Atiq

Atiq’s home can no longer be reached by car. Cyclone Sidr, the largest cyclone to hit Shodopur in Southern Bangladesh in decades, ripped great shearing cracks in the road. It also destroyed the tube well the eight year old and his family used for fresh water. Atiq guides me between the gashes in the road and past fields stripped bare of produce, not by the annual harvest, but by the night of 15th November 2007. Atiq tells me how villagers tied themselves to trees, or took refuge in the cyclone shelter in the hope of surviving the storm. The family’s house, complete with foundations was washed away by the fifteen-foot tidal surge that accompanied the winds, and the pond where he still tries to fish is now filled with salt water.

Since then Atiq’s family has built a temporary shelter, on the site of their washed away house. But the impact of Sidr remains on the tip of everyone’s tongue and wrenched into the landscape around us, not least for Atiq and his family. The cold season in Bangladesh started in December. Atiq’s mother explains that, “now it is winter it is freezing cold at night, and the damp comes right through the house”. Their temporary home is made of straw and salvaged branches. It is barely large enough for the five of them to lie in. Under their feet is the mud floor of the river embankment. The five-person household shares a blanket. It is easy to see why it gets cold at night.

Atiq’s 18-year-old sister is visiting from Dhaka, the capital, where she is now working in a garment factory. She was shocked to return to see the village of her childhood in its changed state. The trees have been stripped clean of leaves and branches, or pulled up by the roots. They lie half hazardly at rest, as though flung by some giant’s enormous hand. The skeletons of houses, and shacks are piled up as rubble, hardly recognisable as homes. Boats along the shores of the river appear to have been trodden on by that same Giant’s huge feet. An enormous car ferry lies beached just behind the shelter Atiq and his family have built, where the tidal surge grounded it, metres away from the river where it used to be docked.

The family was lucky to escape, although the night of the cyclone left them with literally nothing but the set of clothes on their backs. As Atiq and his family fled to a nearby cyclone shelter, the strength of the wind snatched his six-year-old brother from his mother’s arms. Rescued from the pond where the wind dropped him, Atiq’s brother frequently still wakes with nightmares. But they did manage to reach the cyclone shelter and wait out the night. Atiq’s brother whispers from where he is hiding amongst the folds of the bright red and gold of his mother’s sari, “I was really frightened”. They emerged to find a world transformed.

In the wake of a natural disaster one of the immediate needs is clean water. As Atiq and his family explained, for seven days they drank from the pond where the carcasses of dead livestock, fish and people floated, before water distributions finally reached the area. Thanks to the NGO I’m working with, Atiq and his family are now provided with a steady stream of fresh water. It is purified nearby and then carried by rickshaw cart out to local communities. In places like Shodupur, where roads are inaccessible by car, rickshaw carts are still able to reach otherwise isolated areas. This ensures that children like Atiq, who is often responsible for fetching the water for his family, do not have to walk far to collect it. This also makes sure that as many families as possible have access, and caters particularly for the most vulnerable in the community. There are also plans to fix the local tube wells and build sand filters for the ponds. Because of the clean water, Atiq, his sister and his brother are no longer suffering from diarrhoea, and some of the building blocks for rebuilding their lives are in place.

While a mangy starved looking dog whimpers from behind the straw walls, it is not just the immediate needs of the family that are discussed. A family with very little to begin with has in one night lost everything. The ramifications of rebuilding a life and a home from scratch are multiple and stretch way beyond the scope of direct emergency relief. At aged eight, Atiq is an earner for his family. Through fishing he helps supplement his father’s wage as a day labourer, often helped by his six-year old brother. “His father is old”, the family tell me, “he finds it difficult to find work, particularly since the cyclone”. The emergency aftermath can often be used as an opportunity to bring children such as Atiq into the school system. It seems essential to balance the economic responsibilities Atiq has to his family with the right to education he has as a child.