May's Trip Reports
These are May's emails from Yangon describing her activities – as real as it gets ( click links to jump to specific diary entries )
Sept 1st 2008 , Aug 27th 2008 , May 29th 2008 , May 27th 2008 , May 23rd 2008
Sept 1st 2008
I'm back after a bit of delay because we were doing a bit more work than anticipated. We teamed up with Searchers Myanmar, the group of young Burmese professionals who have been doing their own work quietly in the Delta. They are terribly organised - we wore yellow jackets with the name emblazoned front and back, and the boat carried their yellow flag so the villagers would recognize their coming. Much though you are better at putting up with conditions I can't stand in terms of hygiene and "minimalist living" this trip might have tested even you to the limit! The boats that ply up and down these rivers are two or three storied, built in designs dating to no later than the 1950s, though I have been assured that they are not much older than 10 or 15 years. They are exactly the same as the boats I used to ride as a child going to Kyaiklat.
It's an unbelievably horrible journey by British standards - filthy, smelly, completely contravening any form of healthy and safety rules in Europe. People sit three deep all along the passageways sleeping, eating out of lunch bags on little rugs or tarps that demarcate their patches. People sit all along the staircases and sleep where they are - not an inch of space for one to walk along. Hawkers are allowed to get on board and shout and scream their wares at top volume, even if it is 4.00 am. It is a bit like what I've read about Indian train journeys. as for the toilets - I can't even start to describe the stench. They built wooden platforms over what were originally European style toilets so people can squat. At least the hygiene element here is that you don't get into contact with any surface. All of this would be bearable for short trips, but these are 12 hour long journeys. Our boat left Yangon, went pretty much due east all night through all sorts of waterways, going past Kyaiklat and other places that won't have much meaning to our European friends. After 4 days wandering through various waterways, we caught a smaller, more horrible version to get back to Yangon, sleeping overnight in some village townhouse on the way.
Our destination was Bogalay, from where we took a much pleasanter traditional medium sized boat (with an engine). It had a toilet that was much more bearable than bigger things I've been in, and a little timber stove on which we cooked everything we had to eat, buying a bit of veg or fish from the little villages that we visited. Freshwater crabs are in season. The villagers catch them in old fashioned pots and to this extent they are able to scavenge for food. Not much greenery grows in these places and no access to seeds anyway. Our end destination was Kadone Kadi, an area to the south and west of Bogalay, far west of Pyapon halfway to Haingyi as the crow flies. The river is called Kadone Kadi and the land mass is MainMaHla Kyun (pretty girl island), just to the south east of MawlaMyaing Kyun which you might be able to find on one of the maps in my PC. We went to approximately 14 villages over 3 days. There is some evidence of aid having arrived in the areas we visited, but of course these were relatively more accessible as they were in little channels and tracts off the main river. It is said that they haven't reached the inner hinterlands, but at least there are signs in the form of tarpaulined huts and children wearing footwear or carrying coloured umbrellas. We were in the area designated to the "Care Myanmar" organization and wherever we saw white tarpaulins, this was a sign that they had been there. However, of course, though people are not exactly dying anymore, they are living in great need. They were already impoverished in the first place but the storm has wiped out all their reserves and means of enjoyment. Their main concerns are about how to make a living, education and healthcare. I saw a 7 year old child whose thigh had broken during the night of the cyclone when a coconut tree fell on him, being cared for by his grandmother (no parents anymore) who didn't have enough money to ferry him to the nearest town to get his thighbone reset. I left her 10,000 kyats ($10) but feel rather bad because I have no idea what that will buy in terms of hospital care. Care has twice delivered rice to our villages but has not been back, in some cases, for more than a month.
The storm has wiped out all differences between the status of households. Relatively better off, more skilled people are equally as penniless as those who were originally at the bottom of the pecking order. Since money is held as cash, nothing survived in these villages. They are making do, but it is pretty much like camping. They have patched up their huts with tarps, but that's a very unpleasant way to live - the light inside is dark, there's no air flow and it is very very hot. The schools are ditto - in some places UNICEF has erected some plastic covered spaces where classes are held- but if I was a student I would want to give up altogether as it is quite unpleasant physically. Their feet rest on mud and the classes are all conducted in one room, ranging from 10 feet to 30 feet in length depending on the number of kids in the village. Burma will never be an illiterate country, but the level to which they can teach in these outlying places is pretty elementary.- to about the age of 12 years not because of lack of need, but because they are very outlandish places where govt teachers only visit once a month to check on the progress of the village teachers, usually untrained in teaching practice, that just happened to have some sort of education, schooled to the age of about 14 years at most. They are the ones who had had enough money, luck and relatives in towns where they were sent to be educated to the equivalent of GCSEs. I was introduced to a lad who they said was teacher. He looked so young, I asked him his age. He was 16. when I showed my shock at his being one of the main teachers all of whom were very young, they explained he was the most educated person they had. He was actually teaching trigonometry at the time.
