After the storm
Aki, Director of Programme Support and Communications in Myanmar (Burma), writes about the worsening situation in the country since cyclone Nargis struck
Thursday 8 May 2008
I am one of the staff in Myanmar. I live in Yangon, right in the middle of the town. On Friday night (3 May) around 10pm, the storm started. In the middle of the storm that night, I lost one of my windows. The cyclone storm ended around 2 pm on Saturday (4 May).
By the end of it, no one could make a connection through landline or mobile phones. I looked out of my house. I saw trees and telephone or electricity poles falling on the street.
Before the cyclone came, we - our staff both local and expatriate - knew about it. But we didn't expect it to be this severe. I heard that some local people had stocked up some food and essential items like drinking water and cooking oil. I had some food stocks at home, but didn't really stock anything before the cyclone.
After the storm, local people started coming out of their houses little by little; checking their houses, surroundings and their neighbours. If they were not busy fixing their own houses, they were busy helping their neighbours; covering the roofs, taking trees out of the yard or baling water away from the house. As for children, I didn't see them coming out of the affected houses that much immediately after the storm. However, I saw some of them still playing on the street near their homes.
Where I live is in the heart of the city. It has been averagely damaged, compared to the most severely damaged areas, like the delta, which is usually about 4 or 5 hours away by car, or 250 km away from Yangon.
Save the Children has a field office in Pathein, which is in the Ayeyarwady Delta. The south of Pathein is the most affected area because it is located right next to the sea, where the cyclone first hit Myanmar. Normally we can go there by car. Now it is really difficult to go there. We need to use a boat and a truck to reach there. It can take up almost a day or 10 hours.
Save the Children started doing the need assessment in three of our project areas in Yangon. By 7 May, we'd covered up to 50,000 people in those three townships. We provided cash, food ingredients - such as rice, beans, oil, salts - and non-food items like plastic sheets, buckets, and water purifying tablets.
We are extending our need assessment to one more township in Yangon tomorrow (8 May).
We already sent distribution materials off today by trucks to the Delta area. Within the packages, there are ORS (oral rehydrating salts) as we foresee diarrhoea could occur soon in children and adults. It's good to distribute it to avoid preventable deaths, or severe illnesses among them.
Children are the most vulnerable in an emergency situation like this. They have lost their normal way of life. They have lost their homes and everything they had.
I heard from Burmese staff members who went out to distribute aid that children now lack clean water and food. A nine-year old boy asked a staff member, 'Can I have your clean shirt?'
Difficulties:
We want to reach out as much as possible. We want to make sure that we give good help to affected children. Meanwhile, it is difficult to reach out to as many as we want to; because we want to make sure that the help we are giving is realistic to each affected family or children.
Logistics:
The distribution items are limited within the country now. We need external resources urgently.
Last but not least, children in Myanmar desperately need assistance from us and from people outside. We tend to overlook their importance while we were busy trying to establish a sense of normality to the lives of affected people. The unchanging fact is that affected children in Myanmar need our attention to help them now.
How can you help?
Help children and their families in desperate need.
- Donate to Save the Children online or by calling 0800 8148 148
