Bangladesh's river gypsies forced onto dry land

Khuria, Bangladesh (AFP) Sept 18, 2009 – At the end of every year, after the monsoon rains, Noor Hossain dismantles his houseboat on the Bangladeshi delta and heads to the mainland. This time he will not be coming back. Hossain is one of about 800,000 river gypsies, known locally as bedey, who for generations have lived on the nation’s waterways between May and December, and on land for the rest of the year. But now he has decided to give up his nomadic lifestyle because he says the rivers are increasingly erratic and impossible to navigate — which experts attribute to effects of climate change and upstream development. For Hossain, who wears only a “lunghi” cloth wrapped around his waist, it means an end of the eight-month season during which he and the families of his four children paddled two rickety bamboo houseboats across the vast delta. “Many rivers, canals and streams are drying up. We can no longer get to remote areas and without that, we can’t make a living,” said Hossain, 48, who earns some income diving for jewellery lost by women bathing. …