Life on the water

A long day travelling around Rangamati and its surrounding area in the Hill Tracts today. My offical permission had been received, so I was legally allowed to be there!

First of all we visited a Self Help Group, which is one of those set up with money from the Scottish government, and has received seed money to start a revolving loans fund for microfinancing of Income Generating Activities. In the two months since the seed capital was issued, 5 ladies in that group have taken loans, three are doing agricultural work, growing ginger, turmeric and bananas, one expanded her small shop and the fifth used food preparation training she had received from TLM to start a small 'fast food' business. I saw one of the agricultural projects and the shop, and saw how proud the two ladies are of their endeavours - and well they should be!

We then headed off to meet with local elected representatives for an orientation on gender, which was fascinating. This particular group are famed in the area for getting several things very right. There are major ethnic tensions in the Hill Tracts as it is home to 13 tribes, plus the incoming Bengali settlers (the first group we visited didn't speak Bengali, they were from the Marma people group, so their local TLM staff worker interpreted between Bengali and their language and John for me between Bengali and English), but in that district the diverse population lives very peacefully. They also have good stats for girls in school, which was obvious as we drove along the road past all the kids in uniform, there was a very good mix of boys and girls.

Then we headed into Rangamati itself for lunch, including a brief toilet stop at the office, where there was a training on for self help group leaders. Sadly we couldn't stay to observe it, but I was speaking to some of the staff who were with me during the day, and they were saying that one of the biggest problems in starting self help groups in the Hill Tracts is finding people to take on the leadership roles. Under the usual structure, each group should have a chair, a secretary and a treasurer, but in some groups one person fulfils all three of these roles as they are the only literate one in the group. I knew this before, but seeing it makes it that much more real. Literacy rates in the Hill Tracts are scarily low, especially in the tribal areas, which is one reason that some of the more educated people from among those groups resent the government, as they don't put much effort into improving this, and in some areas there are no secondary schools at all, which is not helping the communities to get out of deep poverty, but trapping young people in it.

After lunch we hired a boat and took to the water, where this shot was taken, just before the rain came down again, but it cleared again later. We were planning to visit another nutrition seminar across the lake, though sadly we arrived too late to see the training, it was already over as we had been held up with various things all day. One of those at the training was a fascinating man who spoke excellent English. He is a retired primary school teacher, a doting grandfather, and a man of very strong opinion. He has been campaigning for years to get more services for the tiny lakeside communities, many of whom lost land in 1962 when Kaptai Dam was built, but without success. Rangamati and the lakes it sits beside are very popular with Bangladeshi tourists, and with foreigners, though getting there is harder for foreigners as you need offical permission to travel there. The area is incredibly beautiful, but, as he said 'people from all over the world come here and we can't even offer them a glass of pure water'. It was a delight to meet such an interesting and interested man, and I hope that he is able to get someone in the government to listen to him.

After that I had my tourism slot in the programme! Just a bit further into the lakes there is a lovely waterfall at a place called Shuvolong, which is part of the standard tourist itinerary, so we popped in there, before heading back to Rangamati, dinner and another early night. It was wonderful to spend time peacefully on the water, chatting to Parach and Parun, who work for The Leprosy Mission in the Hill Tracts, Parach is the project manager there, having recently been promoted.