Today, I woke up to a beautiful sunny morning - the haze that had been around for the few days had disappeared.
We left Khulner this morning, first taking a rick-shaw ride down to the river, which was a nice gentle, although slightly bumpy, way to start the day. Even though it was early, Khulner was already alive with people and traffic [and by traffic I mean rick-shaws and electric rick-shaws].
At the river I, and the other passengers waiting to catch the MAF flight, got on a wooden motor boat, which had seen better days and which had just been washed in river water.
This last point may not seem significant, except that the river is extremely dirty and polluted and, looking at the river bank, I suspect that it is full of sewage!!!
So I sat down rather gingerly on the boat. Anyway, having said that the boat trip down the river to meet the MAF plane was extremely pleasant. There were children on the river banks waving as we went by - I'm getting quite good at doing a 'royal' wave! There were also people washing themselves in the river, people washing clothes in the vast expanse of dirty water, as well as cattle drinking water.
When we arrved at the MAF plane meeting point, there were many armed policemen - which was slightly disconcerting to say the least, until we discovered that they were waiting to meet some people from the UN who were travelling with MAF on the incoming flight.
As we sat on the boat under the shade of a tree waiting, out of the cloudless blue sky a silver shape appeared - it really is an amazing spectacle to watch the MAF plane fly in and land so seemingly effortlessly on the river - a spray of water following behind.
So, within the space of an hour I had gone from travelling in the most basic form of transport to the most sophisticated - its just so surreal.
I'm now in Barisal and have had an extremely full day visiting MAF's partner projects - there are some truly amazing things going on this wonderful country, and I've met yet more dedicated and inspirational people.
I need to collect my thoughts on today, before I travel to the Shunderbans area tomorrow.
- Carolyn
