Rohingya Refugee Camp

Colin Miazga and I had been planning since June to do a water exploration program in the Nayapara and Leda refugee camps. In June, 2017, the population of the former was about 14,240 refugees, and of the latter, 19,230 Rohingya. But with the final round of violence beginning August 25th, Nayapara increased to 35,000 Rohingya, and Leda to 23,000 Rohingya. We moved up our start date, and expanded our crew to five.
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Our goal was to supplement or replace the surface water supply with a groundwater supply. We believe we have succeeded, though drilling and well testing will be the proof.
Today we moved to the Kutupalong Expansion site. Here, there are about 2000 wells, and almost every well finds water. But the wells are shallow, and largely contaminated by e. coli and other pathogens. Our goal here is to explore for deeper and better protected aquifers. Before August 25th, the refugee population of the Kutupalong Expansion Site was 99,705 Rohingya. Today, it is about 450,000. Or rather, 450,000!!!! You may have heard it or read it, but the repeated phrasing is true, people as far as the eye can see, in all directions.
We had to walk a 1.5 km obstacle course with our equipment to get into the exploration area. We hired Rohingya to carry the lighter equipment. Colin, Alastair, Chris, and Eric carried the heavy gear, including the 35 kg cable reels.
Think Chalmun’s Cantina in the pirate city of Mos Eisley of Star Wars. Think the dystopic future of Mad Max. Imagine the foothills of Nepal, but clear cut of all trees and rhododendrons, dusty, post-apocalyptic. The area was jungle, inhabited until 3 months ago by Asian elephants. Think of a city built of plastic tarps and bamboo. A dense, urban ant colony where everyone cooks with wood, and not a chimney to be seen. No wonder respiratory infections exceed water borne diseases. And though the Rohingya seem to be gentle and quiet people, the cacophony of the white noise of 450,000 people simply living is like being in a chicken coop.
Working in the camps in the south was a good warm up, so I only got choked up once in Kutupalong today, and for good reason. An elderly…very elderly woman was crossing one of the rickety bamboo bridges with a massive load of firewood balanced on her head. The Burmese army altered the demographics by removing a significant percentage of young men, leaving many elderly women and young children to fend for themselves. There was no way she was going to be able to make the large step off the bridge without stumbling or falling. I moved ahead to grab her arm and steady her. But before she could take the step, one of the 20 year old Polytechnic students transferred the entire mass of firewood off her head onto his shoulder, lowered himself from the bridge. He continued walking with the woman and her firewood to her tarped bamboo hut.
A CTV film crew had an extra day after filming Bob Rae’s visit. They spent the entire day with us, filming the march in and out, interviewing us all, capturing some fantastic footage of manually drilling a water well to 100 m depth from a bamboo drilling rig, and providing a welcome distraction to everything around us. Somehow they will boil it all down to a two minute clip likely to appear in the next few days.