Greece’s Lifejacket Graveyard

High up in the sunburnt hills of Lesvos, Greece lies a black and orange heap of plastic. It is large, about the size of an Olympic swimming pool, but its vastness pales in comparison to the scope of the reasons why it is there—the half a million and growing masses of displaced refugees who have washed up upon the island’s shores.

Lesvos is a major port for refugees fleeing chaos in the middle east, mostly from war-torn Afghanistan and Syria. The journey across the sea can be deadly. Refugees often pay over $5000 to smugglers who will bring them across the Mediterranean to supposedly safe ports in Europe, but there is no guarantee that the smugglers have not been bribed for one reason or another, or that the journey will be successful.

The black and orange heaps rotting in the hills of Lesvos are made up of lifejackets and boats that belonged to those who made it over, but in those quiet mountains one can almost hear the whispering of the hundreds of thousands who were lost on the way. A closer look reveals children’s floaties, some painted with princess decals, some emblazoned with the message, This is not a flotation device.

Once in Lesvos, the owners of these lifejackets were carted into packed camps, where many of them have remained for years. Conditions in the Moria camp in particular have been widely maligned by human rights organizations around the world. The camp was made to hold 2,000 people and now holds over 6,000, according to official reports, though many believe that the number has exceeded 8,000. Refugees live in cramped makeshift tents that flood when it rains, and the camps are overrun by disease, mental illness stemming from severe trauma, and chaos.

Following the Arab Spring in 2011, which catalyzed revolutions across the Middle East, Syria and many other countries experienced a mass exodus, leading to the flood of people seeking asylum in Europe that has come to be known as the modern refugee crisis.

Many refugees are university-educated professionals, fleeing in hopes of finding a better life for themselves and their families. But once in Europe, they are often caught up in bureaucratic tangles that keep them stagnant in the camps for years at a time, despite the fact that many already have family members in other parts of the continent.

Thousands of volunteers have flocked to the island in order to help. Nonprofits like A Drop in the Ocean host lessons and English classes for refugees, and facilitate the safe landings of newly arrived boats. Others work to provide hygienic services, like the organization Showers for Sisters, which provides safe showers and sanitary products to women and children.

Lesvos itself still functions in part as a tourist town, though it is mostly populated by volunteers, refugees, and locals. Not far from the lifejacket graveyard is the pleasant seaside town of Molyvos, which boasts sandy beaches and restaurants serving traditional Greek fare.

Much of the island is made up of open space, populated only by olive groves and forests, open plains, and abandoned buildings. The lifejacket graveyard is located in one such empty plain, and except for scavenging seagulls and goats, the area is empty, making the presence of the rotting heaps of plastic even more unnerving.

The only other proof of human presence to be found lies on a wall of graffiti nearby a garbage dump, marked by the sentiment Shame on you, Europe.

The combination of the Greek financial crisis and rising tides of nationalism occurring at the same time as the height of the refugee crisis have caused xenophobic sentiments to allow these horrifically overcrowded camps to mar this beautiful tropical island, which once inspired the Greek poet Sappho to write her legendary love poems.

The lifejacket graveyard has been left standing partly because of island officials’ lack of motivation to clean it up, and partly as a statement, a tribute to the thousands who still wait in limbo on the island.

If you are interested in helping out, organizations mostly need financial contributions, legal aid, medical aid, translators, and publicity. It is also possible to volunteer, and opportunities and detailed information can be found at sites like greecevol.info.

Eden Arielle Gordon

Eden Arielle Gordon is a writer, musician, and avid traveler. She attends Barnard College in New York.

SOUTH AFRICA: Dinner in Khayelitsha

South African apartheid is frequently written off as a memory, something that ended decades ago. But from the start of my visit to South Africa, it became clear that the violence of that period has continued to bleed into the present, manifesting itself in clear racial and economic divides.

I visited Cape Town in the summer of 2016. Cape Town is a city of contrasts—tall, imposing mountains cast shadows over clear blue seas, and seaside villas luxuriate only a few miles away from derelict townships.

These townships are the subject of this piece. Townships in South Africa are villages that remain from apartheid-era forced exoduses of non-white people, cast out of their homes and crammed into segregated areas.

These townships still stand today. They are mostly collections of mottled tin-roof shacks and cramped streets, and they are home to 38% of South Africa’s population of 18.7 million.

From the beginning of my arrival in South Africa, I was told by locals that the townships were unsafe, especially for outsiders. But one day, I returned to my flat in the town of Observatory and one of my roommates asked me if I wanted to visit one.

