To School By Boat
How often do you get to go to school on a boat? You don’t? Well, for the kids from the village school Ambari it is the only possible way for nine months of the year.
In the South of Bangladesh, all the roads and footpaths in the lowlands are flooded for nine whole months every year because of monsoon rains. The children are unable to walk to school and that affects their school attendance since not every family has the means to pay for a “taxi-boat” to take them there. And there is also the fear their mothers feel: Will my child get back home all right?
Let’s build the boat
This very problem was resolved by a joint project of the organizations ADRA and BCSS who decided to build the children from the village school Ambari a boat. The idea emerged by the end of April 2015 while we were on our monitoring journey. In July, our Bangladeshi colleagues planned the project and its budget. In August – right after the project had been accepted – the preparations began. A market survey took a teacher, a carpenter and another two colleagues to a market 15 kilometers away where they bought the necessary material. It was the durable Loha wood which should last for 15–20 years if the boat is properly maintained and regularly painted. When the local seller found out what the wood will be used for, he gave the school a discount and told our colleagues where to buy the rest of the things necessary to build the boat.
We then jointly fetched the material to the school where it aroused hopes in the children. Two weeks later, on August 25, the building commenced. It was the carpenter and his assistant who built the boat – entirely by hand (they did not use any electrical tools). Although heavy rains disrupted the building for ten days, they managed to finish the boat within a single month, on September 25. Both builders were pleased to help the school and the children. The boat is 5.8 meters long, it can carry 1,500 kg of cargo or twenty smaller village kids. It cost nearly 600 USD.
Joyful launching the boat
The ceremony at the occasion of launching the boat took place on October 4, 2015, in attendance of the happy children and some of their parents. One father, Roshomoy Mondol, told us: “The school just needs a boat like that because all the pathways are flooded for nine whole months every year. So we’re very happy about it. We really appreciate all that Promotho Baroi (the local teacher) does for our kids. He’s a hard-working man and he does what he can so that our children can get to and from the school. We know our kids are safe now and we can send them to school and don’t have to worry about them.”
The local teacher, Promotho Baroi, thanked those who had come to the ceremony and said a few words about how the boat was going to be used: “I’m very happy and, on behalf of all the children, I’d like to thank all our donors and colleagues for this boat. It will take the children to and from the school and we will also use it to go buy ingredients for the school cafeteria where we cook for all the students. We won’t have to rent a boat from our neighborhood anymore.”
Great help for children, families and the teacher
It should be added that renting a boat to go shopping for food when the market was being held was not easy. The thing is that the neighborhood simply does not have enough boats and the neighbors need to go buy food for their own families, too. Promotho Baroi will now be able to use the boat to visit the children’s families and thus communicate with their parents more easily. And the everyday sails will certainly strengthen the relationship between the teacher and his pupils. Bon voyage and no capsizing!
PS: Would you like to see how the first sail looked like? Take a look at the photo gallery below.
