Bangladeshis already have a lot of experience with rising waters.

The nation is inundated with monsoonal rain and floods every year.

In the face of this rising tide, one organisation has developed a novel solution.

They’re delivering high quality health care to Bangladesh’s poorest people, in floating hospitals.

For Asia Calling Michael Leung spent a day in one such floating hospital.

Click the play button or watch the videos below to hear/see more. Or click this link to see a few more pictures.

A Hospital Morning

Quick Tour

“It’s about 9.30 am now, and the first patients are just arriving. A woman has come from a nearby village with her baby and the baby has a bad rash on its bottom and its face. They’ll be one of the first people treated this morning.”

The sounds of humming machines and busy nurses and doctors are familiar. But this is no ordinary hospital. It’s also a floating barge.

Called the ‘Lifebuoy Friendship Hospital,’ this 50-meter long vessel sails around Bangladesh’s remote river islands of Bangladesh.

About 3 million people live in these islands, known locally as ‘chors.’ Poverty forces them here, despite the threat of destruction during floods that hit every year.

And if predictions of sea rises due to climate change come true, these floods could be a more permanent reality.

There’s already little support here. No roads, no electricity, and before the floating hospital, certainly no medical facilities service the chors.

Dr. Shaiful Azam is the hospital’s main doctor. He explains that the barge was originally sailed to Bangladesh from France.

There’s an eye clinic, dental facilities, an operating room, a laboratory and even an X-ray machine.

Space is tight, but the hospital is well equipped and well-staffed.

Azam sees up anywhere between 50 and 150 patients in a single day.

He says that most government hospitals suffer from a lack of funds, so qualified staff won’t work there.

“There might be some doctors and specialists in Gaibandha hospital, they should be recruited. This is the usual procedure. But people are not coming here. They are not coming here … they need to earn money. If he is in Dhaka they can earn so much money.”

A lack of manpower isn’t the only problem for those in need of treatment. With no roads and many rivers to cross, the distances they must travel for treatment are great.

Anwara is one such patient. Her foot is so swollen she can barely walk. For treatment at the floating hospital, fellow villagers carried Anwara on a stretcher from her village two hours away.

“We know we can get good treatment at this hospital. If the hospital wasn’t here we would have had to go to the Gaibandha government hospital. We are very poor, and treatment there would be far too expensive for us.”

Had she gone to the government hospital she would have had taken a local transport boat, crossed two rivers and then ridden another eight kilometers in a cycle rickshaw.

All of this adds to the cost of already unaffordable treatment.

At the floating hospital however, Anwara pays only a small fee for her treatment which will probably take three or four days.

The rest of her bill is paid by a major international food corporation, which is finding most of the hospitals operating costs.

In the capital Dhaka, workers are currently putting the final touches on a second floating hospital.

This time, the charitable foundation of an international airline has funded the project. It will cost about $750,000 dollars to build and another $150,000 to run it each year.

Runa Khan is the director of non-profit organisation ‘Friendship’, which established the floating hospitals.

“Health, you see, is one of the most essential components, if not the most essential component, to any development project. Because when you are suffering you cannot do anything. There is no development intervention possible when you are suffering.”

The sufferings are numerous along Bangladesh’s vast river networks, home to some of the world’s poorest. And if global temperatures continue to rise, more snow will melt from the peaks of the Himalayas causing bigger floods downstream in Bangladesh.

And the threat of a rising sea could also force tens of millions from their homes permanently.

This is why boat-based development initiatives are starting to take off in Bangladesh.

Khan says that using corporate donations has made innovative ideas like her hospital possible.

“Also, these corporate companies have another advantage. They are very open to innovative ideas, they have only one target: you should actually be beneficial, it should be useful and you should see the result directly in front of you. This is what the private sector can do, including the NGOs. They can bring out models of innovation which would help the government to replicate models elsewhere. Through these innovative models we can take fund risks.”

The Lifebuoy Friendship Hospital sees over 50,000 patients each year. And the second hospital is expected to serve a similar number in Northern Bangladesh.

Despite the looming specter of climate change, projects like Khan’s show people there are ways to deal with climate problem.

Why? One wonders how this region passed the conflict in a different way. The unique part of this region is that Tibetans and Chinese have worked economically hand-in-hand here for hundreds of years. The “Tea Horse Trail”（茶马道）, as it is more popularly known, is a historic trail of trade and goods ranging from Burma to Tibet to Nepal and eventually India.

