Taking Bearings

Madhapur, India — The remains of statues thrown into a lake in Madhapur, India, during Hindu festivals from years past lay scattered on the exposed lake bed. Local annual precipitation is now sufficient only to form temporary pools in the lowest parts of the lakebed. A decade ago, the lake supported local fishermen.

 

 

With a blazing Indian sun firing temperatures to more 114 degrees Fahrenheit, the electric pump sang a Siren’s song as it pulled water from a well dug deep into the dry Earth near the lake. Water poured slowly, literally dripping at times from the pump’s pipes, each drop measured by the eyes of children standing precariously on the edge of the orphanage’s lone water holding tank.

With the older boys off at school taking examinations, the younger boys– none knowing how to swim–faced their own calculus. Each boy instinctively weighed the odds he could leap into the invitingly cool water with enough momentum to span the three meters to the other side. Once across, it would be easy enough to grasp a rail at the other side, pull up, and escape the clutches of death by drowning.

With feverish intensity, one of the oldest boys stripped off his shirt, and with arms already outstretched, flew across the water. Laughing with delight at the refreshing splash cooling his body, he began to struggle just as his hand secured the other side of the tank.

A smile and nod from Emmanuel, 20, son of the orphanage’s founder, sent shirts and pants flying as the remaining boys stripped to successively take the plunge. Some boys joined hands, ready to share whatever fate might befall them for a few minutes of relief.

The girls of the orphanage, constrained by propriety, could only look on from a distance.

Shouting and waving his hands, the elderly orphanage caretaker ran from his work in a nearby field, his words chastising Emmanuel from a distance.

“Stop, stop,” the caretaker warned. “They will try this when you are not watching and waiting to save them. Someone will drown.”

Emmanuel waived the boys away from the tank, turning to say, “That is India. Even the blessings have perils.”

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The orphanage, run by a physician based in Secunderabad, India, lies along the shore of a lake about an hour’s drive from the city. Now only a lake on the map, the landscape is parched. The lake’s former depths forming a dry and cavernous bowl.

Smatterings of small white statues – some still with golden flecks of paint glistening in the sun — jut up from what was once lake bottom. The statues and small shrines, thrown into the lake by generations thanking the gods for water now rise like tombstones over the desiccated terrain.

Celebration has turned to concern.

“Fifteen years ago the lake was about three meters deep. Locals would fish there and sell their catch,” said Nirmala Jyothi, the physician who runs the orphanage.

Over the last 15 years, the lake evaporated.

“Now its dry except for during the monsoon,” Jyothi said. “Lack of rain and consumption dried it up.”

Whether the lake disappeared due to desertification, climate change, or just a periodic dry spell, matters little to the groups who cling to a tenuous existence along the former shoreline of the unnamed lake.

According to the United Nations, however, desertification is a component peril of climate change, but one that should be thought of and countered as a independent threat. It is hard to find skeptics of desertification, the satellite imagery is convincing.

The threat is also global, as desertification proceeds, the resulting dust spreads across vast distances. A NASA and University of Maryland study published in Science in August 2012 showed that dust particles created by desertification can leap across the Pacific from India, China, and even Africa.

A dry lake in India can contribute to air pollution and health problems in Indiana.

The 1994 Convention to Combat Desertification, adopted by nearly 180 nations has done little to slow the process. The creation of deserts and desiccated areas is, according to the Convention’s Committee on Science and Technology, accelerating.

A biologically and geologically complex issue, a broad array of experts attribute the acceleration to factors like overgrazing, deforestation, and overpopulation.

The drying land also displaces people.

For the brick makers whose camp also borders the dry lake bed, lack of water divides families. Each year, maturing sons must depart, forced to wander in search of areas with the moist clays needed to make bricks.

In accord with ancient traditions the brick makers dig into the Earth, extracting wet clays that can be pressed into molds and then baked into bricks by the sun.

