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Islamic Relief Worldwide-Bangladesh

Answers in the Wind Learning from the Chars

January, 2012

Documentation & Compilation, M. Mizanur Rahman Programme Officer - Islamic Relief Worldwide-Bangladesh Research Associate Nushrat Rahman Chowdhury Intern - Islamic Relief Worldwide-Bangladesh Concept and Overall Coordination Syed Shahnawaz Ali Programme Manager - Islamic Relief Worldwide-Bangladesh

Photo and Design,

M. Mizanur Rahman Contact with Organization Islamic Relief Worldwide - Bangladesh House No: 10, Road No: 10, Block-K, Baridhara, Dhaka-1212 Web: www.islamicrelief.com

This document has been prepared under the 6th DIPECHO Action Plan for South Asia implemented by Islamic Relief Worldwide-Bangladesh working under the NARRI consortium. Islamic Relief Worldwide-Bangladesh preserves the copyright of this but it can be quoted or printed with proper acknowledgement. It has been produced with financial assistance from European Commission Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO). The views expressed herein should not be taken, in any way, to reflect the official opinion of the European Commission Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO).

Answers in the Wind Learning from the Chars

1. Introduction

1.1 Background

Bangladesh is a land of countless rivers, diverse culture and ethnic knowledge. The geographical setting makes the country much more vulnerable to natural hazards like flood, cyclone and storm surge, flash floods, river bank erosion, drought, tornado and earthquake. These extreme natural events are termed disasters when they adversely affect the whole environment, including human beings, their shelters, or the resources essential for their livelihoods. This has contributed to a gradual increase in the intrinsic capacity of the people to view the hazards and perceive alternative opportunities available to them for coping with the hazardous events.

Many people in the disaster prone areas of Bangladesh depend on several types of indigenous knowledge to cope with the adverse effect of hazards such as flood, river bank erosion, drought, etc. and Gaibandha is one of them. Gaibandha is a district in Northern Bangladesh as part of Rangpur division with the exposure from different hazards. Flood is a common hazard in the district that happens almost every year in different magnitude and extremely affects lives and livelihood while river erosion makes people landless in all the way. Due to brutal vulnerability to natural disasters, increasing trend of poverty in the district, diffculties of communication, vast number of marginal communities, the digital early warning dissemination system cannot reach all the communities of the district especially the people living in Char areas. Although numerous people do not have the access to modern early warning dissemination techniques, they save life and livelihood from the distress of disasters. What is that strategy for survivals? To live with this situation, people of Gaibanda have developed unique set of locally managed, sustainable and cost-effective survival and risk-hedging strategies for early warning of floods and river erosions, which is termed as indigenous knowledge in

development parlance. Their indigenous knowledge is sheer combination of their intuition, observation, traditions and conventions which evolved with the years of experience. This has become a part of their belief which is distinctly reflected in their response mechanism. Fazlul, resident of Char Kabilpur in Gaibanda believe, nature has its own way of moving and when it is uninterrupted, it follows certain rules but when humans intervene in it, nature does not act similarly and tends to get back. Indigenous knowledge and low-cost approaches on Early Warning should be noticed, documented and learnt from. Appropriate measures to harness and build on the successfully demonstrated practices can certainly increase the efficiency and effectiveness of early warning system in place. This will also contribute to increase the sustainability of early warning efforts, where communitys existing knowledge is recognised for mutual learning and adaptation, taking us to our goal of empowering local communities.

Answers in the wind is an effort to identify and capture indigenous knowledge for predicting hazards which will have significance for household level preparedness. In addition, overall early warning efforts of the communities can be significantly improved if indigenous knowledge is synergized with our responses to questions thrown up by the changing climate and modern flood forecasting measures in Bangladesh.

The answers, friends, are all blowing in the wind! Lend it your ears.

