Made in Bangladesh

it’s past midnight, and i should really get some sleep, but the rain is pounding on the roof of the house next door, and it seems to be keeping me awake.

i’ve started to fear the bbc weather forcast.  bangladesh is part of the india forcasting and tonight it was covered in the blue smudge of monsoon rains again, and for the sake of everyone here, i’d like the rain to stop.

we’re monitoring right now.  monitoring for outbreak.  watching for a disease spreading and hitting the people who most often get hit by disease.  those most vulnerable.  those most likely to suffer.

and i hate this waiting.

and while i can appreciate certain things about being ready, getting ready…  we are all very busy at the office, gathering information, making plans, building a strategy.  and who doesn’t like to be busy at work.  but the problem with our line of work, is that being busy often means that things have gone to shit for someone.

but it’s a welcome break from the slow insanity of tal camp.  it’s busy there, don’t get me wrong.  but i feel like we are just trying to keep people alive while waiting for someone to listen.  there have been clues aplenty to indicate that the government is going to let the people living there move to a new piece of land… somewhere not squished between a river and a highway.  somewhere where children won’t die every weekend from being hit by cars (don’t ask me about last may).  and we’re waiting but it’s so slow.  but i know that is all we can do. wait, and heal wounds, and try to do our best, and be with the people and try to do what we can.

and the same stupid weather report showed that green blur that indicates another depression forming down where the camp lies.  the cyclone signal is raised again, and we hope another storm disapates and leaves the people unharmed (read: less harmed).

but for the most part, we are waiting for the people there to be given somewhere they can live, grow some food, not sleep in water.

but now, in dhaka, we’re very busy.  but it’s because things could get bad.

i don’t want to think of what the conditions would be that would require us to launch an intervention here.  i don’t like the reality of why we might be busy.  i know how the poor live here, and it’s not an existence that should get any worse than it is.

i’ve looked for the people who used to live on the bank of the lake near the office. the shanty houses disappeared weeks ago.  they left, whether by choice or encouragement, it’s hard to tell.  and it’s likely a good thing since the land they occupied is now under a few feet of water.

when i worked at a rape crisis centre, and we would joke that all we wanted, was to be put out of work.  make us redundant.  make this not necessary.

i would love a world where we are not necessary.

ok – busy week with lots of working into night time and now it’s nearly 7 on friday and i haven’t left the office yet, and i’m really hungry and want to eat dinner… but i want to send this blog entry off… so it’s um, gonna be short.

so the quick and dirty – we are checking out the health needs right now with the flooding thats been going on. this started with calling health authorities and other ngo’s to find out what monitoring was going on and what they were observing in the areas they were already present, all the while getting geared up to see for ourselves.  on friday we got in the cars and travelled to what were thought to be the worst hit areas of dhaka to talk to people first hand (see, there’s ilse and rizby above asking women if there have been health problems).

there are soooo many organisations on the ground, and bangladesh is pretty well versed to annual floods, and the health needs usually don’t present until after the water goes down – so it’s an interesting situation to try to assess.  as you can see below, the water is mostly ‘up’ still.  the picture below is one dhaka neighbourhood that’s been affected by the river flooding.

in this photo (below) you can see the area on the other side of dhaka where the water is actually rain water that can’t drain anywhere anymore.

today after going to different areas of dhaka the great news is the level of awareness people seem to have about diarrheal illnesses (biggest problems after flooding) and all the people we talked to said they were using o.r.s. (oral rehydration salts) if they got sick and also going to the clinics/hospitals if they needed assistance. it’s so great to see how well informed people are.

below you can see dr. gabi (medco) vlado (log co) and the chin of our logistics support guy from hq (olaf).  they are asking about health issues as well as water availability.  the loggies are here to see if people have clean drinking water, and to check out the general water/sanitation situation.

we also went to the recently expanded hospital that icddrb runs here in dhaka.  they’ve put up a 200 bed stabilisation unit in the parking lot, and admitted 900 diarrheal cases yesterday (which to answer your question, yes, that is quite high).

now tomorrow we are sending one team north, and sunday another team will leave.  loggies have been very busy prepping gear for explos.

although in this photo everyone is just looking at the gear   for flood explos lots of boots and life jackets are included in the kits.

we’re extra lucky that we had 2 advisors in from amsterdam.  and we’re keeping them an extra week.  so yes, very busy.  but will keep all updated.

and now i’ve included some pictures below that just make me smile.

see the danger of bamboo bridges combined with gumboots

ahhhh teamwork (is it worth pointing out that about 100 people are 10 feet away watching and laughing?)

that’s all for now