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Saga of river drifters

AKM MOHSIN
Thirty-year-old Jamal has grown up as a river drifter, eking out a meagre existence on catching and selling of fish.
He does not know the true meaning of a home or landed property. Nor did he go to school. He knows nothing about voting. What he knows for sure is that his family will bury him after his death in an unknown shoal of a river.
Jamal is the representative of some 200 literally floating people in the southwestern region of the country. And this band to which he belongs is one of many that live in boats in the region.
Jamal did not choose his lifestyle himself. His father and many unfortunate farmers of Bhola and adjacent areas settled
for this roughly 50 years ago.
"The rivers devoured our ancestral homes," a sun burnt Sufia in her seventies told the correspondent who talked to this band of drifters at the confluence of two rivers -- the Meghna and the Tetulia -- near Maishsha Gagaria Char in Sripur under Mehediganj upazila in Barisal late last month.
The first generation drifter Sufia is the most senior of the band that moves from Barisal to Chittagong on a fleet of about 50 boats.
Sufia's band is self-sufficient by its own standards. They fish and, with the earnings, they buy bare essentials, fishing nets, clothes and boats.
By any other standard, however, they are leading a subhuman life -crammed inside small boats. Even a cursory glance at their children will tell you what they are missing. All children below two are naked, as their parents cannot afford clothes. Others are poorly dressed.
The boats have too little, but the people living in the boats need everything. One can name their belongings, barely pausing for breath: an earthen stove, some utensils, fishing nets, rods and some worn-out clothes. Parents and children share the same space to live in. When a family broadens, the elder son gets a new boat and moves out. Or, the elder daughter marries someone of the community only to move out.
Yet, there are also brave widows like Sufia who live alone as her children grow up and move in boats.
Unlike others, Sufia does not
have any time to think about the nuances and subtleties of life. Sufia was preparing for the second round of fishing at 9.00am when The Daily Star correspondent met her.
A day before, she caught only two hilshas that she sold at Tk 45 in Barisal. "It's not possible to catch fish every day because of the weather. Wholesalers buy fish at Sripur Bazaar,"
The band catches different types of fishes, including hilsha, shrimp, ritha and pouwa. The daily income per head is about Tk 50 to 60.
"We catch fish but we can't eat them because we have to sell it to buy essentials. Wholesalers take advantage of low price," Sufia said.
They face a lot of difficulties in building a boat or buying a new fishing net, as they never have enough money. Worse, no bank or rural moneylender gives loans to people without any address.
Jamal says he inherited the boat from his drifter father who died long ago in the rivers. His father had told him that they came from Bhola. They were farmers. They lost their lands to river erosion, and when new lands emerged in the river, the jotdar deprived them of their right to land. Oppression and deprivation led his father like others to settle for a life on rivers.
When the correspondent met this band, they were camping in a shoal without crops. They would shift away when they feel that there are not enough fishes to catch in the water. Surprisingly, if this group is traced in Munshiganj one day, it may be spotted in Chittagong a month later.