1.2 Objective

On the way of continuous evolution and modernization, we are turning away from the nature day by day. It is very evident that anticipation and prediction of climatic events by the community by using their indigenous knowledge make them better prepared to face the impact of disasters. These are the people who have the history of survival for hundreds of years. They experience year round disasters, and learn to survive and live by any means possible with varying degree to hardship. There is plenty to learn from the people living for a long time in the nucleus of hazard and poverty spiral in the Char areas of Gaibandha. Most of the times such local knowledge is neither acknowledged nor available except it being transferred through oral traditions and legends from one generation to another. There is every chance of the richness and diversity of these experiences being lost.

There is structured early warning system for flood in our country. The existing system is well established and produces reasonable forecasts, but the information provided by the warning stations is too technical a mumbo-jumbo for ordinary people to

Case: 1

When I was twenty years old, I went to our paddy field with my father. While roaming around the land, suddenly my father became grave and he spoke out- we need to harvest now, though it was not the proper time to do that. I was surprised at his decision and I could not agree with him. He asked me to hire labour for that quickly. He also requested his brother to do the same thing but he also denied like me. But my father was stubborn that he would do that anyway because there will be flood soon. Only to show my anger I hired hundred labour at a time but my father became pleased at my task. It annoyed me much. The people made the entire field empty within two days and in the fourth day, the river started showing its youth-flood water quickly inundated the entire land within two days, a man of more than fifty narrated the story to us in the same area. We were restless to know how his father could guess that the flood water would come soon. He clarified me that his father could predict it by seeing cloud and lightening in the north sky and observing wind from the south. Again, we were speechless hearing their invaluable way of prediction of natural events.

The case collected and compiled by: Author

understand. The information of increase and decrease of water level against the BWDB monitoring stations cover only major rivers and is related to the rise and fall of water levels of various rivers. But unfortunately, the front line people who face the disasters remain beyond the reach of these messages. The messages are not understandable also to them. In this regards, their own observation of the nature can be of great help for them.

This document aims to assimilate the existing techniques of forecasting the natural events. Hence, it will be possible to replicate these methods in other regions and prepare the people for any disastrous situations. Such enormous importance is given to this very special knowledge because availing this knowledge is less costly and makes the vulnerable people prepared for the hazards with very little effort. Cost effectiveness and self sufficiency of detecting hazards are some unique characteristics of indigenous knowledge. Considering all these things, collecting, up-scaling and disseminating this ancient knowledge is the sole purpose of this paper. This information will have significant role to play in early warning and preparedness work if leveraged with modern flood forecasting.

1.3 Methodology

A purely qualitative approach has been taken as the only method of this study. Reviewing the existing literature, conducting Focus Group Discussions (FGD) and interviewing the Key Informants (KII) were the tools to collect the data from the field. The study was conducted in the three unions namely Fulchari, Uria and Haldia; prone to different disasters of Gaibandha. Six FGDs and eight interviews were arranged and respondents were largely elderly male and female having experience of years.

1.4 Organization of the Paper

The paper discusses the local practices basically for early warning for climatic events in three parts. There are numbers of practices and beliefs of the people regarding different natural events. We have tried to discuss their practices in hazard wise so that readers can have the idea at a time.

2. Early Warning Strategy of Char Peoples Strategy for Survivals

2.1 Flood Forecasting with Indigenous Practice

Lightening in the northern sky Lightening in the sky gives different meanings to char dwellers. Observation of the sky is very important to the people. Most interestingly, they observe the sky at night also. They go to bed after Eshah prayer and the tired bodies quickly go to deep sleep. They wake up two or three times in the entire night. Surprisingly enough, when they wake up what they do, they observe the sky and try to find out what it says - how the tomorrow will be. They can also predict the upcoming hazard by only observing the sky. Especially, they become very conscious in rainy season. They believe that lightening in the northern sky and winds from the south bring flood. At this time, they observe the status of the northern sky and monitor the direction of the blowing wind. If the wind is blowing from the south and at the same time there is lightening in the northern sky, they believe that the water level will rise and the flood water will come within two to three days. After detecting these phenomena, the local people start preparing and warn the neighborhood about the upcoming flood. This may have a scientific explanation which the common people do not know. The wind from the south takes the cloud to the Himalayas which act like a wall. With the gain in altitude of the clouds, the temperature drops and precipitation occurs. However, without knowing this scientific fact the local people are using this observable fact to predict flood for years. But it is not necessary that every observation and prediction of the people has any scientific explanation. In some cases, these are purely and solely beliefs-not more than that. Lightening in the southern sky In the same way, the opposite sign shows that there will be a decrease of water. People have observed from a long since that if there is lightening in the southern sky and wind blows from the north to the south, there will be a decrease in water level. The change in the direction of wind indicates that perhaps there will be less rain in the near future. They also noted that they can hear the sound