The visit would be hosted, she told me, by Dine With Khayelitsha, a program founded by four young township residents designed to foster communication between their communities and those outside. Dine With Khayelitsha started in March 2015, as part of a partnership with Denmark and Switerland intended on working as a fundraiser. It then grew and has now hosted over 100 dinners. Each dinner is attended by at least one of the founders, who assures the safe transportation of every participant.

Thanks to this organization, I found myself on a bus driving into one of the townships, and then I was suddenly in a house with a bunch of strangers, eating authentic South African beans and meat.

We arrived at the township’s president’s home, though she was not there—she was outside campaigning, and instead several locals were cooking the meal for the night.

I had come with my new friend, and among the other attendees were two Dutch women, an artist from Germany, a couple from France and Morocco, and a South African black woman. Noticeably absent were white native South Africans, a fact that we asked the hosts about. Apparently, South Africans themselves still persistently ostracize the townships, creating divisions between themselves and the poorer underside of their country.

Our hosts were a few young men from the townships. They had all attended college and one worked in IT and another in software engineering, and most of them also ran after school programs such as leadership and self-esteem workshops for township kids. They had started this organization in an effort to generate more dialogue among South Africans and to raise awareness and reduce stigma concerning the townships.

First, they asked us to discuss one act of kindness we’d performed recently. As night fell, the talk began to flow more easily.  We discussed the fact that so many kids from townships are forced to go through school and university, if they can make it that far, in order to get menial jobs that can support their families. For these kids, following their dreams is not an option, but it is rather an inconceivable luxury. One of the hosts said that he would love to run education programs for kids, but instead he had to become an engineer to support his family.

After dinner, as we were waiting for a bus to come pick us up, I asked one of the men if most people born into townships grow up wanting to escape, to find better lives. He told me that some did, but in his opinion, it is far more important to stay in the townships and to try to create a better life there. That’s what he had done; he’d gotten an education and a job and still lives in the townships, trying to create programs and to help uplift the state of the community.

I talked to another local who was a writer, and his eyes shone as he talked about how he can capture strange and vivid moments with words—and another who spoke passionately about his desire to hear stories from people all around the world. There was an undercurrent of kindness that seemed to link these people together that I have rarely seen; a desire to include others, to tell stories and to share parts of their lives, to not build walls but to rather create open streams of connection. To create rather than to destroy.

Conversations like this one cannot heal or make up for old wounds inflicted upon non-white people in South Africa—only physical reparations and policy changes can truly begin that process. But they are a step in the right direction—a step towards understanding that we are all part of the same global community, and the walls between us are really made of dust.

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Xenophobia Sweeps Across South Africa
Xenophobia Sweeps Across South Africa

EDEN ARIELLE GORDON is a writer, musician, and avid traveler. She attends Barnard College in New York.

Health Care Inequalities Impact Indigenous Communities

What are the Effects of Racism In Health Care Delivery in Canada and the US?

Research released the week of July 1 suggested health care inequalities among indigenous communities extended beyond the Northwest Territories’—where around half the population is indigenous—to all of Canada. The research says racism, in particular implicit racism, has contributed to unnecessary deaths among indigenous communities. Dr. Smylie, a Métis doctor and researcher, commented that “the most important and dangerous kinds of racism that people encounter is actually racism that's hidden.”

Yet implicit racism is not new: it has been the focal point of past studies, most notably the 2015 Wellesley Institute study “First Peoples, Second Class Treatment” also led by Dr. Smylie. The study suggested indigenous people either strategized their visits or avoided care completely due to the frequency of experienced racism. Such racism was commonly felt in a “pro-white basis,” according to Dr. Smylie, and negative stereotypes that originated in colonial government policies like segregation.

Michelle Labrecque’s prescription for severe stomach pain was merely a message to not drink (source: CBC news).

The findings of the 2015 Wellesley study underlined the unnecessary death of elder Hugh Papik in 2016. Even though Papik did not have a history of drinking, Papik’s stroke was mistaken for drunkenness. His death prompted an external investigation that made 16 recommendations for the Government of the Northwestern Territories. Four of the recommendations focused specifically on fostering relations between indigenous communities and health care professionals. All but two were adopted.

