It began for me with a phone call

(Chiang Mai, Thailand) I was just doing my normal Saturday cleaning when I got a call from a friend just after Noon. “Did you hear the news?” she queried. News? Ah, something must have happened back in the States, an earthquake perhaps. Or could it be something in Thailand?  Or a friend who’d had an accident? After all we’ve had a coup and a few floods since I’ve been here. And there are probably at least 10 people I know who’ve been injured in motorcycle mishaps (not including those who’ve died or become comatose from them).

But no, of course not…

…this friend was from Yangon and she’d heard from someone about a cyclone that had coursed through her homeland of Myanmar. “Have you seen anything on CNN or BBC?” she asked. Unfortunately out here in the suburbs of Chiang Mai TrueUBC Satelite is rather expensive for someone on my budget.

“No, I don’t have anything but the Thai channels,” I replied. But I’ll go online and see. Nothing registered on CNN.com or BBC.com, but a google search turned up some reports from Mizzima and others about the storm. Trees were down, roofs had been torn off, the electricity was out. The reports were sketchy, but it didn’t sound good.

I was optimistic in the early days (as I usually am about most things), especially when a U.N. spokesman in Bangkok said that the casualties didn’t seem to be heavy. But a full week of nothing but grim news has been gnawing on my sense of cheeriness. Most of my friends from Myanmar have been relieved to hear news that their families are okay, but all seem to have a growing apprehension about the coming days, weeks and months. They know first hand that not everything runs so smoothly in their country, even in the best of times. And the past week has given them even more evidence that the worst of times can really be gloomy and maddening.

Tags: Burma, Chiang Mai, Cyclone Nargis, Myanmar