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Bangladesh #3: Climate change or pirate change? |
2009-01-08, 22:35
I wanted to go to the coast of Bangladesh so I could find out how people there live. These lands may not even be there, if they get swallowed by rising seas, swelled by global warming.
But when we went to the district of Noakhali and I asked some fishermen about climate change, they didn't have much to say. What they really wanted to talk about was pirates.
One fisherman had his own fishing boat, which some NGOs—non-governmental organizations—had retro-fitted with stronger planks, iron connectors, and so on to make it stronger. I was told that the seas have gotten more rough over the last few decades, and the fishermen needed stronger boats to be able to brave the waves.
 | | Stuck until high tide comes—but pirates are a problem too |
But this fisherman (standing on his boat, above) said he'd been fishing all his life, but hadn't noticed any change in the ocean. (Another fisherman—when we were talking to a bunch of them in a little tea shop made from bamboo poles, with sheets tacked onto them (see below)—told me "the sea is always rough," as if I was asking a stupid question.)
 | | Welcome to the tea shop |
The boat owner said there seem to be more pirates around now than a few years ago, and that they'll steal all your fish, or your money, or your boat. Or sometimes they'll take your boat and hold it for ransom—, which can be 1 lakh taka. That's 100,000 taka, which is about two-thirds of how much he said his boat is worth. Or put another way, about $1500, which is more than the average yearly wage.
He said that with his newly retro-fitted boat being worth more than before, now he's even more hesitant to take it out to the deep sea, where the pirates ply. The NGOs were trying to help, but I guess sometimes you just can't win.
We took a boat ride to another part of the coast, called Bhola, and along the way—in addition to lots of naked kids bathing—saw some interesting stuff. This guy was making his own boat by hand in front of his hut, perched on top of one of the riverside embankments built to keep out high tides, storm surges, and some floods.
 | | Building a boat by hand, on an embankment along the Meghna river |
Another photo captured, for me, the whole of life along this part of the coast: lots of people, especially kids; the low-slung fishing boats with the half-moon covers that people use to hide from the sun; the ubiquitous tin shacks; the rice fields growing thick even right up to the river banks; and the deep green trees growing seemingly everywhere that people hadn't cleared for growing crops.
 | | A fishing-farming village on the coast of Noakhal |
Between me and my translator, a Bangladeshi woman who's also a journalist, we made for a spectacle. There's no stigma about staring in Bangladesh (just as in Pakistan, where I live now), so people stared at us, probably wondering what this white guy and this Bangladeshi woman were doing. (Where's her husband?!) So when seemingly everyone on a boat was staring at us, I took their photo.
 | | Bored of waiting for their boat to push off, my translator and I became their focus |
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