Bangladesh Placement 2011July 25, 2011
Kate Tiltman: Visit to St Andrew’s Theological College in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Arriving at the Sunderban by fishing boat
On my final placement from St Michael’s College I spent four days with a priest whose two brothers had been killed by a tiger. I was in Bangladesh on a visit to St Andrew’s Theological College in Dhaka, and, as part of the visit I went to look at the effects of climate change on one of the villages near the Bay of Bengal.
The priest who took me back to his home village was Rev. Hemen Halder of St Thomas’ Church in Dhaka. Hemen was born in the south of Bangladesh, and his father owned land near the port of Mongla. When he was a child the government purchased his father’s land, but never gave him any money for it. The stress caused the heart attack which killed his father; his mother and her seven children were left penniless. Hemen’s mother sold her jewellery to raise the money to build a house and took the children to Kanainagar, a village near to the Sunderban jungle and the home of the Royal Bengal tiger. Not long afterwards the three eldest boys went to collect firewood in the jungle, and the two eldest boys were attacked and killed. The third boy survived, and we travelled from Mongla to the Sunderban in his fishing boat.
Woman from the village fishing
This story could be a parable of life in Bangladesh. Kanainagar was once a fertile area, with rice paddies and coconut palms as well as fishing in the Bay of Bengal. Now climate change and rising sea levels mean that salt water has destroyed the crops. Where there were once crops growing there are now only shrimp farms, providing shrimps for an overseas market and enriching a land-owning minority. Even the tigers are suffering, as their supplies of fresh water are disappearing and they are coming closer to the villages to find water. People are still killed by tigers in the Sunderban, and fertile land is disappearing under water. Sadly even the graves of the two brothers are now flooded.
The church, which also acts as a flood centre for the whole community, was built by the Church of Bangladesh
The rise in the level of salt water means that there is no drinking water as it is all salty. The Church of Bangladesh has provided containers to collect the rainwater during the rainy season. This water lasts for two or three months before it becomes contaminated by dirt and insects. Then the population have to drink whatever water they can find, with the real risk of sickness and diarrhoea.
My visit to Kanainager brought home to me the impact that small changes in the climate can have on individuals and on Christian congregations in villages such as Kanainager. When I asked Hemen what the future might be for his brother’s grandson the reply was that there wasn’t one. The child, named Joy, lives in a village which has lost the means of growing food. The land
that once belonged to villagers like his father and grandfather now belongs to a wealthy minority who now use it to farm shrimps. There is no education available for a Christian child like Joy, and so his only option is to be a fisherman in an area where cyclones are becoming more and more common.
The containers for rain water collection provided by the Church of Bangladesh
This is the reality of the effects of climate change on one small area of our planet. As Christians we should be asking ourselves what we can do in our lives to reduce the effects of global warming and to consume less so that others may live.