Burma / Myanmar Update – Word from the Field

First hand Report Ayerayawaddy District

We were invited to visit the affected area, an area that we had been to in the past, with a leader who was returning to his native village. He had been visiting his home village with his eleven year old son on the night of the storm.

As the wind and rain increased he had realised that there was going to be a lot of damage so he went from house to house in his community and persuaded people to move from their bamboo and wooden houses into the brick church building, The next morning he went with his son intoYangon for help, travelling by boat, motorbike and foot, arriving cold, wet and exhausted in the evening.

We travelled to the area, about 4 hours (180 km) from Yangon, by car on the Wednesday, five days after the cyclone. We took essential supplies with us, including plastic sheeting, Water Guard (water purification treatment) dried biscuits, rice and medicine, including oral rehydration salts, pain medication and antiseptic lotion.

The road was passable but after 2 to 3 hours drive we were stopped by a military road block. A helicopter had landed on the road while a high ranking official was visiting the area. After about an hour we were allowed to continue.

When we arrived we could see that most houses had been damaged and many had been laid flat. There were people around the town and the tea houses, an important centre of Myanmar community life, were operating. We visited a church in that town that had been so badly damaged that only the frame was left standing. Only one of the neighbouring houses was still standing.

We met an elderly lady there who was very distressed. She said she had lost everything and there was only God for support now.

After leaving some supplies for some badly affected people there we loaded the rest of the supplies onto a small boat and set of for some remote villages. In the river we saw many dead animals: buffalo, pigs, dogs, chickens and we also saw human bodies. I have to say that after the first five human bodies I just stopped counting. They had been in the water 5 days now. It was very distressing.

Although the area that we were in was less affected than areas closer to the sea (where the water level had risen by 3 meters) the destruction was evident. The water level had risen here to about 80 cm and gone down again after a couple of hours. The wind had been overwhelming. Most of the houses had been flattened.

There were lots of people along the river picking up the pieces of their lives. Some were cleaning and washing household items and clothing that had been muddied by the flood waters, others were trying to dry their rice stores in between the showers of rain that are making the recovery more difficult.

I found it confronting that someone would be washing in the river only 10 meters away from a dead buffalo or that 50 meters away there was a dead child floating in the river. No one was collecting the dead bodies.

At the first village that we stopped to distribute supplies they told us that on their side of the river 500 people had drowned or were missing and on the other side the figure was 200. We asked what they had had to eat today and they said that they had had a little rice and salt. They did not have any vegetables or meat. Nearly all of their livestock and vegetable gardens were lost. We asked them what they needed and they told us, clean water and medicine. They also said that they had received no help yet and no one had been to ask about their dead and missing.

We found that the people had a strong coping mechanism and we were impressed by their amazing capacity to continue on in a dignified way. Here, no one expects external help and people help themselves and others as best they can. We saw boats pass by taking building materials to communities up river as people put back roofs and walls on structures left standing. Many are rebuilding using debris and any bamboo they can find.

Finally we reached the leader’s home village, another half an hour along the river. The death toll here seemed to have been around 70. It is likely that the leader saved many lives by moving people into the church during the cyclone. The church building had sustained only minor damage and was still being used as a shelter for many people.

The atmosphere in the temporary settlement was calm and friendly and the inhabitants even thanked us for coming. They had very limited supplies of necessities but they have not lost everything like in some areas and have kept or recovered various cooking pots and water jars. Many of these, however, are damaged and there is a need for containers to catch the rain water as a source of clean drinking water.

Water will continue to be an issue as the shallow wells have been contaminated by the muddy flood waters and the pumps on the tube wells have been broken off.

Rain water harvesting will be an important activity during the wet season that is just beginning. To add to the difficulties, the firewood supplies are now wet and the continuing rains are not allowing any real drying of fuel.

We found that another major concern for the people of this area was that this is the rice planting season and by June there must be seed in every field. Now their rice is all wet. Rice that has been wet and dried is edible but is no use as seed for the next crop. During the recovery process they will need rice seed, farm implements and draught animals to prevent a famine from the loss of a whole rice season.

We were humbled by the generous spirit of the community there that had prepared a simple meal for us to share.

Reproduced with permission from TEAR Fund NZ. The account was written by a field worker in their partner organization in Burma/Myanmar. For more information on TEAR Fund’s work in the area, click here.