By Myat Thu Rein, Reporting Officer, Myanmar Red Cross Society
Almost two years after Cyclone Nargis, the Ayeyarwady delta is gradually recovering. Major challenges remain and survivors are still struggling, but thousands of families have received new houses, villages have been restored and now have improved water supplies. Farmers have received fertilizer and tools, and fishermen have received boats. Schools and health centres are being constructed and numerous training sessions on health and disaster preparedness have been conducted.
The recovery operation is well underway and some of the new innovative approaches used can now serve as examples for other operations, not least because of the involvement of affected communities. Link to more stories about recovery in Myanmar here.
For San Lwin, life as a boatman now seems worlds apart from the night Cyclone Nargis struck the Ayeyarwady Delta in early May 2008.
The 37-year old man was swept away during the disaster, loosing sight of both his son and his wife. He was later reunited with his wife, who had been clinging on to a tree, but the couple lost their five-year old son Pyay Phyo. His body was found four days later in a pile of wreckage.
Altogether, the disaster left 84,500 people dead and 53,800 missing. An additional 2.4 million people, mainly in the delta, were severely affected, according to the United Nations.
On the evening of the cyclone, "the wind got stronger and the sky darkened. The wind was so strong it blew off the roof and walls of the building we were in," says San Lwin. To escape the increasingly bad weather, San Lwin put his wife and child in his boat not suspecting that the waters would sweep them away. Apart from losing their son, the family also lost their home, their belongings, and their fishing boat with all equipment.
New beginnings
Today, San Lwin is grateful that the ordeal is over. He now works for the Myanmar Red Cross Society's office in Bogale. He transports staff and Red Cross volunteers from the town centre to villages where recovery activities under the society's Cyclone Nargis Operation are taking place.
Bogale is one of 13 townships targeted for assistance under the three-year operation which aims to reach 100,000 families. This relief and recovery operation, running until 2011, seeks to assist affected communities through the following programmes: shelter, livelihood, community-based health and first aid, psychosocial support, water and sanitation, and disaster preparedness and risk reduction. The operation is conducted with the assistance of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
San Lwin's knowledge of the river and minor waterways, along with his two boatmen colleagues, make them important assets for the hub office. His working hours are flexible – sometimes, he makes overnight trips with recovery teams, and some days he waits in the office for news of the next field trip.
"I'm happy here," he says of his job which began in August 2008. He had heard about the job through an assessment and relief officer based at the Bogale office.
Making their way to safety
With their home and livelihood destroyed in the cyclone, San Lwin and his wife Mi Mi Nwe, 22, struggled to regain their way of life – a life so different from Kyein Chaung Gyi, the village San Lwin lived in since his childhood and where he caught fish, prawns and crabs to sell in the market.
After cremating their son, San Lwin and Mi Mi Nwe made their way to Bogale township.They walked, travelled by boat and even swam across streams, to make the four-day journey to Bogale, in the aftermath of the disaster.
"We ate banana stems and leaves to make our hunger go away," recalls San Lwin.
"The fields and the rivers were filled with floating bodies. There were dead people hanging on trees and piled up on river banks".
When they reached Bogale, the couple sought refuge in the home of Mi Mi Nwe's uncle. They were not eligible to receive assistance because Bogale township was not as badly affected as the villages where storm surges reached up to 1.2 metres high.
"Besides helping my wife's uncle with his fishing business, I started a stall selling cigarettes and betel leaf but I made very little money – just enough for a daily meal for my wife and me", says San Lwin.
The new life was tough but the couple did not want to return to their village, Kyein Chaung Gyi. There were too many painful memories there. "All my relatives there – all 22 of them, except my mother-in-law – died." This village of about 500 farming and fishing households was almost completely wiped out by the disaster.
The earnings from his new job have enabled San Lwin and his wife to move from a simple shelter he built in September 2008, to a stronger structure which they are now renting.
Thinking of the future
San Lwin is also saving some money for the future when his contract as a boatman ends in 2011. He plans to use the money to a buy a boat to trade vegetables for a living as well as take care of their new baby – Mi Mi Nwe is now pregnant.
Myat Thu Rein is a reporting officer with the Myanmar Red Cross Society's office in Bogale township, in the Ayeyarwady Delta. The office is one of nine "hubs" set up to complement pre-existing Red Cross township structures in the implementation of the three-year Cyclone Nargis relief and recovery operation. For more information on the operation, visit http://www.ifrc.org/docs/appeals/08/MDRMM00226.pdf
Source :http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/SVAN-82HNPG?OpenDocument
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