Uttar Kazir Para is a tiny village located in a rural area around thirty minutes outside Rajshahi. It is part of a network of villages connected by narrow and unpaved roads surrounded by green, small portions of forest and crops. Most of the inhabitants, around 500 in total, are farmers, working in jute, sugar cane, rice and banana crops around the village.
Part of our research here in Bangladesh consists in exploring the local context and understanding which are the most commonly used (local) materials and techniques, especially in relation to “Do It Yourself Materials” that have natural resources as main ingredients.
DIY Materials are created through individual or collective self-production practices, often by techniques and processes of the designer’s own invention (Rognoli et al.), they are sparked from the desire of personalized products and present imperfect aesthetic qualities, traces of humanity, that create added value and originality. DIY materials are often used for open and shared micro production, where R&D investments are almost non-existent, but attachment, pride and surprise are facilitated due to the self-produced nature.
Visiting the village, it was clear from the beginning that, even if smartphones and TVs are rapidly entering their homes (dealing with power cuts is still a daily struggle), people of Uttar Kazir Para still live humbly and in close contact with their environment. From the nature surrounding them, they are indeed able to extract resources useful in different context of their daily lives and activities, from medicine to construction to leisure.
I therefore asked to visit the village, with the objective of searching for natural materials and how they are exploited through traditional and DIY techniques to produce products and assets useful for the community, in order to get a better understanding on what are the potential for small scale production within such a context. During the tour, I was amazed at how natural available resources are thoroughly utilized to extract their maximum potential; everything serves a purpose creating basically no waste.
Over the next lines I will give you some examples of the most common and interesting materials found in the village.
Speaking of resources, the most commonly used over here is bamboo, which covers several different purposes depending on its dimension and quality: big and strong bamboo trunks are used as building material and structural components to build scaffolders, house frames, supports for roof and vegetation.
Smaller bamboo trunks are used to create seats, tables and benches, but also fences and walls. Bamboo sticks are commonly used for different purposes from fishing rods to musical instruments, from teachers’ sticks (yes, in Bangladesh it is still quite common to punish students) to fruit collector; they are also broken down to create containers, jars, folding fans and carpets. Bamboo leaves are not thrown away, they become food for animals and burning material.
Jute is largely available in the area, making it a flourish business opportunity for villagers that harvest it, process it and sell it to local factories producing ropes to export outside the country (mainly China). Not all the jute is sold though: once the plant has been cut, it is left in the water to loosen up, then fibers are peeled and used within the village to produce ropes, clothes and bags while the sticks serve different purposes. Jute sticks are mainly used to produce fences and wall covers, to create protection for newly planted seeds and (together with cow’s feces) to produce fire sticks that will be use to feed the fire while cooking.
Within the village is available a large variety of fruit plants that is not just used to harvest food but also serves other purposes: hard woods such as mango, nim, blackberry, coconut, plum and date, are used to build furniture and structural parts of the houses (such as roof beams); others such as guava and banana are used as burning material.
All the leaves of these trees are used as well, depending on their size and endurance they can be used either as wall/roof/fences covers (date, plum, banana, coconut, sugar cane), to produce products such as mats or containers (coconut, plum, date), become food for animals (sugar cane, mango) or used alternatively (blackberry for stomach ache, nim tree for skin damage and pesticide for crops etc.).
Finally, another important, vastly used and locally available material is soil which is used for building houses (layer by layer), floors and walls. Soil is also the main ingredient for local businesses such as producers of terracotta containers/vases and brick factories (that we are going to investigate more in detail during location visits).
In Uttar Kazir Para, the main resources come from the nature that surrounds it, local people still use tools and techniques to harvest and exploit those resources without producing any waste that cannot be sent back to nature itself.