(The first instalment of this article was published in Tuesday’s Dawn)

DHAKA: Originally from the southern French city of Toulouse, Marre, 56, a former Air France cabin crew member, had always had a passion for adventure. A keen hang glider and paraglider, who also taught both, he once achieved the dual feat of being arrested in both France and Britain within 24 hours after building a motorised glider and flying it across the English channel.

After a string of other adventures, including sailing solo across the Atlantic while still a novice sailor, he succeeded in lobbying the French government for one of its unwanted barges.

In January 1994, Marre and just one other crew member set off for Dhaka.

When, part way through the journey, the exhausted pair appealed to friends to “send someone else,” they were joined by a recently released bank robber with no sailing experience.

On arrival in Bangladesh, Marre sought the help of his future wife Runa’s father and it was arranged that he would donate the barge to a Dhaka-based medical organisation.

Believing that his job was over, he went back to Paris, but soon returned saying he felt he should “see what was happening to Runa and also to the barge”.

“Runa was OK but the barge was not,” he recalls. “The barge was rotting. I was so disappointed I thought I had to do something,” he says.

Jolted into action by the state of the boat, Marre launched a rescue plan.

He paid for the vessel to be maintained out of his own pocket and even succeeded in getting Mother Theresa to visit which resulted in a sponsor coming forward.

In the meantime, Marre and Khan married, but all was still not well with the barge which ended up abandoned once more in a shipyard.

Having set up a tourist boat tour business, Marre was now forced to watch as the barge fell into a terminal state of disrepair.

“Everyday we were sailing past and I was feeling terrible,” he says.

Again he embarked on a rescue plan, aware that this time the chances of success were slim at best.

“I was trying to raise money for a project which had already failed, for a boat that I did not own and on which there was money owed,” he says.

The answer to Marre’s prayers came one day in the form of a visiting head of a multinational company, who arrived as a guest on one of his river excursions.

Impressed by the couple’s evident vision and drive, the company offered to fund the project for three years. The offer led to other sponsors coming forward to help with the $148,000 annual running costs.

Three years later that firm agreed to continue its support, and two years ago an airline also pledged funding for a second boat.

Success has enabled the hospital to expand its services to include treatment for conditions such as cleft lips and club feet, although this has also brought difficult decisions.

“Do we fix up 60 children with club feet who could end up as beggars on the street or revive one old man who dies anyway six months later,” he says.

For Marre, who is now permanently based in Dhaka with Runa, their young son and Runa’s two grown-up sons, it has been a long, sometimes tortuous, but ultimately fulfilling journey.

“When I started from France I thought if I didn’t do something with this barge no one else would,” he says, adding that he could never have imagined how it would change his life.

He is now hard at work overseeing the construction of the second boat which is due to be operational by the end of the year, while two new ambulance boats will also soon be boosting the service.—AFP

Concluded