FROM THE FIELD
Climate change - get invloved. Report from a small island village in Bangladesh, Oxfam's Shumon Alam gets a lesson on flood preparation. "How many of you know the story of Prophet Noah?" Howa (35) asks the women gathered around her in her front yard - all of whom are her neighbours and relatives. "You all know when Allah told the prophet about the coming flood, he took two of each animal on to his boat. He was ready!" She relates the epic with utmost seriousness - then a smile bursts out: "Floods happen to us every year, we have to be prepared." Howa lives in a small Char (river island) in Shirajgang District, Bangladesh, about 120km north of Dhaka. Every year, right before rainy season, she runs this workshop, teaching the women of her village to make portable clay ovens, and how to make a full "survival kit" for the coming flood. "From when we are born, people in this char learn how to live with floods and river erosion. In my lifetime I have moved five times. Most of these women have the same experience. I don't want to move again, and I know these women don't want to move either. Now we work together to face the flood."![Howa
demonstrates the portable clay oven to the women of her community [Photo credit: Shumon Alam]](http://www.oxfam.org.uk/generationwhy/cgi/process_comp/photos/2009/09/howa1.jpg)
![Howa
gathers papaya form her elevated garden [Photo credit: Shumon Alam]](http://www.oxfam.org.uk/generationwhy/cgi/process_comp/photos/2009/09/howa2.jpg)
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
