And now for the good news

Posted Tuesday, December 18, 2007, 7:26 PM by Lonely Planet

It's a couple of weeks since cyclone Sidr struck Bangladesh and the news crews have moved on. In my earlier blog, posted in the aftermath of the storm, I described the situation around Dhaka. Since then I have been in the southwest where the cyclone first made landfall.

I was expecting to find a depressing scene of devastation down here, but at my first stop, Bagerhat, a name that should be familiar to all those who followed the story on the news I found that signs of destruction were very limited. A local guy even had to point them out to me, 'look', he said, 'our national disaster' and pointed to a couple of fallen trees in a pond.

Further south still, on the edge of the Sunderbans, the world's largest mangrove forest, we'd heard that up to 90% of the forest had been destroyed. We ventured down here with a conservationist and were both in agreement that yes, here on the coast, the destruction was bad, but 90% of the forest destroyed - no way, not even close.

I am in Bangladesh to research the next edition of the Bangladesh guidebook and must make it very clear that I didn't go to the southwest specifically in search of cyclone damage - I am only reporting what I saw in the areas I needed to cover. Yet I couldn't help but notice how, despite what the newspapers said, the real destruction always seemed around the corner.

That got me thinking that the only news story you'll see about Bangladesh is one of disaster. Looking around me now the country I see is not the basket case of myth but is instead a beautiful, forward looking nation deserving of a better portrayal. How forward looking? Well, tell me how many western nations have banned plastic bags throughout the country or insisted on all vehicles in the capital (and shortly elsewhere) running only on natural gas? But of course, good news like that isn't news.

- Stuart Butler

Labels: Asia and Pacific, Breaking travel news

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