The second day of my class trip to Bangladesh was mostly a trip. We started by driving past the 4.8 km long Jamuna Bridge to Hard Point, Sirajganj, a bank that protects the town of the same name. The river moved westward, threatening the town and causing failures in the embankment. Bangladesh evenly shorelined by filling up the land north and south of the embankment. And now the river has left. The embankment was much quieter than I first visited here 10 years ago, as sand sticks block access by boat. Still, we got a great overview of the river we visited the day before and the bank we visited.
After that, we took a long bus to Kushtia. We drove west through the countryside with fields of rice, corn and vegetables. We passed Bangladesh’s first nuclear power plant, which is currently undergoing testing, and crossed the Ganges River. Conversely, we passed through Kushtia to the tomb of Laron Shah, a mysterious poet, philosopher and social reformer who is considered an example of Bangla culture. I heard one of his songs at a music performance the night before. At the shrine, some of his followers performed some of his songs for us.
We then headed to where the Gora River splits from the Ganges. The Gorai is the main river that brings freshwater to southwestern Bangladesh, but now it needs to be dr open and flowed during the low winter currents. This is due to a combination of natural and human changes. The main Ganges moved east from the Fourie River in India between 1550 and 1650. As a result, many of the fork rivers such as Gorai have declined ever since. Furthermore, India has built a barrage of Falacca, diverting the water to Hooli and leaving it open, reducing the flow of the dry season to Bangladesh.
We hiked past the embankment on hundreds of metres of sand drifted along the river. In fact, we had to ford a small river that was built to reach a place where we could see the actual Gorai River. We stayed until we needed to go to a new hotel to check in earlier Iftar.
In the morning we went to Shirada Haktibari, the family of writer, poet philosopher and artist Rabindranath Tagore, who was the winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature. His poems are texts from both Bangladeshi and Indian national anthems. He came from a wealthy man Zaminer Family collects taxes from large estates around his home. Despite living a century ago, he was able to see the contrast between the many villagers we met and his standard of living. The wealth of his family gave him the freedom to write and pursue his profits.
We then returned to the Gorai River, where my students interviewed the people who lived. char It is attached to the mainland, just outside the embankment. I listened to several interviews and then joined Mahfus Khan and my daughter Elizabeth near the local Hindu temple. They were not fasting, so they gave us fresh watermelon and lock apple. Elizabeth joined local kids and played games.
By mid-afternoon we had to stop for a long drive to Khulna to join the boat, M/V Kokilmoni. The drive was made long with flat tires. We went Iftar It was a local restaurant in Jesor city, followed by Khulna. in Gart (Dock) We climbed a wooden country boat and took us to a large boat. We work for BRAC, the world’s largest NGO, and joined me in Tapas and Sakib, part of the project. They traveled from Dhaka and arrived at the boat earlier in the day. We finished our day with a late (10pm) dinner as the boat began heading south.
The next morning the boat arrived at our first destination, Srinagar and Starkari, Poldar 32. Bangladesh used Dutch Polder For the embankment islands of the coastal delta. The embankments were built in the 60s and 70s to improve agriculture and initially worked well. However, the embankments cut off the supply of sediment to the island’s interior. The interior of the island was necessary to counter the subsidence of the land. All deltas are sunk, and if there is no sufficient sediment to balance it, the land will be lost or flooded. This is a major issue for the Mississippi Delta, and now we lose our soccer field every 100 minutes. Additionally, in Polder 32, the embankment was destroyed by Cyclone Aila in 2009, meaning that the loss of elevation was flooded with all high tides for almost two years, for 10 hours. 10,000 families in the area had to live on the walls of the embankment during that time until repairs were completed.
It was low tide so there was no good landing spot for a boat that didn’t require walking through the deep mud. We followed Starkali. Gart. Here, first visited shrimp farms and developed extensively in more flooded polders. We found that the commercial shrimp farm was abandoned as it lined up with the Awami League, which was exiled in the July uprising in which the owners overthrew Sheikh Hasina and the government.
We continued into the village for an interview in the morning, but as we were struggling with the 100°F temperature of the heatwave, we returned to the boat for lunch and rest. In the afternoon, after a long break, most of us went to Srinagar. There were a few people fasting because Ramadan was behind. Kazi Matin and I presented the rod surface elevation table (RSET) group for measuring subsidence here and at abandoned managed aquifer charging (MAR) sites. This was set up to store Monsoon Water Underground for use in the dry season, but it was not financially managed once the NGO funds were run out. The groundwater here is saline, so there is a serious problem with having enough drinking water towards the end of the dry season. Unlike the north, most fields were fallow due to the lack of freshwater for irrigation during the dry season.
After discussions on the RST and MAR sites, Elizabeth and I went to the Krishna family, hosting the RSET site of LSU’s Carol Wilson. We recognized each other from our previous visit with Carol. They welcomed us with open arms and gave us tamarind and coconut water. They adopted Elizabeth as the “Little Carroll.” After completing the interviews with the students, we returned to Kokirmoni in time for Iftar and the boat began towards the forest of Sundarban Mangroves.
