This trip to Bangladesh is special.th I’m not only visiting that country or I’m traveling with a new class of sustainable development students, but also because my daughter, Elizabeth, is with me. She grew up listening to stories, and when she saw pictures of my trips to Bangladesh, she always asked, “So, when are you going to take me with you?” Now the time has come.
My course uses Bangladesh as its focus to bring together the intersection of multiple geoscience and environmental issues with the population that live here. The Faculty’s Sustainable Development Program aims to provide students with a wide range of discipline backgrounds needed to advance irreparable harmless human well-being to the planet. Many of these issues intersect in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has a large, growing population inhabited by one of the most dynamic and sensitive environments on the planet, and is subject to multiple natural disasters and is threatened by climate change. As part of our class we will be coming to Bangladesh. I’m coming to Bangladesh. There, my lectures teach me more than ever before, as I have seen the country and the experience of talking to people.
The students also have two group projects interviewing people in four villages across the country. One is similar to the project I did in 2023, interviewing people about “Climate Extreme and Migration in the Bangladesh Delta.” It is overseen by Robert Stojanov of Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic. Another is to “see the change in perception of heat stress among young people and older people who remember when things were different and “explaining the effects of heat stress adaptation, through an intersectivity, spatial lens.” This is directed by Bischaudzit Malik of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who originally originally originally from Bangladesh.
I arrived in Bangladesh on the evening of Thursday, March 13th and Saturday morning. At the airport, we met ten University of Dhaka (DU) students who gave us all the flowers. We then went to the 29-seat bus and chased us for the next four days. There were also two professors, Kazi Matin Ahmed and Mahfuz Khan.
Our first destination was a monument to the National Martyrs of Surva, outside the capital of Dhaka. At Savar we started with lunch for those eating. It was Ramadan, with all the students at DU and two students fasting during the day of the month. Refreshing, we went to the monument with a large upward monument of seven isoshell triangles set in a well-maintained, heated environment, including ten mass graves for those killed during the War of Independence. This site was one of the areas of killing Pakistani military during the war in 1971. It is estimated that up to three million people have been killed in the nine-month war until Indian intervention helped to end it.
From there we moved northwest to a hotel near the Jamuna River, the name of the Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh. This is because about 200 years ago the river either moved westward, or westward from what is now called the Brahmaputra River, or moved westward in a small, existing waterway called the Jamuna River. We settled in the hotel in time for “Iftar,” a meal to break Ramadan quickly. It’s a light meal of fruits, chickpeas, fried eggs and other foods eaten right after the sunset. After Iftar we went to nearby Tangail city for shopping. My students helped out at DU students and bought Fans, Langs, Sally and other apparel before returning to dinner.
After a good night’s sleep, we headed towards the Jamuna River. The river is woven. In other words, during the dry season it consists of many cross channels and sandy islands called char. While the monsoon flow is increasing, it is almost all water, with a diameter of 3-6 miles. Yet, in the dry season, more than 700,000 people live in Char, farming and raising cattle. Some live there all year round, while others live only in season. In this dynamic river, char is constantly changing, and people need to move on average every ten years.
We sailed north under Jamuna Bridge and the new railway bridge went to Char, which I chose. The last time I was here I realized it had changed from my map. After a false start, I set sail to the site of my choice. The channel moved westward and eroded the char on that side, but deposited a wide sandy apron to the east where the river was. The detour delayed us, but we disembarked and hiked to the nearest small village. In the village, students were divided into multiple groups of Colombia and Du students and began conducting interviews about their lives in Char and how it changed. The village only included six families, so we continued our interviews walking to the next village in 98 degrees heat.
Near the village there was a shallow tub and we poured cold water over our heads for relief. Several groups continued to interview people from the last village until the time came to leave. The team gathered many stories of those who lived in Char and left when it was eroded, but returned when it reappeared from the river. Others moved on to it later. Some lived in Char all year round, while others spent the monsoon season.
I was a little confused when I left. Our boat moved closer, but covered where we were and had to return. The group followed a different path to Char’s coast, but we all eventually returned to the boat. We returned to the ghat (dock) and returned to the hotel in time for the bus to Iftar. We finished our first day with a traditional Bangladeshi Baul music concert and dinner concert.
