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In many ways, I feel that I have the spirit of Notre Dame with me wherever I go in Bangladesh.

Here I was, in the cyclone disaster area, walking along this broken road surrounded by destruction. People all around me had just lost their homes and were waiting in a line hoping to be able to get relief or aid. Then, from the crowd, someone yells at me “NOTRE DAME!”. I turn around and there is this guy sitting on the road smiling at me. He couldn’t speak any English and most likely couldn’t read or write. But he could recognize the famous N-O-T-R-E  D-A-M-E anywhere.

Apparently, wearing a shirt that says Notre Dame counts more for a shirt that says Save the Children.

Notre Dame has a huge presence in this country. My dad used to go to Notre Dame College in Dhaka. This college was founded by the same Catholic organization that founded my alma mater back in South Bend. They do some amazing work which I hope to feature in an episode sometime in the future. Until then, check out my photos that I took of Notre Dame College Dhaka.

It’s both touching and makes me homesick to be so close – and yet so far – from Notre Dame. Go Irish.

My parents always told me I tend to focus on the negative. I had given over 30 blankets on the day this photo was taken (not the 30 I gave with Save the Children – that was another batch of blankets I had bought).

Some kids, like the one on the right, were lucky enough to get one. Others, like the other kid in the photo, were left shivering in the cold. Why is it that I can sometimes forget the faces of the kids that I’ve helped, but manage to never forget the ones I couldn’t?

“So exactly how many blankets did you buy?” asked my uncle on a phone call shortly after I returned from the disaster area. “About 70″ I answer. “Uh huh. And how much did this cost?” he asked. “About 14,000 taka [$204 USD]“. “Uh huh” my uncle replied. The phone call pretty much went like that for a few more minutes. He was asking very probing questions like where I bought these blankets from, how did I take them to the disaster area, and where I got the money to buy these blankets from. I answered them in a matter-of-fact manner. After a few more “uh huhs”, he gave me his best wishes, said goodbye, and hung up.

Little did I know that I was about to be upstaged by my uncle. And the best part is – I love it.

This is the same uncle I called while I was in the disaster area with Nick Downie from Save the Children. After my uncle retired from military service, he went into business for himself and has become somewhat of a successful man in the private sector. Less than 24 hours after this very inquisitive phone call, I find out that he, his youngest son, and his daughter-in-law have organized a self-funded family aid operation of their own. This aid operation blows what I’ve been doing right out of the water.

Whereas, I bought 70 blankets to give away for about $200 USD – my uncle and his family has bought two-thousand blankets for over 500,000 taka. That is over $7,000 USD in blankets. Given the fact that these are “family-sized” blankets (where more than one person will be sharing this blanket – sometimes a whole family of four) – this means that anywhere from two to eight thousand people will be sleeping warmly this winter. In addition, my uncle’s daughter-in-law (do I say cousin-in-law or just cousin?) will be giving out cold hard cash on-site so people in the disaster area can cover any emergency expenses they have. Approximately 10,000 taka (over $140 USD) in cash will be given out in the disaster area.

Now, here’s the crazy part: I am going with them to help distribute all this! I leave tomorrow. I’m leaving my computer behind because a lot of the journey will be via speedboat down rivers. I hope to come back after three days and hopefully will have lots of photos and videos to share.

Once more unto the breach.

“We really got to make sure that we educate – not just the [local] people, but also ourselves,” explained Nick Downie. Downie, a British national, had come as Operations Co-ordinator for an alliance of Save the Children charities from around the world to come and help those affected by Cyclone Sidr. I had accompanied Downie for a day, earlier last week, to a remote region of the disaster area that could only be reached by either boat or helicopter.The location for Downie’s plea for education could not have been more imposing. We had just walked for 30 minutes along a path full of make-shift refugee housing and buried bodies. The largest grave we had found had over 13 newly buried bodies – over two-thirds of which were children. In the middle of the interview, I interrupted him. There was a powerful smell that made it almost impossible for me to breath. “Is that smell the dead bodies? Or the dirty water?” I asked…

With the official death toll currently being reported at 3,268 (source: Bloomberg.com), the loss of life caused by Cyclone Sidr already exceeds that of the September 11th attacks. With new bodies being found everyday – a great many of them children – the official death toll is most certainly expected to exceed the total number of coalition causalities caused by the Iraq War. However, despite the ever increasing scale of this tragedy, the plight of Bangladeshis affected by Cyclone Sidr seem to have faded from international headlines.

Although I am reporting from Dhaka, I often rely on British and American news sources for the latest facts and figures. However, finding the latest news on Cyclone Sidr from CNN and BBC is almost impossible. This is strange given that the story is anything but over. During my time in the field, I was fortunate enough to have not stumbled across any dead human bodies. A great many of my colleagues, however, were not so fortunate. Even as late as yesterday night, I was hearing reports of new bodies being found and in need of burial.

Although generous people from around the world are uniting to help donate to disaster relief, aid is still slow in coming. On my trip to the Bagerhat Disaster Area, I had brought 70 blankets which I had paid for with my own money to give away. 30 of which, I brought along with my trip with Nick Downie to this remote region of the disaster area. It turns out, that these 30 blankets were the first aid (of its kind) in this particular region. Whatever sense of accomplishment I felt was overridden by grief. 30 blankets never seemed so little an amount in my life.

“We’re very comfortable back in our homes – whether we’re in London or Toronto,” explained Downie – referring to our respective hometowns. “We just got to do whatever we can,” he added.

One thing is certain – we certainly can do more than just provide a 30 second spot for this news story.

This article has been also posted on NowPublic.com, you can read the same story here.

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I don’t want to talk about what I saw now – at least not yet. That’s why I didn’t write a Day 3 entry. There are things I’ve never seen (and smelled) before.

I’m also in a bit of shock still I guess. But, not all of it was disaster related – some of it was just junk that went on there that ruffled my feathers a bit too much.

Anyways I’m here, safe, and cleaned up. And being able to actually see my own reflection in a mirror is nice. We didn’t have wall mirrors in basecamp.

“Why are they waving at the car?” I naively asked the driver who was taking me to basecamp in Bagarat. “Their homes have been destroyed – they are asking us to stop and help,” the driver somberly replied. It was then that it sank in – I was in a disaster area. The tipping point for me – the point when shock turned to tears, was when we drove by a school. The school kids yelled – in English – “STOP! STOP! STOP!”. But we just kept driving – even if we could have helped them, we would have been mobbed if we stopped.

I also never expected to have trouble taking photographs. For the first time, I was no longer greeted with inquisitive and happy looks. I was snarled at – one person even hissed. “Don’t take my photo!” one yelled. “Don’t take photos – give us something instead!”, “You only come to take photos – not to help”….

Here are some of the few photos I managed to take today – after the jump. Continue reading ‘Disaster Area – Day 1: The Drive In’