Shahanara beams as she works the pump lifting water from the village pond into their new sand filter. She is one of seven women who are in charge of maintaining the filter, and her sense of pride and ownership is obvious. But mostly she is happy to have clean drinking water within a hundred yards of her house. Before the filter was put in last June, all the women of Pathorkhali village had to walk several miles and pay for pump water, or make do with murky pond water.
Pathorkhali village is in the center of the area worst ravaged by hurricane Aila in 2009. In the coastal belt of Bengal, it is not just the wild sea and storms that remind villagers of their vulnerability to nature: tigers often cross over from the Sunderban mangrove forest to carry off livestock -- or people. A young man of Pathorkhali was recently mauled by a tiger, and early they found remains of a child in the mangroves. The village is built along the embankment that protect them and the surrounding farmland from the tidal flows. On the edge of the village, a hundred yards of the embankment, torn out during the hurricane, is still missing. After almost two years of remaining open to the daily tides, the embankment was finally patched further back from the river earlier this year.
The broken section of embankment, and Sunderbon jungle beyond
Dead trees stand as testimony to the damage wreaked by two years of saline water inundation. Over much of the region, only date palm trees were able to survive the standing salt water. Rain water is only slowly washing salt from the fields, and much of the region is still barren earth at a time when it should be laden with ripening rice.
In search of water to drink
As the people of Pathorkhali and surrounding villages struggle to get back on their feet after Aila, drinking water continues to be a big burden. Especially for the women who sometimes spend half their day collecting it. In a country blessed with abundant water, this is an place where finding suitable drinking water is particularly difficult.
In most of the area, attempts at well drilling either stall at rocky layers, or else fail to bring up sweet water. Beside the pond in Pathorkhali is the rusting stump of a well that was sunk to 800 feet, then abandoned when it only brought up salty water. And the ponds that had been the traditional sources of drinking water were filled with salt by Aila's tidal surge.
The pond that supplies Shahanara's filter has been a source of cooking and drinking water for three generations. The grandfather of the local patron landowner dug the pond as a gift for the community. When MCC's local partner Uttaran surveyed the area, this pond was a natural choice because of the community ownership, naturally low salt content, and lack of other drinking water options.
The pond sand filter is a simple system: a hand pump lifts water from the pond to let it slowly filter down through layers of sand and aggregate. This filtration, along with natural biological activity, renders the water clean and safe for drinking. The only maintenance needed is periodic rinsing of the filter bed, which is the responsibility of Shahanara's committee. But installation was not just a matter of building the filter -- most of the work was on the pond: emptying it of salt water and excavating it to build up the banks above flood level.
Ongoing needs
Pathorkhali's pond filter now attracts women from all around, serving about 400 families by Shahanara's estimate. Rashida Begum is one of those who comes from furtherest away. She walks an hour from her village, trying to keep up with the needs of her extended family of 12. "We use six or seven kulshis a day, so getting water can take most of the morning," she says as she sits resting beside the well. "Sometimes my grandchildren come to help me. But when they are in school, I come alone."
Rashida tells me of a pond in her village that also has sweet water, asking if they could not also get a filter there. I'm here just to see the MCC-funded filters. But the staff from our local partner, Uttaran, assure Rashida that they will remember her request and see what can be done. Uttaran is well aware of the continued need for drinking water in this area -- especially water sources that are designed with future flooding in mind.
Flooding is likely to happen with increasing frequency in this area. A rising sea level is a culprit in the long term, but more immediately -- and ironically -- new flood embankments are to blame, due to the changing siltation patterns they cause. But compared to the struggle with flooding, the drinking water problem is a relatively easy problem to solve.
I had the frame made at a bike shop in town, and fitted it with mostly local parts. Only the seat, bottom bracket, cranks, freewheel, and hubs are brought from the US. The final total was Tk. 5,100 ($69) for the local parts, and about four times that for the five US drivetrain parts.
After Masud and his family left (see the previous post), the demonstration farm project was re-evaluated. And it was clear that we were not going to learn a lot more with the farm, so it was not worth the effort and expense required to keep it going. So yesterday a team of carpenters came to take it down -- the same team that had put it up only 2 1/2 years ago.
By evening there was only a few concrete pillars standing among the scattered rubble. A sad sight. I know the project was more effort to maintain than it was worth, and the buildings were hastily built, nothing pretty. But the farm had slowly become home to Masud and his family, and slowly become a part of our lives. 
Next to the workshop and guesthouse/office of our Sustainable Technology Center has been a small demonstration and research farm. The idea was that the farmer family would live there rent-free but also use the technology and farming methods our staff recommend. The cash flow from the farm would also help us better understand the economics of our crops and farming methods.
The economic monitoring part was doomed from the beginning. It was in the farmer's advantage to show a loss: the loss would incline MCC staff to help out with free seeds or free straw or other various marginal assistance that was excusable because of the experimental nature of the arrangement. So it was always rather hard to tell how well or badly they were doing. After several threats to leave over the last year, our staff decided not to agree to any more special allowances, so the family finally did leave 2 weeks ago. Their claim of not being able to make a living was a stretch, given that they purchased land in their village and left with several more goats and cows than they came with. And it wasn't a week before they were calling us asking if they could come back.
But thankfully, I wasn't involved in the money issues. So I knew Masud and their family as our most friendly neighbors. It took months before I started to catch on to their thick, coarse village dialect. But we shared many evenings talking with our guards, many hot days working together around the project site. Masud took me out to his village home, and had me over for dinner and iftar and snacks. I patched up more cuts and scrapes on their kids than I can remember. Every afternoon, they brought over fresh milk from their cows. Often when working at my desk, I'd hear a "bhai…" ('brother') and look over to see Masud grinning in between the window bars. I'll miss that big goofy smile.
[Thanks to Joey for these two great pictures.]
The farm had been christened the 'adorsho kamar bari' (Ideal farmstead), so our staff often jokingly referred to Masud as our 'adorsho kamar,' ideal farmer. Ideal or not, Masud was a farmer through and through, a real village man, with no pretense of being educated or sophisticated. One day, when I offered him tea, he told me about how tea was the vice of the cities: "In the cities, a man will sit down at a tea stall and drink one, two, three cups of tea. Before you know it, there's 10 taka wasted!" (10 taka is about 8 cents.) Another day he asked to borrow my phone, but asked me to dial the number for him. While I was dialing, he told me about his brother, the educated one in the family, who knew all about pressing buttons. Other times he would ask me to come along to the local haat (weekly market) -- just to be part of the crowd, and see the wares, which he would describe with big, excited gestures.
Rabbi, in the center below, is my substitute room-mate. When roommate Shuvo is on night duty, Rabbi comes to stay over ...so I'm sure not to be lonely.
But the mango did not go to waste. Lots was eaten fresh with salt, and much more was pickled as spicy amer achar. 
It is harvest time for the irrigated rice crop, and this year it is a good harvest. Most of the harvest work is done by hand, but the larger farmers use simple motorized threshing drums to speed up that work a little.
During harvest time it seems like everyone is busy, and the roads turn into straw drying floors, and cycling takes a little extra effort.
Bidis are handrolled, unfiltered cigarettes -- sold for Tk 6 per pack of 25. That's 4 for a taka, or 3 a penny. So getting your nicotine fix doesn't cost you much here in Bangladesh.
Here we all are in front of the generator. Shuvo is second from left. His cousin Anwar, 3rd from left, is the station manager, and got Shuvo the job. He also often stays over in our room.