Because of these economic ties, there has been more incentive for the people to work together here on the latest economic boom—and that’s tourism.

I just finished a radio piece on the region. You can listen to it in the below player:

I’m going to do my best to see if I can get this piece farmed out to other media.. we’ll see how it goes.

And now, see his new rickshaw:

Several other volunteers and I have talked and talked and talked about it, but today I finally did it. I’ve just spent Tk 10,000 (roughly $140 USD) to buy my friend Hobu a rickshaw, and, if he works hard enough, there will be a dramatic change in his income over the coming year because of it. We first met Hobu outside one of the expatriate clubs in Dhaka.

Normally, Hobu has to pay 80 taka per day in rickshaw rent fees, and on a normal day he can make somewhere between 200-300 taka. But even if he has a good day, he will still have to pay what could be 25% of his daily earnings to the rickshaw garage where he takes his rented rickshaw. His is a life of indentured labour—without assets like his own rickshaw, his ability to make more money is severely limited, and his story is one of millions in Bangladesh.

I will admit I am skeptical: the first thing I’d heard about Hobu was how he drank a third of a bottle of vodka from volunteers and got so drunk that he lost a rickshaw that evening, after peddling two other volunteers across Dhaka in the middle of the night.

But my skepticism went away when one day, I was his passenger and I made that journey across Dhaka in the middle of the night. From that day, I learned a measure of respect for these hardworking men, and especially Hobu, whose spoken English is actually quite impressive.

Later we took the time to visit his home and meet his wife and two kids, and while he is certainly persistent, he has never asked me for my charity, he has simply shared his life with me. So today, I’ve decided to help him out. And now, if you want to help me help him, I’d dearly appreciate it.

By now you’ve seen the locations where photographs can be installed onto the rickshaw. If you’d be interested in having your photograph added, please send it to me and make a donation. It’s a “pay what you can” kind of thing. Although, if you really feel like it, for $100 I will get your face custom-painted on the rickshaw plate (depicted below). Any extra money I can chase up, I will simply plow into making this rickshaw more and more elaborate and a source of pride for Hobu.

It never ceases to amaze me how little it costs to change one life in this vast country.

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After experiencing the effect of the cyclone with our own eyes, we recorded our final reflections. It’s also one of our crew’s last day in Bangladesh—Michael Mangano—and he gave some thoughts on what he’s seen in the country.

In the end we decided to support the village of Dhangmari with Tk 40,000 ($575 USD) for fishing boats, enabling a few villagers to make more money and support themselves. We also decided to earmark another Tk5,000 ($85 USD) for instruments for the cultural shows, and the leftover Tk20,000 will go to an orphange.

Today we also learn a little more about the cast — who are the people putting these podcasts together, and why have we come to Bangladesh? We discuss again, the ethical philosophy of doing relief work yourself, or is it all just pointless, given the current state of affairs in Bangladesh?

Background
Before coming, donors who were friends of Michael Mangano gave $1,000 for us to bring directly to people in need from the cyclone, as something to do while Michael visited Bangladesh for research purposes (and to have a bit of travel fun).

Is this the approach we should use? Should travellers approach local relief organisations and NGOs with the goal of helping Bangladesh get back on its feet? Tune in to the below podcast for more.

Background
Before coming, donors who were friends of Michael Mangano gave $1,000 for us to bring directly to people in need from the cyclone, as something to do while Michael visited Bangladesh for research purposes (and to have a bit of fun).

For the next few days we’ll be podcasting our efforts as we take a boat journey to some Cyclone-struck villages bordering the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest and a world heritage site. The forest suffered immensely during Cyclone Sidr, and we don’t know we’ll see.

Our first podcast is about what Tourism for Development can mean when it is applied, on the ground, by travellers themselves. Is it the right thing to do? Should travellers cut out all middle men and bring to the help directly to the ground themselves? And also have a lot of fun while they do it?

We ask these questions and more in the following podcast. Please listen for more.

These villagers are moving a small shop to another location. See more pictures here.

Caught by surprise

Cyclone Sidr tore through Bangladesh late on the evening of November 15th, three days before I was scheduled to return to begin work on the Bradt Bangladesh project. At first, Bel and I weren’t aware of how bad the devastation would be. But as my phone started ringing from news agencies around the world, the true depth of the disaster began to emerge.