from the Bay of Bengal in that time and thus they can assume that the sea is crying for water and the rivers will supply water to it. Thus people conclude that the water level will decrease.

The sound of thunder Thunder in the cloud is also a very good indicator for the local people. They believe that the sound of thunder from cloud in the north sky symbolizes increase in water level and the same way the thunder in the south sky indicates that there will be decrease in water level. Trend of major floods It is very difficult to have a trend of flood though people want to predict the severity of flood after a certain time frame. Different people define it in a different way. Some find the massive floods occur every four years and some find it every ten years. But most of the people opined that in every ten years there is a massive flood in the area.

The local people concluded that if there is no flood in consecutive three years, they can understand that there will be surely a flood in next year. Again, some claimed that after every ten years there is a massive flood in this region. The flood statistics of Gaibandha could not dent the statement. For examples they mentioned the year of flood of 67, 87, 97 and 2007. Except the year of 1977, in every 10 years the areas were inundated by prolonged flood since 1967. They also believe that there will be again a flood in 2017. This knowledge of predicting flood is totally dependent on the observation.

The warmth of water surface

Local people can also predict water level rise by measuring the temperature of the water surface. They say when water 4 to5 inches from the surface is warm it symbolizes that the water level will increase. People in the chars of Gaibandha often keep their hands in the water and try to feel the temperature of water and try to assume whether the water level will rise or not. Frog as an indicator of early warning During discussions, many people reported that frog is a very good indicator for flood and water level. In the rainy season, whenever the frogs come out of their burrows and croak for a long time, people can easily predict that flood is coming. Again, there is another interesting assumption regarding frogs. People can assume the flood water level seeing the height at which the frog is burrowing. If the frog takes shelter on the table, people can assume that the water level will be up to the height of the table. Then people make necessary preparations assuming the water level!

It is interesting that this belief is not limited to Bangladesh rather it has some implications in some other countries. In several areas of Africa, frogs croaking is considered as a signal of onset of rainfall. This indigenous knowledge is consistent with the physiology of frogs but it is not confirmed that the noise will always result in rainfall or flood.

Appearance of red ants symbolize floods Teeming out of red ants is also a symbol of flood for the local people. If the ants come out of their places and scamper around, people become cautious of imminent flood. People would know the flood is coming when they see the ants crawling up the wall or something horizontal with their eggs in their mouth. It means that they are preparing for the upcoming flood. Some ants are reactive to environmental change like higher temperature and length of the day etc. During excessive rain, the environmental factors make the ants come out of their nests and they stay above the ground level. Excessive rainfall results in flood and people assume that the ants are coming out of their nests as flood is approaching.

The signal of the monitor lizard Monitor lizard is a reptile which lives mostly in burrows, tree holes and especially in agricultural areas. There is a saying that when the hissing and clicking of monitor lizards is heard continuously then it is confirmed that there will be flood in the near future. In some countries of East Africa, the people observe behavior of different reptiles, amphibians or insects to warn the locality about the approaching hazards. Birds ( ) warn flood A tall green grass is seen in the riverside areas of Bangladesh. The local name of this grass is Kashiara or Kash phul ( ). Among these Kash phul, a small bird can be found; its local name is Kora Pakhi ( ). People of many char areas believe that when these birds make sound, there is a possibility of a massive flood. Millipede as a sign of flood According to the village women, they see lots of millipede before a flood. They are seen in earth made houses. When the village women prepare the earth of the house they notice the

millipedes are coming out of the ground. This is also an early warning of flood for the village women. They believe the millipedes become fidgety and try to find dry places during rainy season.