The recommendations included training staff—“policies for implementation of mandatory and ongoing culture safety training… in partnership with the Indigenous community”—in hopes of breaking down the root issue of systemic racism by confronting stereotypes. According to health minister Glen Abernethy, training will do so by incorporating information about the different cultures of the territory as well as a history of colonization for non-indigenous staff. In addition to the training, Abernethy hopes to increase the number of indigenous staff in the future by encouraging young locals to pursue medical careers so that they might return and serve their communities.

However, the messy entanglement of racism and health care is not unique to Canada. A 2017 survey by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found 23% of Native Americans faced discrimination when “going to [the] doctor or health clinic” in the US.  

Even though the US federal government is obligated, through treaty agreements, to provide for the health of Native Americans, the IHS itself is too underfunded to provide adequate care. A 2014 study stated that “Long-term underfunding of the IHS is a contributing factor to AI/AN health disparities.”  Indeed, for people like Anna Whiting Sorrell who have struggled to get treatment in the past, it is no surprise that “a lot of American Indians simply put up with …“‘tolerated illness.’” Other care alternatives are also difficult to access as the American health care system makes it hard for many Native Americans to obtain care in the private sector.

Cartoon depicting the waiting room of an IHS facility-- and the struggles of the system (Source: Marty Two Bulls).

And while some communities have successfully started looking inwards at traditional forms of healing and eating to improve health, it is evident that many are doing so because outside systems of support are inadequate or nonexistent. Although Canada is actively trying to address inequalities in its health care, the US has yet to do so.

 

TERESA NOWALK is a student at the University of Virginia studying anthropology and history. In her free time she loves traveling, volunteering in the Charlottesville community, and listening to other people’s stories. She does not know where her studies will take her, but is certain writing will be a part of whatever the future has in store.

Literacy… for Whom?

The significance of the Gary B. v. Snyder lawsuit dismissal.

Detroit students opened up the conversation on who has the right to education (Source: Steve Neavling).

On June 29, 2018 US District Judge Stephen J. Murphy III dismissed a federal class-action lawsuit, Gary B. v. Snyder. The lawsuit, filed in 2016 by Public Counsel and Sidley Austin LLP on behalf of a class of students, claimed the plaintiffs were deprived of the right to literacy. The decision will be appealed at the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Although Judge Murphy agreed a degree of literacy is important for such matters as voting and job searching, he did not say it was fundamental: constitutional.  The central reasoning for the dismissal of the case was the suit failed to show overt racial discrimination by the defendants in charge of the Detroit Public Schools: the state of Michigan. The other reasoning Judge Murphy provided was that the 14th amendment’s due process clause does not require Michigan provide “minimally adequate education.”

Meanwhile the case brings up an important question its initial filing gave rise to: is literacy a constitutional right? One could argue the importance of literacy goes back to Reconstruction. According to Professor Derek Black, Southern states had to rewrite their constitutions with an education guarantee in addition to passing the 14th amendment before they could be readmitted into the US. Black states “the explicit right of citizenship in the 14th  Amendment included an implicit right to education.”

The theme of education and citizenship is a central component to the complaint’s argument for literacy as a fundamental right. It appeared in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case too, which emphasized that education was “the very foundation of good citizenship.” The complaint drew on this citizenship theme to argue the importance of establishing elementary literacy tools—about the equivalent of a 3rd grade reading level. These can then develop into adolescent literacy skills, which allow an individual to comprehend and engage with words. Such engagement is what democratic citizens need when they are making decisions on who to vote; even more importantly, literacy is essential to understanding the often complex ballots voting requires. Further, literacy allows one to take part in political conversations.

The schools in question also “serve more than 97% children of color,” according to the complaint. Many of these students also come from low income families. On the 2017 Nation’s Report Card the average score out of 500 for reading was 182 for Detroit 4th graders, compared to the national average of 213 in other large city school districts. If the 1982 Pyler v. Doe case argued children could not be denied free public education that is offered to other children within the same state—in line with the 14th amendment—then why the disparity in scores?

The plaintiffs believe the disparity lies in deeply rooted issues in the Detroit Public Schools. They argue literacy tools that are first taught in elementary school are not only unavailable to them but that their schools are also not adequate environments for fostering education.The complaint mentions unsanitary conditions, extreme classroom temperatures, and overcrowded classrooms as environmental stressors. They also mention inadequate classroom materials as well as outdated and overused textbooks.

Worn history textbook from 1998 (source: Public Counsel).

Not only is the school environment not conducive to learning for these students but their teachers are often not the proper facilitators for learning. The complaint mention such issues as high teacher turnover, frequent teacher absences, lack of short term substitute teachers, inadequate teacher training, and allowance of non-certified individuals.  The complaint also states students at these schools may also have unaddressed issues related to trauma teachers are not trained for.

