Jasmine’s visit to Burma one year on from Cyclone Nargis

I was in Myanmar (Burma) a year ago, just after Cyclone Nargis hit. At that time, I couldn’t get out to the Irrawaddy delta where our team was busy responding with life-saving aid, but I saw our warehouses in Yangon filling and emptying with food and emergency kits from around the world. On this return trip, I wanted to see for myself the impact of what has been one of our largest-ever emergency responses. From the helicopter, the devastation of this vast and remote delta region is still evident.

One thing this trip really brings home to me is the logistical challenges of this emergency response. Reaching one remote village involved a one-hour helicopter ride, followed by a ride on the back of a motorbike down small paths to reach a boat that we travelled on for another hour. Our teams have shown huge resourcefulness in overcoming these obstacles. I can’t imagine how they coped distributing huge amounts of food, shelter and life-saving relief in such difficult circumstances.

The first person I meet in Phoe Ngo Gone village is Ma Ky Than, 53, and her husband. "I lost all my sons and six of my grandchildren — only one remains with us", she tells me. "We lost our home, everything." How do you begin to respond to that? In the early days after the cyclone hit, we provided tarpaulins for shelter, blankets, clothes, and household kits. We've been delivering food to families like this on a regular basis. We've also run cash-for-work projects, which provide families with income and have led to local paths and roads being repaired.

As I travelled around the delta I could clearly see the effects of the tidal surge that salinated the land. It has badly affected farming — this year’s rice harvest is a fraction of what it should be, and there's not enough work for the landless labourers who need money to repair their houses. Some of the salt fields have been rehabilitated, which is hugely important, as many people make their living by salt-panning.

I also met a young grandmother, Daw Ye Ye Cho, 38, with her grandson, Aung Moe Thu, in the same village. She was caught in the cyclone while she was working in her fields. Amazingly, she survived and the next morning she constructed a raft from bamboo and made it back to her village. I asked her about the huge pig resting in the shade behind her surrounded by dozens of little piglets, and was surprised to hear that the sow had been left in the fields after the storm. When they returned to fetch it they found she’d given birth to the piglets!

I also met Tin Tin Nwe, 30, and her 8-month-old boy, Thawzinlinn, in Phoe Ngo Gone village. She was pregnant a year ago and escaped the worst of the flooding by running to her father's house. Most of those who died had been working in the fields when the tidal surge came, and didn't make it to higher ground in time. Straight after the cyclone we supplied drinking water to the village. Now they’re able to collect water from the village pond that we helped rehabilitate.

As we sat having our breakfast of spicy noodles in the small town of Thingangone, we were interrupted by the sound of clashing symbols and chanting. The team explained that it was a monk-initiation ceremony, where young boys join a Buddhist monastery for the first time. This is an important date in the Buddhist calendar, but the ceremony's expensive and many parents have found it increasingly difficult to afford in the economically hard times following Cyclone Nargis.

The next day I travelled to a slightly less remote village called Gone Nyim Tan. The villagers had sustained far fewer casualties than in other villages, but everything was destroyed and the water sources were contaminated. Children now have to walk two or three times a day to fetch precious quantities of water. We're currently delivering water to 66,000 people across the region by boat and have helped rehabilitate freshwater ponds. But we estimate that 240,000 people living in the delta still don’t have access to drinking water, or water for domestic use.

It was a real privilege to be able to wander around the villages and chat to whoever I wanted to - it shows the good relationships that our team has built with the local communities. Apart from logistics, we’ve had no problems working with the communities that have needed our support.

Although the bulk of the relief phase is over and we should be moving onto helping communities rehabilitate their villages, food aid is still needed by many vulnerable families. This family has collected a sack of rice from a nearby food distribution site.

I’m sitting in the home of Daw Hla Yin who’s 73 and living with her two sons. Next to me is one of her granddaughters who’s 13 and wants to be an engineer when she grows up. As you can see, their property was damaged in the storm and they’re struggling to recover financially and repair the roof in time to protect them from the upcoming monsoon rains.

Worryingly, many people are still living in temporary shelters. These shelters are meant to be lived in during the first phase emergency response, but people should be in better accommodation now — especially with the monsoons coming. We estimate that more than 500,000 people, including 200,000 children, across the delta region, still don’t have proper shelter and are living in makeshift homes. We’ll be distributing emergency materials to them before this year's monsoon starts. It’s critical that aid doesn’t dry up now.