Black dragon-fly ( ) hints about flood Black dragon fly works as a symbol of flood. They start to appear in large number before flood. They fly all over the char land and give early warning of flood. After seeing these flying black dragon people become conscious and preparation for the impending flood.

2.2 River Bank Erosion and Collapse of Char

Tortoise shape of a char approves sustainability The shape of a char land is an indicator of its durability. When the char takes the shape of a tortoise, then the char will be sustainable and the people will shift in those char lands. Tortoise like shape means the face of the char is very flat and this flat face of the char is crushed with less powerful tide of the river. The comparatively steeper slope of char has higher chance of being eroded. The driving force of untamed water comes and hits the river shore during flood. If the shoreline is sharp then it will be eroded. But if the shore is flat, the flood water will come and the pressure of the water will not be able to break the shore. So, people compare this flat shape of the char as back of a tortoise. If tortoise shape char is developed they move in those char land. Creation of a new char When a char appears in front of the original char and in between them if there is a flow of water, it is understood that the old char will collapse. The neighboring people observe the course of the river intently. While they observe the flow of water closely, they also look for infant char. The people get mixed feeling if they find a new char. Because it is also a sign of collapse of the old char. Fog is a manifestation of char collapsing People claim that there is a foggy look on the ground that is on the verge of collapse. If people see fog on the char, they can assume that the particular area will go down water.

Some people including a woman claimed that they themselves have observed it and after few days the land area where there was fog, collapsed. This particular fog is different from our seasonal fog. It appears in the rainy season. The char people say if such fog is noticed in wet season, the char will collapse soon. Whirling of water If there is whirling of water just beside the land area of char, the land area adjacent to the char will collapse and the example can be seen in the Fulchari bazar. This whirling of water in eddies, loosens the soil and it collapses. Appearance of red ant ( ) symbolizes river bank erosion Unlike black ants, the red ants are considered an indication of river bank erosion. People have observed if abundance of red ants is seen in a particular char, they believe that this char will not sustain in the next flood season. Jhau tree ( ) is a harbinger of permanence Jhau tree is basically seen in the coastal areas of Bangladesh. It is quite unusual to see this tree in the char areas of Gaibandha. If people see the jhau trees are growing in a particular char, they observe the growth of a tree. People believe that sustainability of the char can be measured by seeing the age of Jhau trees. Grass ( ) assures the sustainability of char It is not that after appearance of char people come and prepare their home on that. Rather they wait for a certain time until they find any Kashia ( ). When they see the Kashia tree growing, they can realize that the char will last and then they come and build their homes. A productive year in the char is a sign of devastation It is also very interesting that people believe when there is a bumper production in the char, it collapses in the next year. There is no certain explanation from the people but they

believe it and they claimed to have observed it from long since. They are sure that a char comes to its full productivity when it is about to collapse. This belief has been carried out by generation to generation. Naturally the chars are very productive due to the sedimentation, but when the village people get batch of harvest they presume that this char will not exist in the next flood season.