And the solution to these discrepancies could very well be what the plaintiffs are arguing for: make literacy, education, a fundamental right. In a 2012 Pearson study on global education systems, the US was number 17. All the countries ahead of the US had either a constitutional guarantee of education or a statue acknowledging the role of education. According to Stephen Lurie, this creates a baseline ruling of what education entails: a culture of education around which laws can form.

Such a baseline ensures education is not a question of privilege. Indeed such conditions as the complaint mentions, as lawyer Mark Rosenbaum stated, would be “unthinkable in schools serving predominantly white, affluent student populations.”  What Gary B. v. Sanders is asking for is a safe school environment, trained teachers, and basic instructional materials. It is asking that Detroit students are guaranteed a minimum of education that will at least give them the chance other students in Michigan have at becoming informed citizens and adults.

Teresa Nolwalk

Teresa Nolwalk is a student at the University of Virginia studying anthropology and history. In her free time she loves traveling, volunteering in the Charlottesville community, and listening to other people’s stories. She does not know where her studies will take her, but is certain writing will be a part of whatever the future has in store.

A Refugee-Run Restaurant in Lisbon's Mercardo de Arroios

Mezze: Rebuilding, with Food

In a market as diverse as Lisbon’s Mercado de Arroios, where people from all over the world shop, Mezze doesn’t seem out of the ordinary. But the small restaurant deserves a closer look: it’s not only one of Lisbon’s few Middle Eastern restaurants, but, more importantly, its staff is almost entirely made up of recently arrived Syrian refugees. For them Mezze represents both a link back to the country they left behind and a crucial aid for putting down roots in their new home.

The idea behind Mezze is one that’s being tried out in other countries. Refugees, particularly those fleeing the war in Syria, are given the chance to earn a living and get established by sharing their culinary heritage, either by opening or working at a restaurant or catering business. The benefit is not just for the refugees, who are able to earn some money while at the same time preserving a taste of home, but also for their new communities, who can support those displaced by war and gain insight into their cultural heritage through the universal language of food.

Mezze’s start, though, was motivated by something simpler – the desire for bread. Alaa Alhariri, a 24-year-old Syrian woman who came to Portugal to study architecture in 2014 after a brief time spent studying in Egypt and Istanbul, was missing the flatbread she used to buy back home. “Bread is the beginning of everything, it exists in every culture,” she says. “In the Middle East it means family, it means sharing. Syrians open bakeries as soon as they arrive in Turkey and in other countries as well.”

Alaa is one of the four founders of the non-profit Pão a Pão, which means “Bread by Bread,” a name inspired by the Portuguese saying “Grão a Grão” (“Grain by Grain,” which has a similar meaning to “step by step”). The organization was the brainchild of Alaa and Francisca Gorjão Henriques, another cofounder and Pão a Pão’s current president. Francisca and Alaa met by chance – Alaa was living with Francisca’s aunt. Pão a Pão was originally created with the intention of opening a bakery.

“Refugees [from Syria] started to arrive in Portugal in 2015 under the European Union program to relocate them,” explains Alaa, whose eyes shine with enthusiasm when talking about the project (while she’s heavily involved in behind-the-scenes work, she doesn’t work at the restaurant). “They only receive state assistance for two years, after which the funds stop.” The aim of Pão a Pão is to help young people and women, in particular, integrate into the work force. “Some of these women have never worked before,” says Alaa. “They’ve been housewives all their lives.”

But the team at Pão a Pão began to think bigger; the bakery plan was scrapped and their new aim was to open a restaurant. They organized a series of successful test dinners in December 2016, which took place in an old covered market that had been converted into an events space. Buoyed by the positive response, Pão a Pão felt confident in taking the plunge. They were able to crowdfund just over 23,000 euros (around $30,000) – almost 10,000 euros more than the initial goal – over the course of 2017, with the restaurant finally opening its doors in September, serving such classic Syrian dishes as moussaka, kibbeh (fried balls made of bulgur, minced meat and walnuts), kabseh (rice with vegetables and chicken) and baba ganoush.

“The people working here feel like they’re doing something useful. So the more people we can help feel this way, the better.”

“People’s reactions have been amazing, it is better than we could expect, we’re always busy,” says Francisca, who recently left her job as a journalist at the Público newspaper to concentrate on her work with the organization. “We have improved a lot since our first test dinners, especially considering that 90 percent of the team had no prior experience.”

