It's a spectacular sight. Bangladesh from the vantage point of a small, low-flying sea-plane is by any measure breath-taking. The silvery net of the innumerable criss-crossing rivers, the green on green patchwork quilts of the fields in planting season, the precise little boxes of the homesteads dotting the landscape, neat postage-stamp sized tin structures surrounded by shade trees, the occasional pond.



As one travels north, the landscape becomes more watery until the rivers eclipse the land as the dominant feature below you. But nothing can prepare you for the majestic swell of the Jamuna, stretching from horizon to horizon, as much as 30 km in breadth during the monsoon, it is like happening upon an opaque, cloudy sea.



Dotted here and there within the clean but murky waters are innumerable little islands, green and brown outposts of silt, sand, and vegetation, some uninhabited and no more than a the length of a cricket pitch in diameter, some as much as few miles from end to end, supporting as many as a few thousand souls.



Landing on the river in the sea-plane is an experience to treasure. Circling the island, looking for a good spot to make an adjacent river landing, you are able to pick out more and more detail as the plane swoops lower and lower.



The islands are indescribably stunning. From the sky they look like little jewels of green and gold and up close they look like everyone's idyllic picture post-card of the lush and tranquil Bangladeshi country-side. It is the jute season and the plants are already at head height, the fields as ever divided into neat squares and rectangles. Not a paved road, not an electric line, not a single building of brick and cement anywhere in sight.



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The chars are among the most fascinating and scenic parts of this most fascinating and scenic country of ours. In a sense the island inhabitants' water-logged existence is quintessentially Bangladeshi. They live not on the river like the nomadic river gypsies traveling hundreds of miles up and down the country but rarely far from the shore, and not by the rivers as the rest of us do, but right, smack in the middle of the river, surrounded on all sides as far as the eye can see by water, hours away from the mainland, the nearest market town, civilisation as we have come to know it.



Here there is nothing. No police station, no electricity, no running water, no roads, no motor vehicles, no government offices. Nothing. For miles along the widest expanse of the Jamuna, in the north of the country, this is all there is. Hundreds of little sandbar islands strung out along its span, barely visible, one to the other, little blips in a sweet-water ocean.



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I am on a trip to see first-hand how life is on the chars and to see the work done by Friendship, the only organisation, governmental or other, that works together with the people of the islands to make their lives safer and more secure.



Frindship's flagship project is a barge that has been converted into a floating hospital that goes from char to char, docking for two or three weeks at a time, offering all necessary primary health-care and secondary care, where possible. In addition to the floating hospital, Friendship also sets up satellite health clinics and medical camps, and one way or another, has now served hundreds of thousands of the char inhabitants, the vast majority of whom had never even seen a doctor before in their lives.



No one else works here. Before Friendship came, the inhabitants had nothing. Literally. Now, in addition to health-care, Friendship has opened up schools, helped the locals to form co-operative communities and societies, sponsored income generation programs and savings and insurance schemes.



The locals are dignified and diligent, conscientious and committed to building a better future for themselves and their families, even in this seemingly most forsaken and vulnerable of outposts. Their kids look reasonably healthy and decently fed.



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The floating hospital is clean and orderly and services as many as 600 patients in a day, many who have come by boat from even more remote chars farther up-river. The line is long but they wait patiently and everyone is seen, no one turned away.



It is a full day as we see everything that Friendship does on the island of Baitkamari. The school that has room only for a small fraction of the kids, many others spend their day wistfully looking through the windows. There is a camp on reproductive health and family planning being held by two nurses who run the island's satellite clinic. We meet with the local society that has been set up and speak to them about their income generation programs, their bumper maize and sweet pumpkin harvests, and their plans for the future



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Then it is lunch followed by a quick dip to cool off beneath the late afternoon sun. The current is surprisingly swift, tugging at your ankles, and if you lift your feet from the river-bed you run the risk of being swept down-stream possibly all the way back to Dhaka.



Friendship's wooden houseboat moored next to the hospital that we are staying on is also home to a BBC documentary crew shooting a documentary on traditional child-birth. They have been there two weeks and are waiting impatiently to shoot their finale when one of the women they have been tracking, tiny but as big as a house, now almost as wide as she is tall, will give birth. The baby stubbornly refuses to appear until they after they have to pack up and leave for Dhaka.



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The evening and night are idyllic. There is no traffic, no television, no noise. It is quiet, calm, tranquil, and serene. The night is livened by a boat-ride to the far side of the island to listen in on an adult education program that has to run at night, dim light provided by the island's one solar panel (no electricity), as this is the only free time the farmers and fisherman have.



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The next day is a short trip to the even more remote char of Khamar Kamarjani where we again get to sit with the local society and talk to them about their income generation programs and plans for the future. This outpost of 50 families who only a few years ago had nothing, no shelter, no tools, no crops, no seeds, not even a boat, they were living among the head-high long grasses and eating every few days if they were lucky. Now they have homes and fields and a communal boat. Their maize crop brought them almost six lakhs. They are raising cows and goats and sheep and even geese. Their next hope is for a school for the kids.

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The chars were an amazing and eye-opening experience. I understand why people choose to live there in the middle of nowhere. They have nowhere else to go, but more than that it is a tranquil and in many ways idyllic life and it is the only life they know. It may be tough but it has its rewards.



The locals cannot do it on their own. Their poverty and isolation and insecurity is second to none in the country. But give them a small helping hand and they can do the rest for themselves.



More than fresh, clean scent of the fields waving the wind, more even than the endless stretches of muddy brown water sprinkled with brilliant splashes of emerald and jade, what I will remember the most about my trip is a small dimly-lit tin shack, with a circle of gaunt and weather-beaten men, one or two even with long white beards, sitting cross-legged on the hard-packed earth floor, hard at work learning their ka, kha, ga.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.