Manta Fisherfolk Spend Lives on Boats Along the Bukhainagar River, a front line of climate crisis
or generations, the women in Shabnoor’s family have given birth not in hospitals, but on water.
And so it was that her baby, Tamanna, was also born on their modest wooden boat set adrift in the coastal town of Lahathat in Bangladesh. Their boat is everything to them: their home, livelihood, and their identity.
They belong to the Manta community – Bangladesh’s “river gypsies” – a nomadic group that lives on rivers and survives by fishing. Displaced from the land decades ago due to riverbank erosion, they have since made the rivers their permanent address.
Their boats, crafted from wood and covered with tin or bamboo, house entire families. Some vessels even carry extended kin, with children trailing fishing nets in the water or tied with strings to prevent them from drowning.
In Laharhat alone, a riverside area just 24 kilometers from Barishal town, in south-central Bangladesh, 174 Manta families live this life. “Currently, we have 600 family members in total,” says Jashim Shardar, the community’s informal leader.
Across the Barishal division, official records estimate 1,905 members of the Manta community. But numbers vary as they often count only the heads of families, thus masking the true size – and needs – of a community left at the mercy of a worsening climate crisis.
Life on the edge
Bangladesh’s river gypsies have not always been landless. Generations ago, they too were farmers and fishermen who lost their lands and homes to river erosion. Thus began their hundred-year riverine journey, living aboard boats on the country’s major deltas.
The Mantas have multiple communities that live in the southwestern coastal areas of Bangladesh, including Barishal, Bhola, and Patuakhali. There are other communities who live their lives on boats, like the Bede, though they do not stay in the same place as the Manta communities do.
Naturally, the Manta community’s livelihood revolves around water: fishing and boating. Now, however, climate change is rapidly shrinking their access to fish, while their very shelter makes them vulnerable to extreme weather like heavy rains or cyclones.
As it is, Bangladesh – a low-lying coastal country in the Ganges-Brahamaputra Delta – is already extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels that could submerge 17 percent of the nation’s land and displace about 20 million people.
“Everything has worsened since five years ago,” said Jashim. “There are fewer fish, (which means) bare minimum daily earnings, and on top of that, basic necessity prices have increased, which means we need to take (out) loans regularly,” said Jashim.
“It’s getting increasingly harder to feed all the mouths in a family, every day,” added Jashim.
Though the Manta community is among the poorest in Bangladesh, those living in Laharhat are even more disadvantaged. Earning an average of $4.12 or less per day, they are considered to be extremely poor, living way below the poverty line – and among the most impoverished Manta communities in the country.
They live without the most basic human needs for survival: reliable access to clean water, healthcare, or sanitation. Many drink from the polluted river they call home. Only one deep tube well – set up by an NGO – serves the entire Laharhat community, and it often doesn’t work.
One toilet, used by almost 600 people, stands onshore – too far for most to access, especially at night. Newborn babies, small children, and women are forced to live extremely unhygienic lives. Girls and women have no access to menstruation tools and are at high risk of reproductive health issues.
Healthcare is virtually out of reach. They rely on village doctors and pharmacies for minor illnesses. For serious ailments, they crowdsource funds within the community. The nearest hospital is in Barishal, which is 24 kilometers and a long boat ride away.
“We do not know how to sign our names in the hospital forms, and so most of the time, they ignore us, make us wait for a long time,” said Jashim. “As long as we can pay, we can get treatments. Once we run out of money, we often stop mid-treatment and come back to the boat.”
When Shabnoor gave birth to Tamanna, she had only the help of her mother, aunt, and a local midwife. Her husband, Monir, 23, admitted: “Paying for hospital fees or treatment is an extra financial burden; if anything went wrong during the birth, there was nothing we could have done.”
Luckily, both Shabnoor and her baby are healthy, but this lack of basic healthcare jeopardizes their lives daily. Their constant exposure to the sun, polluted water, and harsh weather causes them to frequently suffer from health issues, especially skin diseases.
Even in death, they remain outsiders. The deceased are buried on land, but only after pleading with local landowners for a burial site.