Mezze has also been extremely well received by the Mercado de Arroios’s neighboring shops and stalls, which supply the restaurant with its ingredients. Everything Mezze cooks with comes from the market except the meat, which is sourced from a halal butcher in Almada, south of Lisbon.

Perhaps more significantly, the refugees employed by Mezze take pride in their work. Serena, a 24-year-old from Palestine who has been living in Lisbon for one year now, loves the atmosphere at the restaurant. But, more importantly for her, she values the chance to show that refugees are the same as everyone else: “We work hard, we love life and want to be part of society as much as anyone.”

While we talk, she welcomes people to the restaurant and explains the menu. “The Portuguese ask a lot of questions because they don’t know these dishes but everyone loves the food,” she says. Although she finds the language difficult, she considers Portugal to be her home now. “It’s my home, where I find myself,” she explains. “It still has traditional a family structure, family bonds, and at the same time, more freedom of movement and speech.”

Rafat Dabah, 21 years old, has been in Portugal for just under two years, after being relocated with his family from Egypt, where they first moved after leaving Syria. “My father had a restaurant in Syria and in the school holidays I would work there with him,” he tells us. “Here in Portugal I worked in a kebab place in a shopping center.” This experience seems to have served him well. He began working as a waiter at Mezze, but is now the restaurant’s manager – he eagerly explains the improvements they have made at the restaurant and the positive feedback they’ve received from diners.

Originally from Damascus, he lives in Lisbon with his younger brother and his mother, who also works at Mezze. His older brother, 24, lives in Turkey. His father died in the war. Living in Loures, a suburb north of Lisbon, Rafat can’t image going back home to Damascus anytime soon. “It’s tough there. Sadly things are still dangerous.”

As for life in Portugal, he doesn’t feel quite at home yet, although it’s getting better. He tells us how he’s enjoying learning so much, including the Portuguese language. “To integrate you need to learn the language, I’ve learned a lot and I’m practicing more now,” he says. “Once I could communicate, life became much easier.”

This isn’t the first time refugees have made Portugal their home. Because of its neutrality during the Second World War, the country saw a large influx of exiles from other European countries as well as North Africa. Likewise, hundreds of thousands fled to Lisbon after the independence of Angola and Mozambique in 1975. More recently, 1,659 refugees took shelter in the country as a result of the Balkan wars in the early 1990s.

In the last two years, 1,507 refugees (mostly Syrians but also some from Iraq and Eritrea) were relocated to Portugal from Greece and Italy, according to the Portuguese Council for Refugees. The Portuguese Government announced recently that they would receive 1,000 more currently residing in Turkey (again, mostly Syrians but also some from other Middle Eastern countries). Although small in number compared to the massive number of refugees being sheltered in the countries bordering Syria, they are being welcomed warmly. The extraordinary success of Mezze speaks to that.

The support of the Portuguese people has been fundamental to the realization of this project, which leads us to wonder if this openness would have been possible, say, even 20 years ago. “Maybe 20 years ago, without social media amplifying this disaster at the gates of Europe, this wouldn’t be possible,” admits Francisca. “At the same time, today’s Lisbon is much more cosmopolitan than it was 20 years ago. Diversity is now a prime feature in some parts of the city, like in the Arroios neighborhood.”

The ongoing support of Lisboetas, many of whom felt a wave of solidarity with the refugees after Europe initially bungled the refugee crisis, has inspired Alaa and her colleagues to think bigger. “We’re thinking of opening another location. The Portuguese love to eat and we’re lucky that they love our food,” says Alaa.

Francisca confirms the plans to open another place. “We’ve developed this project with the hope of replicating it in Lisbon and other cities in the country. We’re still starting out and we want to improve, but we think we might be able to open in other locations in a year. We also hope to expand our current Mezze to include a take-away and catering service.” They also have plans for debates and workshops, with Pão a Pão hosting a conference on integration at Mezze on Friday, January 26.

According to Alaa, the people working at the restaurant “feel happy, they feel like they’re doing something useful. So the more people we can help feel this way, the better.”

 

This article originally appeared in Culinary Backstreets, which covers the neighborhood food scene and offers small group culinary walks in a dozen cities around the world.