The drying lake and dropping water table now force the brick makers to dig deep holes to find moist clay. Risking cave-ins from unstable soils, the men lower themselves with ropes and baskets to mine moist layers of sediment. Sometimes the older children make the descent and brave the dangers because they are smaller, weigh less and allow the men to hoist more soil to the surface.

“Two children were lost two years ago,” said one brick maker

More than half the molds the brick makers hope to fill remain empty.

“Next year, perhaps the year after, we must all go,” said another brick maker.

Goat herders must turn into nomads to drive their herds to water.

After the pools created by monsoon rains dry, the goat herders from a nearby village must walk farther each day. Without the lake or pools of water for their goats, the herders must drive them to small patches of scruffy bushes and trees that offer leaves and a bit of grass as substitute for drinkable water.

Not far into the dry season, the herders say the goats stop giving milk. Although killing their own livelihood, the headers must harvest faltering goats for food before famine claims them.

Jyothi acknowledges her orphanage is in a fight for survival. The orphanage’s lone holding tank is filled by water pumped from a bored well already reaching 200 feet. Digging for another well has begun. A third well is planned.

But the wells also require electric pumps to tap, an expensive alternative to an exhausting and inefficient crank that lowers a bucket into the cistern below.

The drying lake creates other perils as deadly as drowning for the orphanage. Their tanks and cisterns of water, along with irrigated gardens, are a magnet to snakes, many poisonous.

Lack of lake water drives snakes toward the orphanage and surrounding camps, often forcing choices about whether to use scant money to dig additional wells or provide protection from the snakes.

“When we wanted to build a wall to keep out snakes, we had to pay a 6000 rupee bribe to the local Panchayat (the smallest unit of rural government) before work could begin, money that could have gone to looking for additional water,” Jyothi said. “But having water and wells is a blessing.”

Her son Emmanuel smiled and repeated, “That is India. Even the blessings have perils.”

 

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Scarcity of grains, grass, and water show in the gaunt animals found in camps along the lakebed. K. Lee Lerner. Changing Climate creates Displacement Perils in India: Life around a dry lakebed in Madhapur, India. March 2013. ©LMG. Photo by K. Lee Lerner. All Rights Reserved.

 

If the nearby lakebed continues to dry and harden between rainy seasons, the bricklayers say they must join other camps and tribes displaced by changing weather and climate. — K. Lee Lerner. Changing Climate creates Displacement Perils in India: Life around a dry lakebed in Madhapur, India.  ©LMG. Photo by K. Lee Lerner. All Rights Reserved.

 

The moisture level of clay is critical in making brick. The bricklayers dig into the earth, extracting wet clay that they then press into molds before baking in the sun and in makeshift ovens.— K. Lee Lerner. Changing Climate creates Displacement Perils in India: Life around a dry lakebed in Madhapur, India.  March 2013. ©LMG. Photo by K. Lee Lerner. All Rights Reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Among nomadic bricklayers, and in displaced populations in temporary housing camps, women shoulder a disproportionate amount of work and responsibility for family welfare while dealing with a scarcity of water. ©LMG Photo by K. Lee Lerner. All Rights Reserved

 

Girls at the orphanage assume traditional roles in completing domestic chores, including washing clothes and dishes. The water in the orphanage’s lone holding tank supplies all water needed for drinking, washing, and irrigation of nearby gardens.  Madhapur, India. March 2013. ©LMG. Photo by K. Lee Lerner. All Rights Reserved.

 

 

A child runs down an orphanage path between two gardens. Both the residents and the gardens are dependent on a single bore well for water. — K. Lee Lerner. Changing Climate creates Displacement Perils in India: Life around a dry lakebed in Madhapur, India. March 2013. ©LMG Photo by K. Lee Lerner. All Rights Reserved.

Seeking relief from temperatures rising to 114 degrees Fahrenheit, boys at the Joy Home for Children dive into its holding tank. — K. Lee Lerner. Changing Climate creates Displacement Perils in India: Life around a dry lakebed in Madhapur, India. March 2013. ©LMG Photo by K. Lee Lerner. All Rights Reserved.