Blogs from Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Asia - page 2

So you think you finally know what's going on, that you've begun to grasp a new place in a real way, when suddenly the frame of understanding slips and the word careers into a strange place.... You're driving along the road at dusk on the outskirts of town when, with a violent sudden-ness, a man with a large stick steps out from the darkened verge and begins beating the driver in the car in front, through his open window. You catch your breath as you register the same is happening to the car on the other side. Your own car slows. In the culminated head-lights you see a man in uniform with a gun. Shining flecks of rain falling around him like tiny silver bullets. Now you realise they're pulling all the cars over; 3 small ... read more

Hello - not much time for writing this time as I have been pretty busy. Here's a quick run of the week: So, Bangladesh has been living up to its stereotype and producing gallons and gallons of rainwater, which is flooding the land, and producing those classic pictures of thathched roofs just above the water-line that once we could watch from the nice dryness of our couches. Every day I journey either one or two hours to a camp (depending on which one), and then the same distance back to Cox's Bazar at the end of the day. We drive down the narrow penisula at the bottom of Bangla, to land that is closer to Myanmar than the rest of the country. Consequently last week, the whole field team - all 12 of us - ... read more

Last week Tun Nyo, Soo-Eun and I were flying. We’ve started calling ourselves ‘the three musketeers’, as we appear inseparable (I think its a kind of self-depracating plan to stop our colleagues taking the mick first). We’re the first people we cheerily greet in the morning, we share an office in a cutesy hut, we sit together in the jeep, work in the same room at the camps, return in the jeep and then are always the last ones working late into the hot nights. We're also the most avant-garde of departments in the office - floating new ideas about social development (putting people's wellbeing/happiness at the heart of all projects), gender mainstreaming (making sure both sexes are equally provided for/promoted in all projects) and participatory practices (ensuring the refugees are consulted at every step ... read more

This week has been as bumpy as the road we ride to the camps on. Great curtains of rain have swamped the town, leaving the path to our offices a snake-filled swamp. Lord bless the smart-thinking cleaner who hefted a few bricks into the mire so that we could hop, skip and jump our way to our desks. Ah, we areally are in 'the field'! But its not just the rain that's been making me despondent. The week started with a smart well-educated young man giving me a note that read 'This camp is ruining my life, please help me'. Another came in only to be told that he'd been misinformed about his family being resettled to Canada. Whilst these encounters were pretty gutting, the encouraging thing about young bright men is that they have ... read more

Visited Countries Map So here is where I am....a little country with a lot of people, and right down in the south a little beach resort called Cox's Bazar. I'm going to be here for the next 3 months as an intern with the UNHCR, working in 2 refugee camps in the vicinity. These camps are populated with 26,000 Rohingya refugees from Burma, some of whom have been living there in what have been described as 'appalling' camp conditions for the past 15 years. The situation is complicated and money is scarce so the UNHCR face a continuing struggle to make things better for these people. I have read a lot about it, but will finally be visiting one of the camps tomorrow, so should have a better idea then (it's all about the lived ... read more