 

AUTHOR

CÉLIA PEDROSO

Célia, CB’s Lisbon bureau chief, is a freelance journalist, writing mostly about travel and food, and is the co-author of the book "Eat Portugal", winner of a Gourmand World Cookbook Award. Her work can be seen in such publications as The Guardian, Eater, and DestinAsian. In 2014 she started leading food tours in Lisbon through Eat Portugal Food Tours and now does the same with CB. She wrote the Portuguese entries for the book "1001 Restaurants you Must Experience Before you Die" and keeps searching for the best pastéis de nata so you don't have to.

PHOTOGRAPHER

RODRIGO CABRITA

Photographer Rodrigo Cabrita was born in Oeiras, Portugal in 1977. He started his career at the daily newspaper Diário de Notícias in 2001 and has worked at a variety of publications since then. He is now a freelance photographer and takes part regularly in exhibitions. Rodrigo has won several photojournalism awards, most notably the Portuguese Gazeta award. You can see more of his work at his website and his Instagram page.

 

 

The Furnace of Broken Dreams

On the outskirts of Dhaka you will find hundreds of small brick factories.

The majority of these factories are considered illegal by the Bangladeshi government because the chimney stacks are too low and because they still use coal as their main fuel. Burning wood in kilns has also been illegal since 1989, but nearly two million tons of firewood are burned in ovens annually. The toxic fumes that these countless factory sites emit cause almost half of all the air pollution in the city.

Beside each factory are the makeshift villages or camps, where the workers live. Whole families are forced to labour for twelve hours a day, without rights and with a salary that barely allows them to survive.

The workers rise before dawn, heading up to the furnace in the half darkness. At 9 o’clock they are permitted to take a half hour break from their work. Most return quickly to their homes, wake up their youngest children who still are sleeping, and prepare breakfast for their families.

It is then back to work until 2 o’clock, when they may take another half hour break for lunch. Below you see Imran Uddin, 24 years old, a few minutes before a tropical storm hit the factory site where he was working with his brothers. None of the workers stopped during the storm.

Most of the workers in the furnace are families, including the elderly and also their children, who will begin to work alongside their parents when they are around six years old. The children’s pay is equal to that of adults, and is based on the amount of bricks transported daily. Younger children will spend the day wandering in the camps or around the furnace.

The work day only ends as darkness falls, when the workers will head to the nearest lake or river to wash the grime and dust from their faces and clothes. Returning to their homes, they prepare dinner and fall into an exhausted sleep. It is very rare for a home to have electricity. I was surprised to find that their days were marked only by the rhythm of work, no time even for prayer. They work six and a half days each week.

Most of the workers who we talked with were friendly, despite their fatigue and tiredness, and were glad to speak with someone. They also offered us their hospitality, as best they could, even though some of them told us that they felt ashamed of the conditions they lived in.

Sometimes we spoke with someone who was fearful. Some of the workers were afraid that if the boss knew they had talked to us, they might lose their job. In general, the workers were preoccupied with maintaining a relentless pace of bricks being loaded onto their heads or into the carts.

One of the young men we met, Shakir Kander, was 16 years old. Day in, day out, Shakir shovelled the dusty coal to fuel the hungry brick-baking furnace, from six o’clock in the morning until nightfall.

As with all the other workers, Shakir is allowed only half a day of rest each week. Also below you see a boatman crossing the Bouriganga river, which is considered among the top three most polluted rivers in the world. The many waterways surrounding Dhaka are essential for the transport of materials that are be used in the manufacture of bricks.

Above you see Shamina, thirteen years old, sleeping on the back of her bicycle — used for transporting bricks — during her short lunch break. During my time in Bangladesh, I visited perhaps thirty factories in two months, and met many individuals like Shamina. When embarking on this project, I believed that it was crucial to spend several days at each factory, so that I might more thoroughly capture their moments of everyday life outside of work. Sadly, factory after factory, it became apparent that the daily free time I had imagined for the workers, simply did not exist. Their schedule did not even permit them time to pray before sunrise, and days seemed to pass with an ineluctable cyclicality.

The sun beat down from above, the sweltering furnaces were burned constantly, and the air was always filled with dust and smoke.

I went away upset, with a bitter taste in my mouth. Away from these hellish workplaces, I gratefully breathed great gulps of fresh air, and yet the fate of the workers and their children would remain unchanged.

It was after reading author Kevin Bales’ powerful works on modern slavery and other similar studies, that I felt compelled to move to Bangladesh to tell this story. When I first arrived into Dhaka’s industrial area, and saw the forest of factory chimneys engulfed by thick black smoke, I knew that I had made the right decision. I had to document this. I had to share it with as many people as I could. And so I began.

