At the Mansur House

A day at the office

Farhana Akhtar works in the BCDP office in Dhaka, Bangladesh
(JLewis, TDRF)

Today I continued to film the Mansur’s at their home in Dhaka. It was a work day and their two assistants were there (Farhana Akhtar and Masudur Rahman). Farhana helps Elisabeth with outreach activities and Masudur works as the financial manager for the office. I get the chance to also film briefly the two of them. Farhana actually has a Masters degree in science. She is struggling like most young people in this region of Asia, to decide whether she can continue to stay in this field. In Bangladesh, the job market for conservation biologists is small. Even here at the Bangladesh Cetacean Diversity Project (BCDP), positions are really only for as long as funding is available. So there is not real job security. Pressure is high from Bangladesh families on young people to abandon these types of short term positions, for other more permanent and lucrative ones like within the banking sector. As a result, Bangladesh looses many very bright budding conservationists. This is a significant problem. And it is this issue, we eventually decide is the major point worth focusing on for this documentary. Without a future crop of bright passionate conservationists, how will the Ganges river dolphin survive, much less many other endangered species and habitats across this region.

Office of BCDP in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Reliance on laptops
is critical because of frequent blackouts. (JLewis, TDRF)

Life in Dhaka
Dhaka is not unlike many other cities across Asia. In every location I worked for this film, power outages occur nearly daily. And all people including those doing research, have to cope with this. So for example, in Nepal, my student Shambu sometimes has to plan his work that needs to be done on his computer after 3am when the power comes back on, so he can complete it. For the Mansur’s, they have opted to use mostly laptop computers because of the battery power that can get them through sometimes daily periods of blackouts. I believe we had power outages on each day I was with them.