BANGLANEWS FOUR

by John and Rita Bennett

Here we are in our fourth quarter since we arrived Bangladesh. We have passed several ‘mile posts’ marking our first Easter, first hot season, first rainy season, first mango season and recently first Christmas. Christmas is always a time for contact with family and friends. Fortunately Kathryn and Eleanor were able to join us here. We met them in the dark, shabby airport, at about 4 O’clock in the morning of the 16th December. We could hardly believe that they really were with us at home in the flat. Of course there was a lot of fun opening the big heavy bags and examining all the little luxuries and necessities, which they had brought with them. There was Dhaka with its traffic and beggars to get used to, not to mention the food and the water but before the end of their holiday, they were buzzing about in baby taxis and even going out on their own with young Bangladesh friends.

We first heard about the hostage crisis in the Chittagong Hill Tracts from Andrew Roberts our CMS colleague in Colne, in his email to us. But before the abduction on the 16th February, we think we met one of the Danes at the wedding reception for Ravi Chritenen and Ruth Pederson on the roof of their home in Gulshan. It was the first wedding we have had in Dhaka, and was a super international occasion.

The three hostages, Torben Mikkelsen, Nils Hulgarro and Tim Selby are at this moment still held in deep forest in the north of the Hill Tracts around Kalapahar. Contacts have now been made with the abductors, with Chakma leaders speaking to Chakma. The British and Danish high Commission staff, some of whom we know and have spoken to, are doing an excellent and careful job in very difficult circumstances with the Chakma leaders and people and Bangladesh authorities. Whilst there is a peace Accord in the Hill Tracts successfully negotiated by the present government and the tribal authorities, conflict resolution is slow. When we visited Rangamati and some of the lakeside villages, with Kathryn and Eleanor just before Christmas, we found deep resentments. The resettlement of non-tribal people in the Hill Tracts, is given by Tribal people, as diluting their Budhist tribal culture but by many other Bangladeshis as developing and modernising an area which is ’backward’. Tribal people have already lost much of the best rice-growing land under the artificial Kaptia Lake. built during the Pakistani regime, or to new settlers. The lake generates electricity for the port of Chittagong and there are plans to enlarge it still further, with more loss of tribal land. resurfacing roads or building new ones near Rangamati- spells access to the area. This is a sensitive matter, as it proved years ago when first built by the Australians. But as people in Bangladesh will say, it is very unusual that foreign workers are in danger. The news at the moment is that progress is being made towards the release of the three men. 

With Kathryn and Eleanor we also visited the Sunderbans National Park. This is a wild life site of international significance- where salt seawater meets the sweet water of the mighty rivers of the subcontinent. Here in the mangrove swamps are deer, crocodiles. Monkeys. Otter, numerous birds and the last refuge of the Bengal tiger. Access is restricted and game guards are supposed to protect the animals and the visitors from one another. As well as poaching and disturbance there is the noise and litter, which visitors can bring? There is also the threat of pollution from the factory up-river. This is a very difficult problem for a developing country. People need the jobs in the factories and ‘green’ regulations are hard to enforce. For us though, it was a very peaceful experience of sailing amidst unspoilt green mangrove swamps, while brahmani kites soared above. We walked and swam from pristine sandy beaches with wading birds and little flying fishes for company. We did not see a tiger- only his footprints - scary if just at the moment everybody else on the beach is out of sight! We celebrated the New Year as together with Kathryn and Eleanor on Egg Island, at the very very edge of the Indian Ocean. There was nothing between us and the South Pole except for the ocean. The island is formed from silt, and wasn’t around twenty years ago, but now has tigers, deer and many different birds such as kingfishers and kites. Sometimes other small islands bob up for a while out there, and become for a few months the resting places for bird, until the ocean reclaims them.

John recently visited a Garo home in Dhaka, with Philemon, a friend and minister of the church of Bangladesh. There are about two thousand Garo migrants into Dhaka, coming to look for work. A community centre has recently been built for tribal people in the city. Rita and he were invited to the Garo festival, which marks the rice harvest in December. It was the same day; we realised, as the Christmas lights were being turned on in settle market place, back home in Yorkshire. The festival was a really good time of singing and dancing. When Philemon and John visited Garo friends in their home they were sharing together in the pioneering work of welcome and friendship begun through some Garo friends in the Church of Bangladesh.

He is very glad that the pastoral Psychology Course is now completely written, and the students at the theological college are now at the revision stage. It will be interesting to see how well the students get on their March examinations, and how well participatory methods and written notes in Bangla, help them to learn. We are now at the stage where they are making short presentations and are questioned being fellow course participants. In development Studies we have concentrated mainly on ‘Project implementation procedure’ and ‘Environmental issues for Bangladesh’. We have also used the current news interest to begin a short focus on ‘conflict resolution’ skills.

Lay training is proceeding well with course material coming off our computer about every week. Rita and John are working in supplementary lay training and educational resources. If you would like to know more about this, or could get someone to bring out particular books, resource files, Big Books, when they come our daughters Kathryn and Eleanor will know someone is coming out from Britain to Bangladesh, who might possibly bring something with them. 

At the moment Rita is concentrating her work with education in and near Dhaka, especially on early child education, where she is working with teachers in a new kindergarten and trying to make this a base for giving other teachers experience of ‘good practice’.

So we are well and happy. We love having visitors from Britain and we appreciate all your letters and interest.     Many, many thanks. Very best wishes

John and Rita Bennett.