Care or UNICEF had in some places issued them with an exercise book and a pencil, but they are not sure when they will get more. We gave the older students a book and biro and younger ones just a book. The children were quite amazed when I encouraged them to do a drawing. No-one had allowed them to use an exercise book for that before. We also distributed rice, oil and a radio or two per village. The adults were exceptionally thrilled about the radios. Those villages which possessed a radio said they have been listening to all the foreign broadcasts everyday to keep a watch out for the next cyclone - something they never knew to do in the past (nor had to). In some villages when I asked if they had a radio the answer was the equivalent of "Good gracious - we can't afford food, never mind radios!" Please ensure Charlotte Craze at thebeeb (see my emails Inbox filing) gets a copy of this note. Thebeeb should be persuaded to sponsor our distribution of radios to these outlandish places. As I wrote in one of my reports to their org a few years ago, their output is a lifeline for this country. People listen to them and their competitors for news and in particular, they seek meteorological information daily now. these people are dead scared of another cyclone and live in fear of any wind or tidal changes. Our little radios were quite cheap, bought locally in Bogalay. we also gave them a torch plus batteries per household and for pregnant/newborn mothers we delivered some packages that UNICEF had given to our partners to take out to the field, containing a bit of soap, soap powder, mozzy net, a longyi and a few other survival things. We came across a woman whose milk had dried up after Nargis, and was feeding her nursing 3 month old child with canned condensed milk and whatever they had to hand (traditional method is to chew the food first and pass it on to the child). We explained the dangers of non-baby milk and tried to encourage her to find something else from the locality, boiled and pureed veg, etc.. We find these people terribly ignorant about healthcare and wellbeing in the first place, compounded by lack of visitation by health experts. Some places in village towns have a healthworker visit once a fortnight. If you break a leg or fall ill, you just have to put up with it or borrow some money to take a boat to a hospital, usually 4 or 5 hours away.
This trip I did a bit more talking to the kids about what happened on the night of Nargis. they are all such brave little stoic souls. A boy of 12 who is about the size of an English 8 year old told me he has lost his dad, grandparents and 3 siblings. He had carried his comatose older brother up a tree to give him some shelter as he had had his neck cut open by flying objects. As he put it, "my brother was 'sleeping' in the tree and a blast of wind made him fall out and he disappeared forever". Grandmother was holding onto the other siblings and when Grandfather went back to fetch her he never came back, nor did grandmother. Dad disappeared too and now there's only mum. I asked what he wanted to do when he grew up and he said, "I want to be a boat mender so I can look after my mum". He was crying as he told me all this, and I felt the same way myself. Another boy, about 7 or 8, told me he had been on a boat with a lot of family and friends, which had overturned. BY some miracle he’d been trapped underneath and could breathe, and eventually someone a long way downstream pulled the boat to the bank, rescued him, and took him back to his village. All his family died. He cried and so did I. No-one asks these questions so the kids just keep it all to themselves. Much need for psychological therapy here. All the kids are anxious to get an education though inevitably it will stop at the middle school level as they can't travel to the towns to get the rest of their secondary education, let alone tertiary or further.
I'll bring back statistics, costs and other details when I get back to UK. Meanwhile, I have been to Egress Myanmar's conference which aimed at putting together the INGOs, NGOs and local businesses to encourage them to work together. There is a rift, with INGOs in particular upsetting local organizations because they are perceived to want to work on their own and recruiting staff away from local businesses. It was actually a very cordial meeting and everyone was in agreement about the way forward. I then went to Egress' offices and have collected lots of very good info about the standard costs of building schools, homes boats etc. There is a good initiative they have instigated whereby they have collected a lot of boatbuilders together to work in Pyapon to build low cost boats so people can go out and fish safely for food. These boats cost $90 each and would be good for us to sponsor some to give livelihoods back to water villages. The carpenters get to earn a decent living and the people get cheap boats (free if we sponsor them). They have also drawn plans, priced and listed all the ingredients for building schools to a good standard with concrete piles to raise them above the regular flood level and act as shelters in the case of a new disaster. They said the costs of the school in Haingyi were understated if they were to be using quality materials. I said it was probably because they planned to build it themselves, using locally materials and methods rather than hiring skilled labour and using longer lasting materials. The correct cost of a 40 metre school building with 8 rooms is more likely to be around $30,000 according to Egress. I will investigate further.
