And sometimes, the donations may not be what is really what is needed. Did that happen in the refugee camps?
Oh yes! I remember somebody in Britain had donated an experimental amphibious vehicle. Made of fibreglass, with balloon wheels, which doubled as paddles. It had a little trailer, which floated, and it could carry 250 kilograms, apparently. It was named the “Amphicat.” I don’t remember it lasting very long.
We would also receive unsolicited donations of clothing that were simply not useful. One day, we took delivery of hundreds of ladies’ shoes with long, stiletto heels! Absolutely useless in this part of the world. But it turned out that the heels were valuable. Made of titanium, or something like that. So we broke all the heels off and sold them! We made quite a bit of money from those heels.
Another time, we got a shipment of women’s brassieres. Again, not wanted at all. I was so angry, I snapped one into two pieces. After I did that, we discovered that the individual cups, which had metal wire frames in those days, made excellent rice scoops! So the bras turned out to be useful in the kitchen, at least.
How did people react to this problem?
Everyone was aware of the problem of donations not matching needs, but it was difficult to do anything about it. I remember one extraordinary meeting in the middle of December, just before Victory Day, where Tajuddin and the other members of the government-in-exile called the aid organizations in and said there were going to be changes in how the aid organizations could operate in liberated Bangladesh.
But it’s always difficult to tackle this issue. I remember in January, 1972, the head of the UN mission in Bangladesh tearing his hair out. They were inundated with blankets, when what they really needed was food.
How did you get along with Tajuddin?
Very well. He was a charming man. I first tried to get a meeting with him after we received 50 tons of protein supplements from Canada. Dehydrated mashed potato, fortified with vitamins, minerals, and milk powder, to be mixed with other food. A good idea, but it was too sophisticated for us; we didn’t really know what to do with it.
Tajuddin’s office in Theatre Road was close to our Oxfam office. I arrived as arranged, but he had been called away to an important meeting with some officials from the government of India. The next day, I received a beautiful handwritten note from him, apologizing for missing our meeting. I understand, he said, you walk home quite late at night to your apartment in Auckland Square. Please drop by for a cup of tea when convenient.
Tajuddin had met with some of the doctors and medical students in the camps. He had learned that they could address the medical issues, but that they were struggling to help the refugees deal with depression. The medical people had suggested that music might help, and Tajuddin had agreed. So now he had a proposal for us. Could Oxfam help to procure musical instruments for the camps?
I also thought this was a good idea. So we bought harmoniums and tablas, hundreds of them, and distributed them. Since the camp inhabitants dreamt of returning home, they sang songs about the beauty of their homeland. The songs in turn helped them to visualize going home. It lifted their spirits.
I entered the cost of the musical instruments into the books as “medical supplies.” The Oxfam accountants back in Oxford wanted to know what the heck was going on! So I obtained letters of appreciation from the medical staff in the camps, verifying that music had actually lowered the costs of caring for the refugees, by helping them better cope with the trauma they had suffered.
Speaking of doctors in the camps, Jon Rohde, the American physician, was working at the Cholera Research Laboratory, now known as icddr, b, at the time. Were their medical interventions useful in the refugee camps?
Very much so. Orsaline had recently been developed, but not yet put to widespread use. So Jon’s colleagues did trials of the solution at the camps. They found that 30% of the inhabitants in one camp had diarrhoea. In another camp, where they distributed and prescribed Orsaline, the incidence of diarrhoea dropped to 3%. One tenth as much. So it was immensely beneficial.
Jon himself was not in the camps initially; he and his wife Candy were evacuated from Bangladesh in early April 1971. I believe they were on a list of people that the Pakistan military wanted to apprehend. Jon and Candy had given refuge to some leading Bangladeshis in their Gulshan bungalow. More importantly, they had driven around Dhaka after the military crackdown, taking photographs of the death and destruction in Old Town and at Dhaka University. The regime wanted their hands on those photographs.
Rezwan Hussain is a writer and researcher in Dhaka. This is the third instalment of a multi-part interview with Julian Francis.