Agailjhara in May

Bagda manager, Melissa, and Suraiya are forced to walk as the road in under construction and the vangaris cannot pull passengers in the sand.

I spent two days last week in Agailjhara with Suraiya, who designs in Dhaka, and Melissa the Ten Thousand Villages buyer for Bangladesh. In two days we drove there and back (6 hour trip each way), visited 5 different handicraft organizations, and attended a Hindu funeral. At each handicraft organization we were greeted with a huge flower bouquet and a equally huge flower garland and welcome song by the producers, exchanged introductions and explained how Melissa worked with and for the producers, discussed Melissa's marital status, looked at hundreds of handicraft samples, selected samples to be sent to TTV, gave suggestions for new products, had tea-coconut water-mishty-chanachur-apples-oranges-watermelon-cookies-and a billion other things, received a gift from the project, took photos of the producers and recorded their names, and interviewed the project manager.

I forgot to take my thermometer with me to Agailjhara, but as it is in the south, but it was hotter than Mymensingh. And as it is in the village, there isn't power a lot of the time. Yesterday my thermometer reached 106 degrees in my house in Mymensingh.