From the start, the relief effort to help the survivors of Cyclone Nargis faced tremendous barriers and challenges to overcome. The area of destruction is wide and the numbers of those severely affected are immense. Combine these factors with the inaccessibility to areas, a badly damaged transportation network, and the destruction of so many boats upon which the area depends upon, and the problem of relief becomes even greater. Then on top of all this we can throw in the inability of local authorities to handle the challenges of all of these factors. Officials have further hindered the relief efforts, by creating barriers to access and assistance (likely out of fear and other base motives) and following traditional practices and impulses, when new solutions and openness would better serve everyone’s interests.
Through all of this is the cruel reality that far too many people are going without access to food and proper shelter. Here are some excerpts of the reality on the ground a full three and a half weeks into the relief effort.
On the riverbank of the town of Kyauktan, are the true victims – struck down first by the cyclone and then by the neglect and stubbornness of their own Government.
Along the riverbank are hundreds of people in living conditions scarcely superior to those of animals.
Monsoon rain gushes through the walls and roofs of hastily repaired huts and churns the paths between them into grey mud. Rain is their drinking water – without it, they have only the murky contents of a riverside pond.
A week ago they sheltered in the local monastery until they were forced out by authorities.
Those who remain, once proudly self-sufficient rice farmers, have become desperate hunter-gatherers, scrounging in the dirt and debris.
“Now the only job for everyone in the village is searching for something to eat,” said Ko Sein Lwin, 45, who before the cyclone hit was able to keep three daughters in a university, at $500 each per year.
“We’re starting out life again, not from the first step, but from zero,” he added grimly. “It’s like going back to the Stone Age.”
…
When the boats make their quick stops with aid at a nearby village, Sein Lwin and his neighbors must ask for a share of the fresh supplies. They make do with what other destitute survivors are willing to give up, usually just 2 cups of rice per person each day.
Cash savings disappeared in the cyclone-driven surge of waves at least 8 feet high that raced through the village. Gaping holes in Sein Lwin’s roof are patched up with pieces of tarp that he dragged from the river as they floated past after the storm.
The cyclone smashed a brick and cinder-block primary school to rubble. All of the books are gone, and no one has heard from the teachers, who live in Bogalay and were scheduled to start classes again on June 1 for 80 students.
It’s not much, but the flimsy bamboo lean-to on the side of the road is all Aye Shwe has to keep his family dry. They lost their home to the cyclone and may soon be uprooted again — this time by soldiers ordering them to leave.
…
“Where my house used to be is still filled with water up to my waist,” said Aye Shwe, pointing to fields of rice paddies in the distance, under water as far as the eye could see. “How can I build a new house there?”
“The government has still not brought us anything,” said Piniya Wentha, a monk in the Irrawaddy Delta village of Kaunt Chaung, who added that international aid groups had not been able to deliver aid either.
“The only food we get is from individual volunteers,” the monk said. “Our seed stocks are gone, the cows and buffalo are dead and we are going to miss the next rice harvest.”
Other survivors are relying on their own meagre resources, catching fish in canals that are now flooded with debris and rank with the corpses of rotting animals and human waste.
But along the road leading to Dedaye, thousands of people – breastfeeding mothers, children, elderly men and women – wait under the tropical sun and daily monsoon showers, hoping for someone to give them food or clean drinking water.
“It will take months for the situation to return to normal. Before the cyclone, you did not see these large groups of people begging for food,” one volunteer told AFP.
“Their houses have been destroyed, their rice lost in the storm and they have nothing to wear except what is on them,” the volunteer said.
“It is not that they like to come out and beg.”
Tags: Ayeyarwady, Bogalay, Bogale, Burma, Cyclone Nargis, Dedaye, Hunger, Irrawaddy, Kyauktan, Myanmar, Pyapon, relief aid
