Here is a short message because I have had many questions about the cycloon Amphan in our area. In Bangladesh, there was a tidal wave on the coast, with an estimated 220,000 damaged homes, with over 50,000 being completely destroyed. Fortunately, most people were able to reach a "cyclone shelter" in time. This is a sturdy building on stilts designed to withstand such storms. This helped to keep the number of deaths to around 20.

In the north, where we are located, we had mainly a storm with high winds. Several trees were blown over, houses were damaged but fortunately the damage is minimal.

I was awakened, Thursday morning, at 5:30AM when the tree next to my bedroom was blown over. Fortunately it fell on ground that was not used so we didn’t have any damage to worry about.

But with closer inspection, we found that the roots of the tree had damaged one of the drains in the bathroom. That means no warm showers. . . But fortunately we have water in the kitchen and can use the other toilet.

Today 6 men worked the whole day to remove the tree, but unfortunately that was not possible. . . They did remove all the branches from the tree...

The next drama can be seen in the picture: the ground under the tree moved visibly with every gust of wind. In the end, from the roof, men sawed the branches with leaves off with saws fastened on bamboe sticks thus making the tree catch less wind. Now that the wind has stopped the tree can be cut down.

A tragic side effect of the storm is that all the unripe mangoes were blown out of the trees. Our neighbour’s children worked diligently yesterday to gather them. I helped part of the day to peel, remove the pit and cook the mangoes to make mango puree—this is delicious and is similar to apple sauce. Unfortunately this means that there are less mangoes for the mango season and that mangoes will be more expensive.

Before the storm, fortunately, most of the rice was harvested, which means that the damaged here is limited.

As for the Corona virus: the number of cases is increasing but moderately. There is still no public transportation, but with the end of the Ramadan coming people have been doing more shopping.

On the other hand, there is a lot of fear for the virus which results in strange behaviour. In this picture you see a mother and father wearing protective overalls. But these are not closed properly and therefore do not protect. As you can see the children are leaning against the side of the protective clothing. Even among our own staff there is much fear-- even with training and information this fear is only partially taken away.