Who We Serve
KEHSF serves a special category of Bangladesh people called the Char People (coastal people), who lives isolated in the Char land/areas (coastal areas) and are deprived of the advantages and benefits of living in the mainland of the rest of the country. They are further disadvantaged because the char areas, by nature, are infested with devastating high tidal bore, tornado, flood, cyclone, and the salinity. The char land are formed when the fertile silt carried by swift currents of the rivers, flowing mainly from India and the Himalayas, are emptied into the Bay of Bengal. But these rivers before reaching the Bay of Bengal, merge into the Meghna River of Bangladesh at different points, and only then the whole loads of silt of all rivers are emptied into the Bay of Benga. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the emptying of silt in Bangladesh occurs mainly in the Greater Noakhali watercourse and the estuary of the Meghna River is also formed in this watercourse.
Obviously, the constant supply of silt overwhelms the Bay which in turn creates strong tides. The silt are tossed around to create the Chars, big or small, attached to the existing land or at far away forming an island. But in next year or the year after, the chars of this year might vanish forming the chars at different locations. And this is a situation many char people unfortunately face.
In a small and a densely populated country like Bangladesh, the land worth a gold, especially for those who became landless in the mainland. Since the partition of British India, the Govt. of Bangladesh (East Pakistan from 1947-1971 and Bangladesh since then), plotted the char land attached to the Noakhali south shore for a numbers of years into 2.5 acres (now it is smaller) and distributed those to the landless farmers of the mainland. By accepting this gift of the Bay Bengal, the mainland people turned to be the char people, as well as, what the founder of the KEHSF called, the ‘Children of Bay of Bay of Bengal.’
I CALL THEM “CHILDREN OF BAY OF BENGAL”
“Born in early 1950s, I grew up with them, only 20 miles, or may be 30 miles, apart. I was in the Noakhali city living in the comfort of a safe home. Attended the best schools and moved to the capital city to attend the best University. Moved even further to USA to attain more education.
They lived out in the open, miles and miles of wetland, nobody around. They didn’t have any school to go to and no roads to walk on. They were deployed there to fight the Bay of Bengal with a couple of pages of legal-size papers (the deed of 2.5 acres of land), empty-handed, not even a backpack of emergency supplies. But they were not afraid to fight the Bay of Bengal. They had a strong faith on God, the Almighty, as their protector. They added more hands by multiple marriage and early marriage. They built their house way high from the ground, at least 3 feet high, the 5 feet is the best. They built another barrier of mud-wall, all-way around the outer boundary of their homestead built on about .5 acres of their total land of 2.5 acres. They planted fast-growing banana trees on the mud-wall, all-way around. This is their final defense, with grown up banana trees on the mud-wall, 8 to 10 feet high, against the Bay of Bengal.
But in no time, the inevitable happened. The Great Cyclone (or Bhola Cyclone) of 1970, with its about 30-feet-high water surge, grabbed everything, the human. Animals, the real estate, and the crops, all included. Nobody knows how many lives lost, but the best estimate points to up to a million, perished into the Bay of Bengal.
However, the Bay of Bengal made mercy to some, as if they were its children, the loved ones, left behind to start a new generation of Char people. It has been a long time now; the new generation is back to millions again. As I approached them, they asked, as if they knew me from the past, ‘where have you been all this time.”
