Pre Intervention rural community

Today we drove from Khulna to the Nalbubia Cluster in Nalbubia village which have not had any intervention from WaterAid.

The community village is in low lying coastal land which is susceptable to saline intrusion to the water supply.  Only 5% of the villagers have already taken their own initiative and installed latrines in most homes so they have already solved the easiest problem of avoiding contaminating their own water supply.  That leaves a lot still to be educated, and the actions of the majority may still have a big effect on the minorty who have already implemented sanitary procedures.

The villagers currently have to walk over 2km to a council provided pond to collect their drinking water.  The water in the pond is rain water and in the dry season has the potential to run dry.  A pond sand filter was buit 6 years ago, but has never been operational, so this is a potential area of improvement which WaterAid partners could follow up easily if the need is identified as a high priority.

The area is mostly covered in water, where it used to be a large percentage of rice fields.  The farmers realised that the saline water in the soil was gradually deteriorating the quality of the crops, and many turned to shrimp fishing as it was more profitable and more suitable for the conditions.  This is still the case, but the family I interviewed had a problem with a virus which killed all of their shrimp within 3 days and it takes 3 months to recover a saleable amount of shrimp again.  Also, once the land has been turned to shrimp farming it can never be returned to use for growing crops.  This is just an idea of the hard decisions these people have to make in day to day life and they do appreciate all the help they are given.

From what we've experienced in post-intervention communities, it is often the case that within 18 months of a project being started with a community, they will begin to form their own initiatives, removing their reliance upon outside agencies, and also spread the knowledge to local villages.

It's been another good educational day, and we're back in the capital city Dhaka now for our final visit to a post intervention slum in the morning.

I want to thank South East Water and WaterAid for this opportunity, because it's truly amazing.