Welcome to the third Symbiosis Newsletter for 2011.

As many of you will remember from last year’s mid year Newsletter, or from personal experience, it’s now the wet season in Bangladesh - or Borshakal.  To be honest, it’s not really a fun time of year to be trying to work in Bangladesh.  Now that the wet season has started, it can be wet for a week at a time – heavy rain, light rain, windy rain, irritating rain.  The only good thing about it is that it cools things down a bit – and provides water for rice crops, ducks and fish ponds, of course.
But for many of the poor people it must be almost a nightmare.  Not only is there mud everywhere you walk, so it’s difficult to get clean (and keep clean), but how do you get clothes dry when you’ve washed them and you live in only a small mud hut or tin shed?
Then you get a few days with no rain and some sun and the sauna starts up.  Even the tiniest bit of physical work makes you wet from the inside out.  I don’t know how they get any work done at all.
Last Newsletter you saw the image of the cluster of houses surrounded by green rice crops.  As expected, that little island is now surrounded by flood water.  Their main transport in and out is now by banana tree raft.