Case: 2: Night Shows the Day: Conventional Weather Forecasting by the People Mobarat Ali Mondol is a poor farmer of a char of Haldia union of Gaibandha. He, like the other people of this area, was facing bad days as they could not see the sun and the open sky for the last ten days. There was a foggy weather for a long time not only in Gaibandha but also throughout the country in this early January of 2012. As a poor farmer, he survives on the rice he grows in his small piece of land (almost 1 acre). His last stock of rice was going to run out soon and he was waiting for the sun to come up so that he could dry the paddy (Dhaan) and prepare the rice that can be boiled for eating. But the problem was- there was no trace of the sun for the last ten days and like Mondol, all the people in that community were suffering from this problem. So, borrowing from the neighborhood was not also possible. Without boiled rice, these people cannot think of a single day. Initially he planned to sell some of the Dhaan in the market and with that money he wanted to buy some processed rice but the problem was - he would incur a huge loss in terms of monetary value. People are to pay 100 taka as interest if they borrow 1,000 taka for one month. So, the interest rate for this type of borrowing is almost 120 per cent per annum, which is very alarming. It was the night of third January, 2012. Days were very cold and foggy from the last ten days; nights were also very cold, foggy and dark. Mondol went to bed very early as he always does. He woke up at 10.30 pm, a bit early as he was tense. Finding no other alternative, on 3rd January, he contacted a loan shark living 15 kilometers away from his home for borrowing money with this high interest rate. That is why; he wanted to get up early in the morning and wanted to catch the man at the very first hour. He knew the danger of taking loan with this high amount of interest but he was not that much afraid of it as he was going to get the harvest soon and with that he could easily pay the borrowed money. However, the overall situation made him a bit tense. In his first observation of the sky when he woke up and went outside his room at 10.30 pm of that night, he saw that the sky was still dusky and there was deep fog everywhere. He became grave and thought that next day would be the same foggy day again like the earlier ten days. With a deep despair, he went to his room again. Entering his dark room he could visualize the pale and torn face of his wife who was serving his family from the last 28 years. He could visualize the faces of the boys, one of 13 and another aged 6. The boys, perhaps, just after walking in the morning would search for some boiled rice with smashed potato or with some onion, salt and chilly. I do not know how their mother will console them, he muttered. A deep sigh came automatically. He felt sorrow for the wife. In the last winter, she was terribly suffering from asthma but she never told the husband to take her to the hospital as she knew that her husband had not a single penny in his pocket to do that. Mondol knew that but he did not dare to take her to the doctor. Luckily she is quite well in this year. However, he woke up again at 3.00am, went outside and tried to observe the sky again. He looked at every patch of the sky very carefully. Suddenly he could feel the gentle wind from the west and also thick fog around him but seeing some stars in the sky he could realize that the fog was not that much thick in the upper sky. He became a bit satisfied to see these things and could assume that tomorrow will be a sunny day most possibly. This was the thing for which he was searching. He went to bed again and had a good sleep up to 5.30 of the morning. In that very early morning, he started making arrangement to take the Dhaan out of the store (Kuthi, locally called) when his little boy and the wife were asking again and again why he was doing so in that foggy morning. This is how the people without technology still in these days forecast the weather. They observe the sky at night several times when they wake up and try to scrutinize the wind and sky so that they can have the idea of the weather of the coming day and can prepare for the day as well. The case collected and compiled by: Author

2.3 Drought Outstretched sky The local people thoroughly observe the sky, especially at night. When there is no cloud in the sky, it looks clear and distant, people say Akash dure chole jai. If they feel that the sky has gone higher and there are lots of star in the sky certainly there will be no rain and there

will be drought soon. They also can assume whether the next day will be sunny of cloudy by observing the night. It is very surprising that people try to understand the nature of next day seeing the earlier night. Lightening in the west Lightening in the west also indicates drought. not the kind that is seen during storms, rather it is some continuous and short lightening streaks for a long time at night. People say that if it is white and light then it is a sign of drought. If it is fluffy with a rolling sound The color of this flowing thing is white and it gives message of the forthcoming drought.

Red dragonfly ( ) hints about flood Red dragon fly indicates drought, local people believe. While the black dragon fly is the messenger of flood, the red dragon fly plays an opposite role as it shows an early warning of drought.

2.4 Storm and Rain Fall

Rainfall and storm forecasting People used to forecast the weather especially for rainfall and storm. I used to forecast the rainfall of twelve months - a man of fifty told at Uria one of the Unions of the study at Gaibandha. He said that he on a deep dark night used to go to his fields where there were some trees with edible root plants and drooping leaves. He selected one leaf each from the twelve consecutive trees and named those after twelve months and then tied them with rope and came back to home. In the very early of next

morning, he went to open the bundle and could forecast seeing the water the leaves contained. If there was no water in any tied leaf, he could assume that there will be no rain in that month and if there was water in that, it symbolized that there would be rainfall. Intensity of that rainfall could be assumed seeing the amount of water the particular leaf contained. They even said that even the storms can be predicted by seeing these tied leaves. People claimed that now they hardly practice it as many of them see it an activity that is against religion. That is why they do not want to do it. This claim was checked and cross checked again and again the result was the same. People firmly believe it and also they claimed that it was the most effective way to see the overall weather scenario of a year. The

man who practiced it used to disseminate the early warning among the people in that locality and people according to his warning took necessary preparation especially for irrigation. Warning from bird ( ) The bird locally known as Futtir Jol can be a sign of rain to the community people. When this bird chirps for consecutive three days, people takes it as an indication of rain fall.

