing,
We sing the song of northern wind
Perchance the sound of a gun-fire again:
We are silent,
We are at peace
Life’s piecemeal death would not have been there;
Would not have been frustration and darkness of life’s piecemeal desires;
If I were a wild-drake
Wild-duck, if you were
Somewhere on the horizon on the bank of Jolsirhi river
By a paddy field.
Cheers
Shi Xiong
Or can we? When women make a choice between career and family
I may be thinking too far ahead, but if we just take stock of the remaining days to graduation, the ‘far’ future is really just, right around the corner.
Today I came across an article by Nancy Gibbs in Time magazine about Sarah Palin’s resignation as Governor of Alaska.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1909252,00.html
It was a pretty positive story counteracting the trend of professional women “opting out” of their careers for family life. Gibbs proposes that the push factor behind this drop out is more of hostile or inflexible workplaces rather than child rearing. She goes on to support her arguement with a survey showing that <8% of professional women left the workforce for a year or more during their prime child bearing age.
Gofar is also a time of special consideration for me. It may be parachute journalism at best, but at the end of that two weeks of reporting and months of assembling the stories, it will in some ways come to influence the decision on my future career.
One particularly memorable para in her article :
“..The idea that ambitious women reach a certain point in their professional lives only to be hauled home-ward by some innate maternal imperative has a cultural life all its own. The opt-out muth is esp. damaging right now, when job competition if fierce. When a very prominent woman takes on commitment-say, as governor of a state, whose voters are supposed to be the ones who decide if she’s no longer able to be effective- and then walks away, a shudder goes through every venue where women fight to assert their rights and affirm their commitment. How much easier does this make it for prospective employers, even unconsciously, to pause before hiring or promoting a woman with young children?”
I recall a conversation months back with a friend over msn. I was still in Lahore, weeks after my Nepal internship has ended, at a guesthouse where electricity goes off every other hour due to load shedding. Under the sweltering pakistani midnight heat (above 40 deg i swear), I was sweating out an online debate about women in journalism and family.
Me: “I’m only asking for equality in domestic responsibilities.”
Friend: “Does leaving your husband with his hands full of taking care of children means fairness to you? (Then I was saying that I still wanted to be very mobile in my field work even during motherhood).
So for juggling a demanding career, I have became an errant mother who abandons her children. “You can’t have the best of both worlds,” she concluded, in a debate which predictably left me feeling pretty defeated. What I find unsettling is not this conversation alone, but how society on the whole would perceive such women, and more importantly, how women themselves would socially sanction such behaviour from their compatriots. Even though there may be some form of institutional safeguards against discrimination in hiring married women or women with children, or promoting them, but there’s only a limit such regulations are effective. Not forgetting these rules of the game are devised, and monopolized largely by men in global workplaces.
Then I realise it’s not just women who are sometimes faced with tough choices between career and family life. Another friend, who recently made a difficult decision to lay aside his love for globetrotting and photography to help manage his family business, said rather ruefully: “Life is all about choices”.
I can’t help but notice that was exactly the same line which Palin was quoted saying, at the end of Gibbs’s article. “If I have learned one thing,” she (Palin) said, “life is about choices.”
But probably one difference between my friend’s situation and the ones professional women face is embodied in Gibbs’s kicker: That’s (the freedom to choose) something for which women have been fighting for a very long time.”
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