Traffic and rainy season
Written by Antje on August 19th 2013 21:36
The last time I wrote about ramadan. A week or so ago the ramadan was over and now we have the sugar feast (also known as Eid). Everyone gets a day off to celebrate this and we had that on Friday, our normal free day. Most of the government offices close for 5 days giving people a chance to celebrate. Everyone travels to visit family. They return to the village where they were born which usually has an aunt or uncle living there. This weekend is the weekend after Eid and we heard about very long traffic jams (90km) going towards Dhaka. This is mostly buses and no private cars. You can compare it to a Black Saturday. I have included a picture from today's newspaper.
And with the ferry it is not any better!
We have had an unusual rainy season. The rains are supposed to start in the middle of June. This year people began a month ago to irrigate the fields because there was so little rainfall. About 2 weeks ago the rain began pouring down. It has rained so much that people are concerned that the rice in the lower fields will die because of too much rain. You just can't win☺
To help you see the difference between the rainy and dry season I have included two pictures. These were both taken from my kitchen window. The top picture was taken this week. You see an unplanted piece of land belonging to the hospital. In the future houses will be built here. Close by the wall a train is coming along and behind this is a rice field. The fields with a lot of water have just been planted. The fields that look greener have the same amount of water but the rice plants are bigger and greener.
This last picture shows the difference. It was taken in March during my birthday party. You can see how dry the land was then. In the distance you can see green rice fields, but that was not because of the rain but due to the irrigation.