On Nov. 20, four days after the cyclone struck, I was sent by Indonesian radio program Asia Calling to cover the disaster from the ground. What I saw was a gradually increasing picture of devastation. Sixty-foot trees were upended and tossed into nearby houses. Village homes, most of which are constructed from bamboo and corrugated tin, were simply blown over or tossed about like tumbleweed. Those situated in the coastal or river areas were also the victims of a tidal surge, which at some places was said to be over 12 or even 20 feet tall.

I can’t imagine the terror these people must have felt for that one, very long evening. One man I met, Alamgir Hossain, said that he and his children took refuge in a tree after a huge tidal surge destroyed their home. After the night had passed, they found themselves 20 feeet above the ground.

Many inhabitants were able to make it to one of Bangladesh’s numerous cyclone shelters. As a result of these shelters, not as many have perished in this cyclone as have in previous disasters. But because Bangladesh’s infrastructure, health and education systems lag far behind, people who live in the cyclone’s path had their homes and livelihoods destroyed, with no safety net to help them recover.

Sundarbans hit

The disaster also calls the Sundarbans one of its victims. As the world’s largest littoral mangrove forest, the Sundarbans is Bangladesh’s prime tourist attraction. Early reports have said that over a quarter of the forest was damaged. Although I have yet to confirm that report, it is well known that several local fishing villages in and around the Sundarbans were badly hit as they bore the brunt of the storm, including Dublar Char, an island on the southern edge of the forest.

As a result of the above, Guide Tours, one of Bangladesh’s most established and best tour operators, has embarked on a relief effort to aid the people of the Sundarbans. They will be using their company boats to deliver immediate aid and long-term assistance to victims located in the Sundarbans. I have republished their relief appeal at Joybangla.info and now ask you, my friends, contacts and previous donors, to consider committing some of your resources to their efforts. Please read their appeal, and if you cannot donate this time, please do forward the message to others.

In a more ideal world, a disaster like this wouldn’t strike a country like Bangladesh twice in one year. Nonetheless, our responsibility to aid those who are suffering cannot be denied. It is my hope that one day the people here will be able to protect themselves from the ravages of a disaster like this.

Why support the Guide Tours’ relief effort?

As we (Bel and I) move in to the role of travel journalists and promoters of Bangladeshi tourism, we have consistently found Guide Tours to provide the most consistent and high level of service for travellers to the Sundarbans, both international and domestic. As we also believe in the majestic beauty of the Sundarbans and its preservation, we believe that our relief efforts, however small, should go towards the preservation of the World Heritage-listed forest whose presence, by slowing the tidal surge of Cyclone Sidr, also saved lives.

If you would like to learn more, please listen to my radio reports, using the below player, or read about Guide Tours’ relief appeal. Otherwise, please read this excellent editorial about the disaster written by a media colleague, Zafar Sobhan. Finally, you can read a previous article of mine on the Sundarbans here.

Every donation helps!

Guide Tours has indicated the following when it comes to usage of the donations:
For your information:
1 US$ = 3-4 Liters of Safe Drinking Water
10 US$ = 20 Kilo of Rice or 10 Kilo of Lentils
100 US$ = one day ship fuel required for transport

***

What will happen with the funds raised?

In order to facilitate donations, we (Belinda Meggitt and Mikey Leung) are accepting funds on behalf of Guide Tours via online payment gateway Paypal. You will need your credit card to donate. Simply click the “Make a Donation” button below and follow the instructions. You will need to register for a PayPal account in order to donate. On Nov. 30, we will pass what we have raised so far to Guide Tours, and on Dec. 7, we will conclude our fundraising and then wire these funds directly to Guide Tours for long-term restoration work in the Sundarbans.

Otherwise you can wire funds to Guide Tours directly using the following info:

Name of the account:
The Guide Tours Ltd.

Name of the Bank:
Standard Chartered Bank
Dhaka. 2, Dilkusha c/a, P.O.Box-169, Dhaka-1000
Swift Code Number: SCBLBDDX
Account number: 01-1104772-01
Comment: Cyclone Relief

For those of you who sent me messages of concern, my apologies for not letting you know about my status sooner! Thanks, it’s good to know people think of you when stuff like this happens.