"The worst is now over" that’s what the doctor’s team consisting Dr AnisulKarim, Dr Sarwar and DrNakib commented after they monitored the health condition of the patients at Thota Para in Joyomoni.
Each home is about twelve by twelve feet (144 sq feet) square feet and around a half portion of which overhangs on the much discussed Shela river.
Members of every families of the village had collected the crude oil that the Padma Oil had gifted them as a bounty under a buyback plan.
The Padma oil tanker spilled some 75,000 gallons of oil when it sank four kilometres off Joyomoni.
Mohammad Rahim,30, a fishermen of the village told us about the incident when our Documentation and Health Camp Volunteers visited his home. He recalled the pitch dark oil floating on the surface of Shela and the burning sensation in the eyes of villagers from the toxic-smell that spread from it.
He said while sipping tea how he thought what more could befall this god-forsaken land.
People of the village were used to personal losses and devastation, even strong hurricanes, and the risk of Tigers in the forest their lives depended on, the pirates who vandalized their villages, looted their catch, set ablaze their homesteads. They are also used to the regular want of drinking water.
Hasina Begum,42, and countless others uttered the same story. They drank the river water because they have no alternative. When the river got contaminated, they started buying water from the nearby village at taka 20 per barrel. The water was visibly unhygienic, with innumerable fragments of floating substances.
But, they kept on saying that the poor can deal with everything.
And they did-all of the hundred families in Thota fell sick as they collected oil from the river and boiled the collected oil mixed with water in their yard to sell to Padma oil outlets.
People of 10 other affected villages also collected the oil. Those villages are Joyomoni, Boiddomaari, Katakhali, Chandantola, HoglaBoniya, Boroitola, Sila, Jibdhora, Golbuniya, Kochubuniya as reported by a social analyst RupaDutta who has been working voluntarily to get the statistics for the medical team.
The activist and singer Anushe Anadil sat under the thatched roof of a boatman’s house which was the camp for all the works being done.
Tanjilur Rahman, an independent activist and filmmaker was busy coordinating the people to collect the debris and put them in a waste disposal plant made from bamboo and polythene. The forest department, on the eve of arrival of the United Nations’ team, had ordered people to bury the gears used to collect and burn the oil underground, under the sedimentary soil of the village.
It was a tough task for Tanjilur Rahman's team to re-dig the site and collect the oil stained things where they cannot harm the sensitive ecosystem of the Sundarbans.
However, they are still at the task of paying taka 500 per boat to collect the debris by boat. The oil collectors, however, are using masks, gloves and boots not to repeat the mistakes they made earlier.
Our response to the spill was to collect money to buy gloves and other materials for the cleaners already working on the ground. But when Herpetologist Shahriar Caesar Rahman mentioned, they need medical help for the cleanup crew in Thota, three volunteer medics- Dr. Mohammad Anisul Karim from ICDDR'B, Dr. Mostofa Sarwar of BRAC and Dr Nakib Sajib from Satkhira Upazila Health Complex joined the team.
They turned up in Mongla to help the people and study the side effects of the oil spill on them.
As we were going to Joyomoni from Mongla by bike, Dr Mostafa Sarwar said this was one of the largest and harrowing oil spills in the history.
We only had enough medicines to treat a few patients, but we carried on. In the village, a doctor was a welcome relief, a precious life-saver than water. They have a wretched health facility in Thota so they have to travel far to receive treatment.
In the doctor's diagnosis, a pattern seems to appear: headaches, nausea, burning sensation in the eye and lack of sleep. Dr Anisul confirmed that these were the same side effects felt by the cleaners in Mexican Gulf oil spill.
Patient Sweaty was vomiting profusely. After receiving ORS from the medical crew, she seems to get better. She did not touch the oil, she said, the reason for her sickness is the fumes from cooking the oil on her veranda, it intruded into her lungs and finally, she felt the severe side-effect that all villagers were already facing.
Dr Anisul Karim and his team confirmed that the worst part of their sickness from the cleanup is over, at first, everyone got sick, but amazingly, everyone recovered. Now, the long term effects need to be monitored.
We were all astounded by the resilience of the people working there, and hats off to their work. Sundarbans, relatively speaking, is free from the heavy layers of muck. But the oil has sank and spread for many miles.
What it would do to the fragile environment is also a subject that needs to be studied intensely for the next several years.
The way the volunteers came forward to help the Subdarbans in the time of its need should not be forgotten.
Researchers are needed to continually monitor the effects and volunteers need to work on the need-based assessment on the results in order to aid the sensitive ecosystem.
There seems to be a gap between activism and research on the ground. If working in Sundarbans has taught me anything, it is that we need a common platform for the study and safety of Sundarbans and our entire heritage. Only research or only the activism cannot be the answer.
