Far From Home, Bracing for the Rains

KUTUPALONG, Bangladesh — The Haruns, a family of Rohingya refugees, live on a barren hillside in southern Bangladesh in an improvised shack. The annual monsoon rains could wash away their home, and many others like it.

Last month, the monsoon season in southern Bangladesh began, and refugee camps are in the direct path. Strong winds and heavy rains have damaged hundreds of shelters, with reports of at least one child killed from a small landslide. As the rains continue, things will likely get worse.

There is no workable evacuation plan. If the refugees cannot move to safer ground, aid groups say, thousands may die from floods, landslides and disease.

Nearly 1 million Rohingya Muslims live here. Most fled brutal attacks in Myanmar last year in one of the most rapid exoduses in modern history. These low-lying structures are at high risk for flooding.

Other shelters are perched on steep, barren hillsides that could slide away.

In May, I visited the highest-risk zones to see how people were preparing. Bangladesh is one of the world’s most densely populated countries, and hundreds die from monsoons every year.

This refugee camp is even more dangerous. The shelters are built on what geologists are saying is little more than a sandbox. But after escaping torture, rape and massacres by the Myanmar military, the refugees do not want to move again.

I met Nur Safah, who lives with her husband and six children in a tiny tent.

The house was held together by donated plastic tarps, worn bamboo shoots and twine, with holes cut in the side for windows. In the afternoon, it felt like a sauna inside.

It is built on a sharply sloped hillside. Even a small rain turns the dust into loose mud.

When I asked Nur Safah what she will do when the heaviest rains come, she shook her head and said they would just have to buy more tarp.

On the edges of the camps, aid groups led an enormous effort to try to move people like Nur Safah out of danger.

Rohingya laborers worked for $5 a day, from morning to sunset, chopping off the tops of empty hills to make flat land.

The mood was surprisingly cheerful. These men had been out of work, idle and awaiting their fate.

They blasted Bollywood music from their phones and told jokes as they worked.

The idea is to build new, sturdier houses, out of the path of flooding.

But the rebuilding is slowed by politics. Bangladesh wants the refugees to eventually return to Myanmar, so it prohibits what it considers permanent construction – no brick or concrete structures. Now, time for planning is up and workers are rushing to build structures not much sturdier than plastic tents.

Slicing the hills might make space for 15,000 people of the 200,000 who are in high-risk zones.

The more realistic option is to strengthen the camps that are already here.

Aid workers handed out bundles of newer bamboo shoots to anyone strong enough to carry them.

Refugees paved dirt roads, brick by brick, to ensure cars can get in when it rains.

Engineers raced to redirect floodwaters with canals and simple concrete culverts.

But time has run out.

The most dangerous threat – disease – could be the hardest to stop. People use more than 40,000 latrines across the area and get drinking water from shallow wells.

The rain could overwhelm these systems and mix sewage with drinking water, risking outbreaks of diphtheria, acute watery diarrhea and cholera.

The camps have given Nur Safah and thousands of families a tenuous sense of home.

But they are at risk of losing that all over again.