The word relocation suggests one journey: from here to there, done. The reality is a hundred smaller journeys. Which pot to carry. Whether the goat comes now or later. How to move a grandmother who has never lived anywhere else.
Higher ground is not simply higher. It is further from the market, closer to strangers, without the shade of the tree you planted as a bride. The women make the calculation anyway, because the water has made the old calculation impossible.
Our part is small and specific: a raised plinth, a stronger roof, a title deed in her name so that the next flood cannot also take her claim to the land. The rest — the hundred decisions — are hers.
I did not move my house. I moved my whole life, one basket at a time, and I chose what to keep.
Resident, coastal Bangladesh
Rebuilding on higher ground is not a single act of engineering. It is a long negotiation with loss — and the women leading it deserve to be met as decision-makers, not as cargo to be relocated.