In the end, what has stayed with me most about these factories, is our remarkable human capacity to somehow find the will to adapt and survive in adverse circumstances, whether environmental, social or economic. Living alongside the workers was, in its own way, a privilege, as I tried to understand and document the depth and truth of their lives.

 

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MAPTIA.

 

RAFFAELE PETRALLA

Raffaele is a documentary photographer focusing on social, environmental, and anthropological issues.

BANGLADESH/INDIA: From No-Man's Land to the Unknown

For decades, more than 50,000 people have been stranded, without access to basic rights, on tiny islands of no-man’s land locked within India and Bangladesh. 2015 finally saw an end to these enclaves, or ‘chitmahals,’ bringing hope and change to communities living on the world’s most complex border.

The party lasted long into the night across remote patches of northern Bangladesh. As the clock struck midnight people played music, danced and sang using candles for light, and for the first time in their villages they raised a national flag. Similar events were also taking place on the other side of the border in India just a stone’s throw away. 

For 68 years, ever since the formation of East Pakistan in 1947 (which later became known as Bangladesh), the residents of one of the world’s greatest geographical border oddities have been waiting for this moment; for their chance to finally become part of the country that has surrounded yet eluded them for so many years.

At 12.01am on July 31st, 2015, India and Bangladesh finally exchanged 162 tracts of land — 111 inside Bangladesh and 51 inside India. 

Known in geographical terms as enclaves, or locally as chitmahals, these areas can most easily be described as sovereign pieces of land completely surrounded by another, entirely different, sovereign nation.

Inside an enclave, a man prepares jute by removing the long, soft vegetable fibres that can be spun into coarse, strong threads, and keeping the sticks. For many enclave dwellers, jute is where most of their income comes from and also what they use to build their houses.
 

Enclaves aren’t as rare as you may think, and until now this part of South Asia has contained the vast majority. Existing around the world, mostly in Europe and the former Soviet Union, they were once much more prevalent — until modern day cartography and accurately defined borders eliminated many. Some still remain, such as the Belgium town of Baarle-Hertog, which is full of Dutch territory. The locals have turned the unusual border into a tourist attraction. However, for this region of southern Asia, where political and religious tensions run high, the existence of enclaves is not so jovial. Life for those who are from these areas is far harder than in neighbouring villages, only minutes away.
 

Sisters Lobar Rani Bormoni, 11, and Shapla Rani Bormoni, 12, stand in a paddy field in the enclave in Bangladesh where they born.
 

“These enclaves are officially recognised by each state, but remain un-administered because of their discontinuous geography. Enclave residents are often described as “stateless” in that they live in zones outside of official administration — since officials of one country cannot cross a sovereign frontier into administered territory,” explains Jason Cons, a Research Assistant Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and author of the forthcoming book, ‘Sensitive Space: Fragmented Territory at the India-Bangladesh Border.’
 

Muslim men from Dhoholakhagrabari enclave pray in their mosque. Mosques are usually the only solid structures that exist inside the enclaves.
 

Several folktales tell of the origin of these enclaves being the stakes in a game of chess between two feuding maharajas in the 18th century, or even the result of a drunken British officer who spilt spots of ink on the map he drew during partition in 1947. Captivating as these stories are, the most likely explanation dates back to 1711 when a peace treaty was signed between the feuding Maharajah of Coch Behar and the Mughal Emperor in Delhi. After the treaty their respective armies retained and controlled areas of land, where the local people had to pay tax to the respective ruler, thus creating pockets of land controlled by different people.

Prior to 1947, when this region was entirely Indian territory, living in these locally-controlled enclaves made little difference. However, during the drawing of the boundary between India and Bangladesh, the Maharajah of Coch Behar asked to join India — on the condition that he retain all his land, including that inside the newly formed East Pakistan, which his ancestors had rightly won control of over 200 years ago.

So, through no fault of their own, the lives of 50,000 people turned upside down — for decades they have been stranded on islands of no-man’s land.

A man fishes at dusk using his large bamboo fish trap. This river exists just outside the enclave but as it’s in Bangladesh territory, enclave dwellers are forbidden to fish here otherwise angering the local fishermen. 

Enclave dwellers fish in a flooded paddy.

During the early 1970s a framework to find a solution to this problem was put in place — called the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement. For forty years, as governments came and went, neither the Indian nor the Bangladeshi politicians were able to agree with their counterparts at the time. And whilst the politicians squabbled, the residents suffered.

