Friday, February 26, 2010

Saint Martin's-Part 1

The whole house is sagging. Under the weight of drying fruits, vegetable vines, oars, and bits of trash the palm frond shingles and woven bamboo walls are slowly being pushed back into the sandy soil. The sun is setting into the thick haze hanging over the Bay of Bengal. In the fading evening light I am entertaining a half dozen small children with my camera and answers to their memorized questions of “howareyouiamfine?” and “your country?”

Inside the low doorway of the house two men are talking loudly with an old woman. I understand a handful of the Bangla words I hear and guess that some sort of negotiation is taking place. The yard is full of small papaya and banana trees covered in green fruit.

Abruptly the discussion stops and the two men emerge smiling. They turn to the children who quickly stick their hands out. Into their open palms the men put a fistful of crumbled red notes. The kids demand more and the men add another ten taka—roughly 17 US cents. With cash now in hand a dozen small fists start digging into the sand. The stench of decaying marine life fills the air. From the ground come dozens of beautiful shells. Many are still squirming with maggots. Each shell is inspected before being stuffed into a nylon sack. Several purple sea urchins are retrieved from where they were drying in the top of a papaya tree.

Another few weeks drying in the sunshine on Saint Martin’s Island will make these former mollusks and echinoderms from the island’s coral reef ready for shipment to seaside resorts back on mainland Bangladesh. The shells will be hawked by small children to smiling middle class and foreign tourist on a dirty beach bordered by dozens of newly built high rise hotels.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Dusty Collar.

It is hot. Between the dust and bright sun the color is washed out of the day. We have just arrived at the end of the road. Before us crumbling brick and clay continues southward, but we stop. There is no reason to try and go further--the decaying road has no destination. At least not any more. Nine months ago this was a place of mud and tin homes, small villages, fishermen, lumberyards, and fish farms. These are gone--erased by the eight foot high flood waters of last year's cyclone season.

Minutes after arriving we are surrounded by locals who offer us lunch. They then comment on how dirty I am from the long ride and offer us a place to wash. My attempts at the local shower--clad in a skirt-like lungi--quickly draw laughter from on lookers. Clean, we search for a way by boat into the Sundarban wilderness. The Sundarbans are the world's largest mangrove jungle. The lush green islands are home to fishermen, tigers, woodcutters, and pirates. The forest's many canals are wild enough to have hidden a population of 6,000 Irrawaddy river dolphins--unknown to the World Wildlife Fund until last year.

Cartcutter, the village we hire a boat from, has experienced problems with salt water damage to aquaculture and groundwater since last year's cyclone. It's roads and homes still show signs of damage.

Patorekali has none of these problems. It no longer exists. A row of hasty assembled tin and tarp houses line the remains of the main street. Pieces of a mosque and the village's school hang over the muddy river banks.

No one living today had ever seen a storm like last year's. Even the man I am staying with who had survived a tiger attack--by killing it with his bare hands--had never faced anything like last year's cyclone. Here in the low-lying delta of the Meghna River the rising waters of the Bay of Bengal are facing off with with the southern end of Bangladesh. One storm at a time Bangladesh is losing ground.

Now it is the dry season and though the damage is still fresh life goes on. Hundreds of workers rebuild roads and embankments--50 meters further back from the water. Fisherman check their nets. Bicycles haul wagon loads of lumber north towards the highway. Newly painted boats dry in the hot sun.

My host treats us to shrimp, fish, and crabs from what remain of his aquaculture ponds. These luxury foods are usually reserved for export to foreign markets in the USA and Europe. He arranges tours on the edge of the Sundarbans, a visit to a forestry outpost, and photo opportunities with monkeys. As his guest I am show around the village--introduced to hundreds of curious men and children. They laugh and smile when I try to speak to them in the pieces I know of their language.

Humanity, curiosity, hospitality, hardship, endurance--this is Bangladesh.

Too soon after arriving we begin the long, hot, dusty trip back to the highway.