Return to the M.B.Herald Vol. 37, No. 22 Home Page
In mid-September Mennonite Central Committee distributed emergency food valued at $15,000 in areas affected by prolonged flooding in Bangladesh. This flooding was the result of the 1998 monsoon season that left 70% of the country under water and damaged 760,000 hectares of crop land.
MCC's food relief fed an estimated 3600 families for about five days. MCC needs $770,000 for seeds and tools, medicines and house reconstruction. MCC also is providing 6300 tonnes of grains through a Canadian Foodgrains Bank shipment to be used in food-for-work programs.
More than 200 MCC Bangladeshi staff and 15 North American volunteers distributed food and medicine to villagers near Dhaka, Shirajganj and Faridur. One businessman in Dhaka is using his money to feed 600 people a day.
Mohammad Shamsul Alam, an MCC agricultural researcher, explained the reason that this flood was worse than the normal annual flooding because low-lying areas, normally dry by early September, were still under water. People can't plant crops. Food is available, but no one has money to buy it, he said. "The rice that was planted in July and August has been washed away, so there will be no rice harvest in November," he said.
In 1989, Mohammad Abdul Bari started working in MCC's vulnerability reduction program which helped people raise the floors on about 100 homes after the record flooding in 1988. He said the 1998 flood is worse, and that with the waters staying longer bamboo walls of houses are rotting, mud foundations are softening and homes are collapsing. People have no way to boil water, and there has been an increase in cases of cholrea, hepatitis and various kinds of pox, he said.
One family in Faridpur had constructed a bamboo platform inside their home that was 2.5 feet above the floor. This year, they had to raise the platform another 3.5 feet.--Dorothea Dickerson, MCC
Return to the M.B.Herald Vol. 37, No. 22 Home Page