Only informal work, like at this sawmill, is available for enclave dwellers in Bangladesh.
 

On the ground there are no border fences or security checkpoints, and without realising it, you can walk in and out of India countless times, crossing an international boundary completely obliviously. However, there is a serious lack of infrastructure and this has been one of the most serious problems facing the residents. Paved roads quite literally stop at the boundaries to the chitmahals, as do electricity poles. The enclave inhabitants in Debiganj District of Bangladesh, as non-Bangladeshi citizens, were even barred from sending their children to school, also receiving no state assistance or even the most basic of hospital treatment.

Sheltered within their small bamboo house, located inside the enclave of Dhoholakhagrabari, Eity Rani, 14, and Shobo Rai, 8, carefully do their homework by the light of an oil lamp. Life is much harder for children who are born in enclaves.

 A Bangladeshi man sits in a shop in the market of a small town that sits between enclaves.

Every Saturday a jute market is held in Debiganj. For the many inhabitants of the enclaves that surround the town, jute is where most of their income comes from.

Wearing just a lungi — a traditional sarong worn around the waist — Sri Ajit Memo is sitting in the middle of a small muddy courtyard, surrounded by houses made of bamboo and jute sticks. At 55 years old, his family have lived in a Dhoholakhagrabari chitmahal for generations. Chewing on the twig of a certain tree that locals here use as an alternative to toothpaste, he explains, “All kinds of problems exist here. The government doesn’t care about us, or our children, and so it’s very difficult for them to even go to school. Honestly, we are Indian, but how can we feel this way when we get no help from them?”

For enclave dwellers on both sides of the Indian-Bangladeshi border, the entitlement to receive even the most basic of rights has eluded them.

Reece Jones, an Associate Professor in Political Geography at the University of Hawai’i Manoa, who has visited many chitmahals on both sides of the border, explains further, “After decades in this situation many people have found ways around it through bribes to officials or through friends who helped them to obtain the documents they needed, such as school enrolment forms for their children. However, the situation was not stable or secure. They were extremely vulnerable to theft and violence because the police had no jurisdiction in the enclaves.”
 

Rupsana Begum, 7, (pink dress) and Monalisa Akter, 7, (orange dress) are from an enclave but were able to come and study at Sher-e-Bangla Government School because their parents managed to acquire fake documents and were able to pay the school.

In Dhoholakhagrabari enclave students and their teacher sit in a madrassa class. Because enclave children have a difficult time accessing the education system in Bangladesh the locals of this enclave formed an Islamic Foundation funded on donations.

Today, after decades left living in limbo in these randomly placed no-man’s lands, around 47,000 people on the Bangladeshi side and some 14,000 on the Indian side have finally been given the right make a choice: stay where they have lived for generations with official citizenship of the country that will absorb them, or return to their country of origin.

None of the residents living in Bangladeshi enclaves within India asked to return to Bangladesh and as a result they will now all become Indian citizens. However, on the other side of the border in Bangladesh, whilst the vast majority of the Indian enclave dwellers decided to stay and become Bangladeshi citizens, 979 people requested to return to India. For these families, the enclave saga has yet to end.

Of those 979 individuals, a total of 406 come from Debiganj district. In 2011, a team of Indian officials visited every home in every enclave in Bangladesh and produced the first ever detailed census of all those living within the Indian enclaves. This report formed the basis of all subsequent decisions on the status of each person living in the enclaves.
 

An old lady inside her home, which has no running water or electricity, in Dayuti enclave.
 

Dhonobala Rani, 70, gets emotional knowing that she has to leave her son (in the blue shirt) behind in Bangladesh, as she takes Indian citizenship.

Several months after my visit to document the enclaves during the final days of their existence, those who had chosen to leave for India finally crossed the border, leaving their homes in Bangladesh forever. In India they were given land and began the process of integrating into Indian society. Those who chose to stay behind in Bangladesh also started to receive such basic rights as eligibility to vote and access to health care.

Let us hope that after decades of struggle on these isolated political islands, the lives of these ex-enclaves dwellers can begin to reach some level of normalcy. In the end, after so many years of uncertainty, the world’s strangest border region has now become a thing of the past.

A lady from Ponchoki Bhajini village, in the enclave of Dhoholakhagrabari. She has chosen to leave for India, to start a new life as an Indian citizen. 
 

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MAPTIA.

LUKE DUGGLEBY

Luke Duggleby is a British freelance documentary and travel photographer living in Bangkok.