There is a local legend about the naming of this bird. The ancestor of this bird was a herdsman; his job was to give drinking water to his masters cows. But on one occasion he lied to his master and didnt give water. The cows were so thirsty that they broke their tether and drank water from the river. This made the cows very angry and they cursed the herdsman that he would become a bird and cry for water in the dry season. The local people believe that the bird is crying for water and soon there will be rain so that it can drink water from rain.

Early homecoming of poultry Normally, the poultry is fed in the morning and they are freed for roaming during the day time. Before the dusk they come home and again in the next morning the master frees them. This is the normal routine of ducks and hens. But when the ducks and hens come to their coop very early in a day or they rush to their home at awkward time, people take it as a warning for storm. When clouds take shape of a tree Before storm, the clouds start to gather at the north-west side. But the local people believe when the cloud takes the shape of tree in the north-west side, it indicates storm. This time the clouds take a shape of a big tree with large branches. Black cloud in the western sky Again, black cloud in the western sky is a very clear indicator for a building storm. People said that while working in the field they often saw the black cloud in the western sky then they rushed towards home but even they could not reach their home before the rain started. It means that it takes a very short time for the storm to start after they see the cloud. So, whenever people see black cloud over there, a panic grips them and they try to get prepared as quickly as possible.

3. Conclusion

The increasing trend of development, could not assure the security of marginalized community of the country from natural disasters. Every hazard makes significant losses of that poorest section and even no early warning systems developed for saving lives and livelihood from draught or river bank erosions. On flood related signals, the central warning system focuses the height of water level of some major rivers. Then, how the disadvantaged communities save themselves? What is their strategy for survivals? On the other hand, the reason of giving importance for recognizing indigenous knowledge is the connection to grassroots level. The voice comes from the bottom and experiences from the life they lived. It has been tested for the years and they got results in most of the time. The recognition of those voices can be heard more effectively. With the advancement of science and technology, people of these rural areas can have the text messages from the mobile operator and get to know to what extent the flood water will rise today, they can learn the weather forecasting, necessary actions they need to take in the time of adversity but how many people are covered by the coverage of technologies. Do people get enough time for preparing themselves? This has been our humble effort at searching the `past for alternative approaches. Indigenous knowledge could contribute to the contemporary development models and can be one of pioneer approach in development discourse for effective prevention of lossof lives and livelihood from disasters. It can be said that their indigenous way of prediction is not less effective than those that our technology gives. For example, most of the preventive or preparedness measures they are suggested by us the development practitioners are often beyond their capacity to afford. These are people who, even after knowing the dire necessity of saving some money for the rainy day, cannot do that for lack of options, can never think of taking actions we prescribe through our technology. We frequently suggest them to take shelter on open high places during flood but they cannot even manage to do that. Rather, what they do? They make the place by themselves by amassing the water hyacinth, banana trees and some other homestead waste materials. Our technology does not teach them this. It has come down to them from generations. It is important to pay respect to these knowledge and practices of the people. Much science has been woven around Chaos Theories and systems are being developed by erudite scientists by feeding these seemingly chaotic events into highly technical computer and mathematical models for coming up with methods of predicting weather with some certainty but the communities have been listening to the frogs, grasshoppers and the winds

for generations and have been surviving because of their own models and methods of predictions. It is high time we took some initiatives to capture these invaluable knowledge from community to community and disseminate them widely for wider and effective practice to have a safer communities throughout the country. It is time we heard the answers in the wind!