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Walking the extra mile for water in coastal Khulna
UNB
5th April, 2021 09:30:43
At the crack of dawn every day, 39-year-old Aleya Begum s struggle for water begins. A resident of Sutarkhali village in Khulna s Dakop upazila, she wakes up around 5 am daily to the family rooster s sunrise song to walk for kilometres to fetch water for her husband and children.
On a normal day, she makes two trips to the water source to bring home two pitchers of water. After finishing the household chores by noon, I go out again in the afternoon to fetch water. This is my daily routine. Monsoon is the only season when I am spared of the toils and pains as the rains assure us of fresh water supply for 3-4 months, Aleya exclaims.
âWho ll rebuild our memories?â: Cyclones bring tragedy to this Sundarbans village
For the people of Kalidaspur, one of the furthest inhabited villages of the Sundarbans, Amphan is yet another chapter in a story of loss.
21 Dec, 2020
For about a week in May, Swatilata Mondal listened to government officials make announcements in her village of Kalidaspur, warning of an incoming storm. Kalidaspur is on the Choto Mollakhali island in the Sundarbans in West Bengal.
Swatilata shrugged off most of the warnings. After all, cyclones and coastal storms are a regular feature of living in the Sundarbans.
âI had survived Cyclone Aila,â she said. âWhat could have been worse than that?â
âGod played a cruel jokeâ: Cyclones have taken a toll on women in the Sundarbans
From losing family members to tiger attacks following cyclones to gradually losing their pisciculture business, they have suffered in almost every way possible.
Kousalya Mondal lost her husband and father-in-law to a tiger attack shortly after Cyclone Fani.
Sagarika Majhiâs life is punctuated by cyclones. Itâs how she divides her story into different chapters.
In 2010, Cyclone Aila devastated her village of Satjelia, lying in the centre of a ring of islands in West Bengalâs Sundarbans. Sagarika, 43, lost her farmland and ponds to the cycloneâs wrath and, as a result, her income from breeding catfish, parshe and tilapia.