Villagers join hands to build 2-km brick road in Joypurhat
Dust settles at the start of every long-awaited monsoon, with welcome rejuvenation brought to the soil. Mangoes will soon ripen, everybody knows and the thought is tantalising. Nor will anybody complain when the chance arises to while away an hour or three immersed in that soothing thrumming sound of a downpour on a tin roof. Across Bangladesh, and Joypurhat does not differ in it, there are many reasons to welcome the rain.
But in the six villages of Kadoa, Koli Kadoa, Mirgram, Mirgram Chowmuhani, Dholpara and Chowkpara in Joypurhat sadar upazila, the season comes with a hitch. The villagers here have for many years not been able to enjoy these simple pleasures free from an accompanying sense of dread. They know what the rain will do to their shared, dirt road.
“It's barely possible to walk the road during the monsoon,” says local student Md. Milon.
“The road is all mud when the rain comes. It inconveniences everybody,” agrees Kadoa village school teacher, Fazlur Rahman. “Students suffer the most,” he adds, “and farmers.”
In the area there are five educational institutions which rely on that torturous two-kilometre stretch that begins in Kadoa and ends in Mirgram Chowmuhani. So when it comes to students to be inconvenienced by the mud there are certainly more than a few.
Nobody can say these Joypurhat villagers aren't patient. For not less than a decade, from all six villages residents have requested and pleaded for their distinguished elected representatives to address the situation. For ten long years all entreaties have fallen upon deaf ears.
“The union parishad has never really listened,” says one villager Mazed Mia. “Sometimes they complain of fund shortages.”
There's an old adage that says, “If you want something done properly, do it yourself.” It's an expression that for the villagers might more accurately begin, “If you want something done at all...”
In early September this year a meeting was called. Accepting that a decade was quite long enough to politely wait for local government to make its move, the attendees, locals from all six villages determined to chart a more radical course: they would improve the road themselves.
The estimate for the cost of the bricks they planned to use for paving was nearly 2.5 lakhs taka. It was here that a local physician, Dr. Anwar Hossain, thought he could help. “I was impressed with their initiative,” he says. He decided to offer the lion's share of the funds to buy the bricks.
On 8 September work began, finishing up six days later. “Nearly 5,000 people worked on improving the road,” says Sahidul Islam of Dholpara.
Dr Hossain says the exercise proves that any work is easy when people are united. From now, students will easily reach classes and farmers can without tension deliver produce to markets. “There will be no more suffering precisely caused by a muddy road,” says Dr. Hossain.
Besides, these days any villager can sit back and relax through any downpour's tin-roof percussion, with no underlying apprehension or ill-ease. There shall be full enjoyment of the monsoon's music in all of Joypurhat from now on.