Finally, as this email is already too long, I have today received a stack of photos from the rice farmers for whom we bought seeds. They are standing in paddy fields, plants up to torso height, beaming from ear to ear, chuffed with the progress of their plants. I am going to visit them this week, to check on extent of plantation and help them with purchasing urea fertilizer. Their fields are working out better than the ones I saw on the above boat trip. There, they had planted government issue seeds and the crops have failed by around 50 to 75%. They have tried 3 times to sow, but the seeds just don't work in those waters which are usually so fertile they have never needed fertilizer in the past. In the end some of the villages have given up and have tried to dry out the sprouting rice grains at least they can cook them if they can't grow them. They showed me a pot of plain boiled rice which looked like Chinese fried rice but in fact was simply low quality discoloured rice grains with a bit of a nasty taste when I tried some. I have now become something of an amateur expert on how to grow rice, rice seasons etc. Fascinating subject, very temperamental plants which need lots of care. Buffaloes can't do the job anymore. New ones cost about $200 to $400 each so no farmers can afford them. I suspect the reason many died recently long after the storm is because of internal injuries. The villagers do not have any scientific understanding so they could not explain the cause of death to me other than to say their spirits died after the storm - shock or stress.
Perhaps the most important message to our friends and donors is that the effects of the cyclone look set to last for some years to come. We need to help them to rise to and exceed the levels of poverty they suffer, and deliver them both nutritional and educational aid. For the children this means schooling. For the adults, this means health and nutritional awareness and understanding about alternative things to grow until the soil becomes more viable for rice or whatever crops they have been growing. For the Haingyi district, they majored on growing long term highland tree crops (eg: cashew nuts, pepper) which will not be viable for the next 6 years even if they could find the mechanical means for clearing their highlands, These guys are terrified of being killed by wild elephants if they go to clear the mess of forestry left by the cyclone. I had no idea there are so many wild elephants left in this part of the world. They are still sitting with a sense of helplessness about what to do short term, though their long term wish is to regrow their lost tree plantations.
Sept 1st 2008 , Aug 27th 2008 , May 29th 2008 , May 27th 2008 , May 23rd 2008
Aug 27th 2008
As we are not just simply rushing out to anywhere to feed people, activity is a bit more slow paced. I met up with Ma Mon's contacts on Sunday evening and am planning a joint enterprise trip with them. They are a very good and useful group to know. They had been active for some years before Nargis. They are a group of young professional people, in various medical, educational and other professions who had decided sometime ago to donate their free time to the poor and educationally underprivileged people on all sorts of issues, originally helping on educational and healthcare - how to improve their own conditions. Some of them are qualified doctors and nurses so they had also been giving basic treatments and examinations, primary healthcare (chronic patients with TB, HIV etc). They have also been rescuing young children from having to be work slaves to help support widows, by trying to find alternative means of income for the women so long as the children are allowed to go to school instead of working.
When Nargis came, they turned completely over to working with the victims and widening their scope into donation runs with food, clothing, etc.. They view the current needs of the delta as being an explosion of the same kinds of needs as they always had before, i.e. much poverty, ignorance about healthcare, access to free medical treatments, lack of income leading to children having to stay out of school to help parents etc, combined with urgent needs for food, clothing, books and equipment for schools, school buildings, waterproof homes, animals/machines for farm work, land repairs act.. The group are so well established and had already done much data collection and mapped out the state of many regions in the delta before Nargis, so they were able to swing straight into action after the cyclone. They are known to the authorities so have no problems getting into most areas. they travel with branded jackets so everyone recognizes the group.
So as to see what their work is like, have agreed to go together on a two/three day trip starting Thursday 28th, in the Bogale direction. My 6 and me plus whoever they put together. They have a rota of volunteers because most are in full time work and have to take leave. We are going on a food donation, medicine and healthcare run. Whether by boat or by car will be determined in the next 24 hours. their advance scouts have gone first to check on travel conditions. they have their own kit of lifejackets etc so no need for us to take.
The consensus here seems to be that most districts' greatest physical need is still for rice, oil and cooking utensils/pots. Those areas that have fish etc can find protein - they just don't have carbohydrates and veggies. Things that have to be killed can always be sourced, things that grow from the ground are the main shortages. The sky produces fresh water so water is a less drastic need. They know they should boil water, or feel they should because it doesn't look as clear as they would like, I think that's why they haven't all died of dysentery related diseases. As E confirmed, it is malnutrition and lack of primary healthcare and clinics that is more of a killer than sheer post-disaster disease. I think the world's aid agencies and private foundations who have been around for years building fly-free toilets and emphasizing the importance of clean water, plus the inherent Burmese obsession with bathing and washing have really paid off in this disaster. The monsoon has also helped to wash out disease potential spots, even if it is uncomfortable to have to deal with so much rain - of which there is more than in most years.
