Attack of the Seepiraten.

Swimming in Dhaka only the poor - and they must also: In the rainy season is sinking Karail the slums in the water and turns rickshaw drivers ferrying. PhD student Kerstin Humberg grazed wet by the largest slum of Bangladesh.

 

Dhaka on Monday afternoon: With a flick of our wooden boat stranded on the shore of Lake Banani, we arrived promptly attracts onlookers to. Want to follow the young Bangladeschis how we planks on the boat ashore balance. What studied a group of white men and women in Karail, the largest slum in the Bengali capital? Who are the five Bangladeschis at her side - and what the cameras?

The Meteorologist-Insa Thiele Eich and her father, Clemens Simmer PhD from the University of Bonn, for a workshop of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in Bangladesh and for the first time in the country. Since 2006, Dhaka and Guangzhou in southern China locations of the DFG Priority Program
"Megacities - Informal Dynamics of Global Change."

In the rainy season, is fifth in the country under water

Together with two geographers at the University of Cologne and local partners, the two meteorologists want to explore how climate change affects the lives of slum dwellers in the mega city Dhaka effect. Simmer professor and his doctoral student analyzed using regional climate models of the possible extent and frequency of extreme weather. Geographers Boris Tibor Braun and Assheuer investigate what strategies the slum dwellers today defy storms and floods, and their survival.

FOR SERIES

Private

A counselor sets of: Kerstin Humberg flew from Hamburg two years as a consultant to the World. Now doctorate the 31 - year-old graduate geographer and wants for two months in Bangladesh entrepreneurial ideas to explore poverty reduction. They reported in Uniblogs of her life in the land of Bengal.

In the rainy season every year on average one fifth of the land area of Bangladesh flooded. What for us Germans tantamount to a catastrophe, is for the farmers in Bangladesh, normal and even a blessing. To a certain degree of rain and floods secure good harvests and hence their own existence. But since the eighties have extreme phenomena such as droughts or floods particularly strong increase. 1998, over two thirds of the country under water - about two months long.

Apropos: A bottle of water at this moment would be a dream. There are about 30 degrees, the streets are dusty Karails. Creep at a snail's pace through the slum. On the roadside räkelt a girl on a bicycle rickshaw in the sun. In the corrugated iron hut beside a young woman peels potatoes. On the other side of the street a barber shaves a customer.

Exploding Mega City: Lagos Only grows faster

Again and again, I press the shutter of my camera. My gaze falls on a man who on a wooden stretcher lies. While his left arm hangs on a drip, he raises his right hand for greeting. Perhaps an ambulance? Whether snack bar, hair salon or chain carousel - the approximately 30,000 people in Karail organize everything on your own. Urban life in miniature format.

Even now live about 40 percent of people Dhakas in Slumsiedlungen, and it is growing every day. Still living about three-quarters of the over 160 million Bangladeschis in the country, but the hope of work and income is driving farmers into the city. "Apart from Lagos Dhaka is the fastest growing mega city in the world," explains my supervisor Boris Braun from Cologne. Grows by 3.5 per cent of the Dhaka metropolitan area each year, an increase of about half a million people. "In just two years, Dhaka to the population of Cologne have expanded." The bulk of this growth will be based on "informal settlements" cover - ie how Karail slums.

Shortly afterwards we reach a open space on which children play cricket and kite flying can be. There we meet Mr. Yunus, perhaps mid-50th He lives in Karail. How he reacts when it is monsoon season for everything under water? "First, we bring ourselves in safety," Yunus says, pointing to about three meters tall bamboo stand behind him. "Who can zimmert wood debris from a boat together."

Many rickshaw drivers have no other choice. To the daily income of perhaps 200 taka (about two euros) to secure, they must be from one day to change the industry and as ferrymen specifications. If it's really bad, the slum dwellers by the wealthy from nearby Gulshan with food supplies. "The lives of the rich and the poor is closely linked," says my doctor father.

Reich helps poor - who can have his cleaning lady to death?

Since many slum dwellers as a service staff for the rich on the other side of the river work, many personal contacts. The willingness to help the poor, is therefore quite large - albeit not entirely altruistic. Despite losing a lot of slum dwellers in case of extreme flooding nearly everything they have.

While my colleague Tibor diligently study the responses of Mr Yunus noted tried Insa, the noisy crowd of children around him to subdue. Young, blonde women are rarely lost after Karail. For the children Insa is an attraction. "Nicole Kidman could not stir," jokes Professor Braun. Also hands cling to his two children, as we are on the home.

Whether I could swim, I asked one of the Bengal geography professors, as we sit in the wooden boat. "Geht so. As a child, I am by the seahorse-like examination," I joke - and wonder at once worried about his facial expression.

"Most Bangladeschis can not swim," says Tibor. Public swimming pools are not in Dhaka, in the filthy rivers of the city who enjoy only the children of the poor. In fact, clings to the Bengali student Insa Sifat immediately to determine when the rear johlende children on home-made rafts approach. Sifat can not swim. Hardly, we have the small Seepiraten discovered on their raft, the first boy enters our boat and splashing us wet.

Insa laughs and shakes his head. Bangladesh is very different than they expected. Before her departure, she was skeptical, as it clearly would. Meanwhile, it looks quite relaxed and enthused by the "genuine hospitality" Bangladeschis. She has great desire to come back soon. Because it is exactly like me.