Visit to Khulna slum

Today was a national strike in Bangladesh which meant we were unable to travel by road.  This gave us the fantastic opportunity of an hours walk from the hotel to the first slum.  We walked through the local market street and alongside the river past the shipping port where goods were imported from other areas of Bangladesh and from China and more recently Burma.  Once again, we were welcomed everywhere we walked and greeted by absolutely everyone it seemed.

The slums we visited today were post-intervention (WaterAid have already worked here) and the difference is immediately obvious.  The first thing is that the smell of the pre-intervention slum in Dhaka was not there and the walking areas were clean and wide.  The people of the Custom Bosti slum welcomed us and we sat in with their community as they showed us their paper plans of how they manage the sanitation now.  They have a map of the slum with all households named by their families and they have performance indicators of who is acheiving the required levels of cleanliness.  They showed us the latrines which have been built, the water pumps from the tube wells and the composting solution which they use to reduce waste and grow  vegetables.  This community also have a small business producing sanitary napkins to sell to the community for 30TK  (35p).  The community have plans going forward and are happy with the present situation and have been given the indepence to develop alone without WaterAid dependance.

The message from the community also gets out to local slums which have no WaterAid projects, and the people learn from this slum and being their own initiatives to improve their situation.  It is essential that the word is carried this way as currently only a small fraction of slums in the Khulna area are covered by WaterAid.

Tomorrow we are travelling South to see post intervention projects in areas affected by climate change.  Once again we will see a different set of challenges that the communities face.

Finally, we were treated to a cultural evening from a local drama group who act out stories of how peoples lives are changed by certain schemes, like the changes that WaterAid make.  They use a scrolling painted scroll with images which support their songs.  It was a fantstic experience and we all joined in with their final song and we treated them to an immaculate rendition of 'Londons Burning' which is the only thing we could think about which described an event in UK history and gave us a chance to work on our harmonies!

Dhaka - Pre Intervention

Today the group visited three separate slums in Dhaka which were pre-intervention (WaterAid have done no work in the area).
The visit enabled us to meet and interview a slum dweller to ask them about the conditions they live in, where they collect water, go to the toilet and wash.
Sarah and myself interviewed a 35 year old lady named Rashida who was married with four children and has lived in this slum for ten years.  Her husband shares one room with her and they have another room for the two children who have not left home.
The water supply to the household is provided by the landowner, but this is only for bathing and washing clothes and is usually only available from 8am to 2pm.  They collect their drinking water from the house of a local MP under some friendly agreement.
The community have shared use of hanging latrines, which is in basic terms a corrugated iron and bamboo shed with a hole in the floor on stilts over a pond.  The pond is also used for all the garbage from the slum as they have nowhere else provided for it.  Access  to the latrines is across a pile of rotting food waste and plastic packaging.  The area around the latrines is dangerous to walk on and in the rainy seasons the pond level can raise high enough that the waste water and garbage washes up into the lower houses forcing the residents to move higher up the slums.
Rashida is actually happy because she knows no different, but does appreciate that with better sanitation facilities their lives will be improved.  At the moment their biggest problem is the garbage disposal, which would make access to their latrine facilities safer and easier.  They would also benefit from a water supply which runs 24 hours a day, or at least had a storage tank at the top of the slum which they could draw from any time it's convenient.
This is the kind of work that WaterAid does for communities, working with local Non Goverment Organisations to decide who is most in need of the assistance.

We've moved on to Khulna today, on a hair raising 9 hour journey including a fantastic ferry crossing and a chance to really soak up the immense diversity of Bangladeshi culture at the roadside.  It's fascinating to just watch as people go about their daily business.  We were also centre of attention as we walked around the slums, but the people were so friendly and curious that it never felt threatening to have so many people surrounding you.

I'll try and add some photos soon.
Tomorrow we are walking to the slum projects in Khulna as there is a national strike which makes road travel impossible, or badly recommended at least.

First Post from Bangladesh

I'm blogging from the hotel in Bangladesh after being awake since 7am on 27th November in the UK.

We've been to the WaterAid Bangladesh office today and met the WA staff, who are all really nice.  The aim for tomorrow is to visit a pre-intervention slum in dhaka city before travelling 6 hours by car to Khulna including 30 minute ferry trip.

