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Bangladesh Blog: Luck - Lost and found

(Gelöschtes Mitglied)
(Gelöschtes Mitglied) schrieb am 29.11.2007
Sandra Bulling, Media and Advocacy Manager from CARE Deutschland-Luxemburg is blogging from Bangaldesh. See also www.care.de

3_Luck: Lost and found

After another day of long driving, we visit one of five mobile medical teams that CARE is operating together with the Dhaka Community Hospital. These teams travel from site to site, treating hundreds of patients per day. We finally meet up with the team close to the “Sundarabans”, one of the world’s largest mangrove forests. A doctor together sits behind a table with five nurses under the burning sun. Their only cover is a red plastic sheet above their heads. Lots of people are lining up to get medical assistance. Injuries, pneumonia and diarrhoea are the most common ailments. “The number of water borne diseases such as diarrhoea is increasing”, doctor Abul Boker tells me. “People cannot but drink water from their polluted ponds. The tidal wave that came with the cyclone has salinated them.” There is no drinking water here except these ponds. No water pipeline, no tubes, let alone bathrooms or toilets. “We are thirsty”, one man says. “We know it’s not good to drink the water but what shall we do?” I don’t know the answer. Even though CARE ’s water purification plants can produce 10.000 liter of fresh water a day, there are too many people in need and the area is too vast to reach everyone. 6.9 Million people are affected by the impact of the cyclone, as local newspapers state today.

While watching the people lining up, one after another, I look around and see a small hut. It is tiny, no man can stand inside. The walls are covered with plastic sheets and blankets – a broken patchwork house. In front of it stands a women, carefully holding a small baby in her arms. As with everyone else I met so far, she winks at me to show me her destroyed home. “After the cyclone hit I thought for three days that my husband was dead”, Morsheda says. Her husband, Kailsen, was working at the coast, drying fish to earn a living for his family. He clung to a tree when the storm came. After some hours the water rose and he climbed higher and higher until he reached the top of the palm tree. The next morning he couldn’t get back to his village because the roads were blocked by uprooted trees. Meanwhile, his wife had gone into mourning. For three days she walked numbly through the area, desperately looking for his dead body – Then she saw him approaching slowly. “I was so shocked and relieved, I cannot describe it,” she says. “Even though I lost everything, our ducks and chicken, our house and our income, I am just happy that my family is alive. I know we will survive now.” Within all that desperation, Morsheda and Kailsen found a little luck.

During our five-hour ride back to Khulna my thoughts constantly return to the young couple. While watching a beautiful sunset I hope that more people have gotten some luck. That they will find the spirit, the strength and the means to continue their life and rebuild their future as Morsheda and Kailsen are doing.