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Traveling along the highway outside of Dhaka, we passed miles and miles of water logged land. Now that the monsoon season has begun, the land will stay wet for months. Much of it will dry once the monsoons are over but some portion will just simply disappear—either washed away by a storm or remain permanently under water. The streets of Dhaka and Chittagong are full of village refugees who simply have no land to live on any longer.
The country side is marked by plots of cultivated land criss-crossed by higher earth boundaries that have been shaped by people both to designate field boundaries but also as a way to transverse an otherwise water logged land. Anywhere there is a natural rise in the ground a living structure has been built. In the absence of higher ground, earth has been piled up to make dry areas for housing. Where the water is too deep or the land too low, they have built bamboo bridges.
Houses are a hodgepodge of mostly corrugated tin panels and bamboo lashed together to form shelters. Each field appears to have a cluster of these set up on the dryer ground. Some of them perched precariously on very small parcels of land or hanging over the edge threatening to slip into the water below with the next storm.
Whole areas are under 3 or 4 feet of water so it looks like there are hundreds, no thousands, no millions of swimming holes, across the country. People bath and children play in these pools. Fishing nets are set everywhere with elaborate, elegant bamboo structures to hold the nets in place. Much of these waterways are choked with hyacinth plants. Villagers actually bind them together in clumps and use them as floating gardens to plant squash and other food crops.
Seemingly everything is done by hand – at least in the country side. The landscape is notable by the absence of heavy equipment. Instead workers with shovels and hoes work to dig, chop and move earth from one place to another or to build structures or repair bridges. Everything is moved in jute baskets. Whole roads are built one basketful of dirt at a time.
In the mornings there is an army of small boys with wooden carts heading somewhere, to do something.