My first impressions of Bangladesh are that it's an amazing place.  It's just like being on a crazy Asian film set with near traffic misses round every corner!  There's an abundance of shops selling Alloy wheels and bull bars, then a row of shops dedicated to building.  They use bamboo as scaffold here and it's amazing to see.

We went for an after lunch walk around the local area and were followed by a sweet group of kids who were basically after Taka (money), but at that point no-one had any.  This is Bangladesh, and tomorrow the reality will hit home.

Hope to update again soon

Time to go

Morning.
I'm just going to scrape the ice of the car (something I won't have to do again for 8 days).  Hopefully I'll be able to get some updates on the blog throughout the week, otherwise there will be loads to read when I return.

Wish me luck!

Research

I've just been writing myself some question prompts to use when I get a chance to talk to the people in Bangladesh.  Even doing this simple task is quite thought provoking.  I mean, where do you start when talking to someone who lives in a world so different from your own?

Interesting dilema.  But I've got a bit of a clue now.

Also, been keeping an eye on daily news reports from Bangladesh.  Most daily reported events seem to involve traffic accidents, political riots and the odd domestic.  I did manage to find one article about a major river dredging project North of Dhaka which could make a massive difference in the coming years.

Busy schedule

We received a draft schedule for the trip and it's good to get a rough idea of how the trip will pan out.  We're going to be meeting a LOT of people (there's no option in Bangladesh because of its dense population) so we've got to keep a good record of who's who when it comes to identifying photos, interviews and all that.

There's a lot of mileage to do once in the Country, so plenty of time to gather our thoughts, tidy our notes and take in the varied scenery.  Might even get time to eat!

I am most looking forward to spending several hours with a pre-intervention family to see how they live at the moment and get an idea of what a difference WaterAid will make.  If I can get my "bag-cam" sorted out, I should bring back some video of what it's really like.

10 days and counting...

I'm Industry news

On our intranet at work there's a portal on the front page called Industry News which updates automatically from some web feed or something.  I just happened to notice myself appear in that list on Friday...

http://www.instituteofwater.org.uk/news/News.php?newsID=1488

Got to start looking in local press now! :o)

Mr.Worry

If I were in the Mr.Men at the moment, I would be Mr.Worry.  Didn't get much sleep last night as my mind decided to be worried about everything to do with the trip.  What will I eat?  Where will I sleep?  What if I get ill?  What if nobody actually reads my blog!?

Luckily, we covered a lot of this in our team brief four weeks ago, and due to the nature of the trip it's only natural to be aprehensive.  I'm calling it a 'healthy fear' at the moment, but I think it's just excitement.

Bring it on.

Time of day

...also, note the times on these posts.  I've set the clock to Bangladesh time so hopefully the blog doesn't get confused if I get the opportunity to post while on the trip.  Won't help with jetlag though I don't suppose.
:)

Jabs and Bacteria

So, for the trip we're visiting places which tourists would normally steer clear of, but for those accustomed to travelling in Asia, Africa and a few other distant places there's the necessity of vaccinations.

To get the jabs at the local surgery you need to fill in a form for travelling and the section with tick boxes against common activities included Snowboarding, diving, mountaineering, but I had to write 'visiting slums' in the 'Other...' section of the form.  I think that prompted the nurse to call with some excitement that she could pump me full of every vaccine she could lay her hands on.  We came to an agreement that I didn't need to be turned into a lab rat and settled on a combination of Hepatitis A, B, Typhoid, Diphtheria, Tetanus, Polio and I've got some gloop to take for Cholera and a prescription for Anti-Malarials which I'm still contemplating.

Cholera is in the news at the moment with a large outbreak in Haiti after the Hurricane, so I guess we're lucky we have access to these vaccines over the counter for £7.  I'll be taking mine tomorrow, so let's see if there's any side effects from the 25 billion bacteria of four different strains of Cholera they put in each dose.

20 days (and counting)

Welcome to my blog for the WaterAid supporters trip to Bangladesh!

I have been chosen to represent South East Water on the trip and join representatives from other water companies and agencies and from WaterAid on what promises to be an eye-opening, educational and enlightening journey.

I have never done anything like this before, with my travelling confined to the usual tourist routes in Europe, America and Australia with the odd deviation to climb a mountain or explore a cave.  I can only guess what I will experience on the trip and hope to capture some of the experience and emotions in this blog, both before, during and after the trip.  Hopefully there will be some way of getting a message back from Bangladesh, whether its by email, fax or the dove from above! I'll see what I can do.