Chapter 01 of 04
Barishal · Meghna riverbank
- Subject
- Meher Nigar, 65
- Place
- Hijla, Barishal
- River
- Meghna
Meher Nigar roasts dried chilies on the open veranda of her home beside the Meghna. This half of the veranda is the family’s kitchen. Lunch will be rice, lentils and chili paste.
Meher Nigar is 65 years old and lives in Hijla Upazila of Barishal district, in southeastern Bangladesh.
“People think about food, about treatment, about education. We think first about saving our lives.”
Extreme poverty has never lifted from Meher’s family. “We have never had rice, fish, vegetables, and pulses on the same plate,” she said. “We live by the river so we sometimes catch fish. The thing we lack most is rice.”
“Whatever we earn goes to rice,” Meher said. “What is left for medicine, for school, for the house?”
Behind her stands a single room shared by seven people: Meher, her husband Dulu Aladar, two sons, a daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. A sheet divides their sleeping spaces. The walls are made of rice straw and the roof of old corrugated iron.
There is no grid electricity along this part of the riverbank. At the time of the reporting visit, the family’s small solar panel was broken.
Two blue plastic drums hold some of their clothes and cooking utensils. They are more than containers. If the riverbank collapses, the drums should float, giving the family a chance to recover at least a few possessions.
The Meghna was then about 15 feet from Meher’s home.
Her husband pointed approximately 200 meters into the river. Their former homestead, with its courtyard, cowshed, farmland and family burial ground, had stood there four years earlier, he said. Cargo vessels now travel across the water where the family once lived.
The household has already been displaced and rebuilt four times. If the river takes this home, there may be no land left nearby on which to rebuild again.
That uncertainty shapes every part of Meher’s day: cooking in a temporary-looking kitchen, keeping possessions ready to move, and trying to feed seven people after the river consumed the family’s farmland.
Meher does not know where she will go if the river takes the house again. Even at her age, life carries no promise. She lives every day in the fear of losing her roof. “People think about food, about treatment, about education. We think first about saving our lives,” she said. “Every night I think about whether I will be alive in the morning. Whether the house will be.” She drew a long breath.
“We have not a single penny saved. We do not know if there will be a meal tomorrow. We have no money for medicine, no money for school. To think about those things is a luxury for us. We only think that the river will not take our lives, that the river will not drown our land.”
The family said it had received no housing, food, medical or land assistance from the government, and no support from an NGO.
That experience cannot, on its own, establish whether a particular climate project should have assisted Meher’s household. But it gives human meaning to a question that Bangladesh’s national budget does not answer.
Next: Nilphamari