Bangladesh: Between monsoon and dry season | DW Documentary

In southern Bangladesh, silt islands along the Jamuna River regularly appear and disappear. These ‘chars‘ are populated, despite the fact that they are completely flooded during the monsoon season.

Part of the great river Brahmaputra, the Jamuna river sees the emergence and disappearance of these ‘chars’ every year. The people who live here are known as the Chauras, and they have organized their lives around rise and fall of the waters. They go about their agricultural work and live in small communities, always knowing that everything they have built up can be destroyed with the coming of the monsoon season.

The film also documents the dry season, when the river Jamuna recedes, leaving long white sand beds and new islands of fertile soil. Chaura Rahim Shorkar has plenty to do now and hopes to harvest the crops in time for the next flood.

Rahim does not want to trade his life here for one on the mainland. His wife Alea, however, takes a more critical view. What future do they have here? What future awaits their six-year-old son Ashik?
At any moment, they could face the same fate as their neighbor Shuruz Saman, who has been hit for the sixth time in his life. All his fields and land have been swallowed up by the water and once again, making a new start costs him his entire savings.

All the Chauras know this suffering. They all help each other, lending a hand when the corrugated iron walls of their houses need to be moved again because of the waters. Life here is not easy and will not get easier. On the contrary, climate change is set to intensify the extremes of the monsoon and dry seasons.


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