No schools for Manta
With no access to proper education, the Mantas are largely illiterate. Only a few know how to count or calculate fish prices – skills they picked up out of necessity, dealing with daily incomes and market prices for the fish.
The nearest primary school in this community is a local school in the village, where the Manta kids are reluctant to go. “They call us names, mock us every time we go to school, we get embarrassed, and so we don’t want to go to school with them,” said Shonali, 9.
Poor hygiene is a major barrier to education for the Manta children. Since they don’t have access to proper sanitation tools, many children suffer from body odor and dark skin – which makes them targets for bullies in schools. The mocking and ridicule is so much so that many now refuse to return.
There is a separate school dedicated solely to the Manta community initiated by a local teacher, but the classes are irregular. “Only 16 of us go to that school,” says Shonali. “We know basic numbers and alphabets, but there’s no routine, no definite classes, and most of the time, the school remains closed.”
“If anyone arranged a proper school for us and ensured a good environment, all of us would love to go,” she added.
But government officials like Iqbal Hasan, UNO (Upazila Executive Officer) stress that the state’s priority is inclusion, not segregation, for Manta children. He adds that all the primary schools in these regions are instructed to admit Manta children without discrimination.
“We regularly hold meetings with the teachers to ensure that they don’t discriminate between Manta children and others; we want to ensure inclusivity for them in schools,” said Hasan.
Still living in darkness
In a world powered by digital devices, the Mantas still live in darkness. Some families own small solar panels, gifted by NGOs or bought secondhand, often to power a single lightbulb in the boat.
Mobile phones are rare, and charging them requires a trip to the local market. “I just watch whatever pops up on YouTube,” Shonali says. “I don’t even know how to search.”
As their daily lives are shaped by deprivation, extreme poverty leads to early marriage and polygamy, leaving young girls vulnerable to being married off young. An elder, Hafez Shardar, says that Manta girls as young as 13 are already considered ready for marriage, with most wed at 16.
Thirteen-year-old Sheema Begum, now married, lives with her 20-year-old husband Lokman Islam inside a boat just 11 meters long and 2.5 meters wide, a space too cramped to raise a family.
No wonder they now dream of a life on land. “A home, a job, school for our kids—that’s all we want,” says Sheema.
Families typically own two boats: one for living, one for fishing. When heavy rain or cyclones hit, the boats offer no protection. But the Mantas refuse to go to government cyclone shelters. “We can’t leave our boats. They are our lives,” says Jashim. “If we are to die, it will be on the river.”
Many do. Floods sometimes wash away entire families, and their bodies are found only after waters recede.
Invisible in the eyes of the state
Even as governments come and go, the Mantas’ lives remain unchanged. Each family has a national ID card, but they’re excluded from official fishermen’s lists and ration schemes. Some women receive rice under government welfare programs, and the community is technically included in government awareness training. But the benefits rarely reach them.
In 2022, some Manta families elsewhere were given homes, but not in Laharhat. Shardar muses: “Maybe there are funds allocated for us, but unfortunately, those never reach us; either only a few benefits or corruption takes it all away,” he said.
For the state’s part, Hasan says they have tried to include the Laharlat community in these projects, “but that means sharing the land with the residents, and most of the time, they refuse to accept that…The government wants them to be a part of the local communities and not be secluded, but they want lands where they can just live among themselves and not be included with the locals.
For the community, however, the resistance goes beyond simply sharing space, but parting ways with the only home they’ve ever known. Many share that Laharhat Ferry Terminal has been their address for generations.
It’s why many of the Manta members often hesitate to open up about their challenges to others. “We once made a promise that we won’t share anything about our struggles anymore with anyone, because nothing ever changes for us,” says Jashim. “We don’t know why our lives never change, we desperately want to break out of this cycle.”
“This is not living, this is not a life,” adds Lokman. “It’s only a painful existence; whatever we earn, the spending is always exceeding it, and there’s no escape from it.”
What’s clear is that many of these so-called river gypsies now desperately want a change.
“We suffered all our lives, and so did our parents and grandparents; we don’t want the same fate for our children,” says Jashim. “We hope for a change, the kind that can get our next generation to break this generational cycle, our only hope is for them to get a better life than us.”
