Women and children prepare for floods

It’s a testing time for the women of Char Atra island in Bangladesh as they brace themselves for the monsoon. Last minute work is now being done to get things ready. The river is too powerful and the island too low to prevent the floods, but homes and paths can be heightened. Many women are at work raising the height of their homes, to keep the waters at bay. Besides rising water levels, the affects of climate change, now is an anxious time for people on the island who also face higher costs for food at the market.

Already the monsoon is drenching South Asia, and millions of gallons of water are heading towards the island of silt, paddy fields and huts from as far away as the Himalayas. Bangladesh is getting ever deeper and longer lasting floods because of climate change. Come the end of August, the river island, Char Atra in the middle of the Ganges will be completely inundated. Instead of walking to school or the market, the 10,000 locals may instead have to swim or get around on banana-tree rafts. A dozen women are piling up sand at the base of Hasina Begum's dismantled tin-sheet and thatch home so that it can be raised. The mother of four, wife, and day labourer says she is relieved because during last year's floods, there was so much water in her hut that she had to tie her children to their bed at night to stop them from rolling off and drowning. Now she will only have to do that if there is a freak flood, a one-in-50-year event. If this happens then she can build a platform under the roof and sleep there. As she struggles to care for her family, Hasina grapples with the effects of climate change every day. “Eight months ago I was living where the river is now,” She told Reuters news agency. “Since I got married I have moved to a new home six times because of the river erosion. Before, we used to stay for three or four years in one place, but during the last five years we have been forced to move every year.”

Her story is typical of women the world over as climate change hits hard. Because they are carers, breadwinners, and all-round super-mums, they are the ones who are hit hardest by the new extremes of weather. In Hasina’s village, the men including her husband go to the city to search for work as labourers or rickshaw pullers, leaving the women behind to look after children and the elderly when disaster strikes. The government school is the far the largest and strongest building on the island. It doubles as a shelter for hundreds of families during floods and cyclones. Many school age children leave the island for work. Only a small fraction goes to school. They face many of the same problems their grandparents encountered, say aid agencies: floods, riverbank erosion and hunger.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children