Our trips are likely to uncover issues to do with poverty and helping rebuild, plus schooling, nutritional and food needs. Farmers are also having a hard time, according to Searchers' researches. They are quite up on what it costs to help farming. They say you can think in terms of: $100 per acre of paddy fields will pay for farm labourers for ploughing (not the ploughs themselves), seeds/plants, and general set up at the beginning of the season. Then when it is time to fertilize (they showed me pictures of fields where one part is lush because the water is clean, the other part is bare because salt has got in from the cyclone or it is just worn out/used up/poor soil), it will take 1 bag of fertilizer per acre at $30 per bag. The difference it makes is a yield of 50/60 dins (Burmese measure) per acre to 20/30 dins if not treated.
Searchers' view is similar to ours. If having to choose between schools and farmers, better to ease farmers' lives so they won't need to get their children to help. Then do schools as children would be free to attend. Right now children are being kept out of school because they need all the help they can get without cost to get something going. Ohnmar ( our team leader) confirms also for the Haingyi area that the children themselves are desperate to get educated as they see this as a way out of the poverty trap. Lots of sad stories from both groups re teaching remaining kids in tarpaulin wrapped shelters.
Some costs gleaned so far: they believe not good to bring in animals from other parts of Burma as they don't thrive or work well in change of terrain. I suspect more likely to do with something I read in a science magazine that buffaloes are a matriarch led group species, and if the matriarch dies suddenly, the herd disintegrates. If the Burmese are shipping animals from other areas, might be they are shipping young ones who get confused without a lead buffalo (a bit like huskies). Consensus is, better to have ploughing machines. Diesel seems to be widely available but at almost unaffordable prices. Ploughs cost from $300 for cheaper, small ones to $1,300 for bigger ones. Which they need depends on paddy field soil conditions.
Other figures: Government teacher salaries confirmed at $30 per month and very senior heads etc get up to $80. Private schools get less - $20 per month average.
Travel costs for villagers to go to Pathein from Haingyi (e.g. to collect our donations, sell their produce, get health care) $10 per head one way (prevents most from getting health treatment)
There is a locally organized initiative there to build a new middle school ( age 5 to 14) building in village near Haingyi, to serve several villages. I have the drawings/plans etc. They are trying to set a lower than actual cost of $600 per schoolroom in order to encourage donors to donate (real cost $800). Ohnmar gave $100 towards this while there and have a signed, sealed receipt for this. Is an easy way of helping schooling development. we can send whatever we want to Pathein bank (very miniscule cost deduction) and the school head can be sent a message by shortwave radio phone to go by boat and collect the money. Seems to me to be a good cause.
Now - re our girls. The reception I got was unexpectedly enthusiastic to the point of they nearly all hugged me (quite OTT by Burmese standards!). Had been waiting all day to see me yesterday. Interviewed them at length about their experiences in Haingyi. They are utterly unharmed by it - want to do more - couldn't wait for me to get here so they could go out again. They are all coming with me on the Searchers trip. I think at the end of that, I should be able to deputize making fresh trip decisions. They are getting very good at sizing up the situation and organizing to go in and do things. Had no concerns or fears about the conditions in Haingyi - which is about as bad as they will ever be allowed to see.
Being called for office lunch. will write again when can.
Sept 1st 2008 , Aug 27th 2008 , May 29th 2008 , May 27th 2008 , May 23rd 2008
May 29th 2008
Great news about the money. Does this mean they might let us choose how to spend at least some of it? I have in mind the orphanage/school at the nunnery - they estimated they need about £800 per month to pay all the 12 teachers' salaries. Then they will be bound to need food, books etc. W is planning to support some of that.
I also have in mind the monasteries we have been to in the villages whose concern is to be able to rebuild their school buildings and must surely need books and equipment. No end of those sort of things for which we could put in place a foundation that W might be persuaded to manage. If not, there are lots of other very responsible ex MEHS people who would do things like that for us.
This morning I went to where W's houseman's house needs to be rebuilt. You cannot believe how generous spirited people are, in spite of the poverty there. This man is actual the poorest in the whole place. His house is approximately 10 feet by 9 feet (whole house). There is almost nothing left except for a bit of platform. Wife and kids are sleeping at the monastery. To get to his house, you go underneath the upper floor of someone else's. That someone else has let out two cubbyholes below her platform to two tenants. All of the people in the village came out to stare at us and then one of them said "we are glad you are helping them, they are so poor"! They have no envy or jealousy - they just want their neighbours to have a home. But they are so poor themselves anyway.
The lady who owns the timber shop where we will buy timber for the house says there are many villages beyond Pyapon - absolutely untouched by visitors/donators, where all the houses have blown down. I am going out on Sunday, near but not quite there because I am going by boat to somewhere else. There is enough money for me to ask the office girls to organise some more runs once I've left the country. They are now expert at ordering rice, calculating quantities, choosing routes etc.. One of the things we haven't yet done is deliver cooking pots. They have no means of cooking in many of these places so have to rely on the monks or headmen to do big cook-ins with their gigantic festival pots and pans. This isn't satisfactory because they can't choose when and what to eat. Some of our money should be spent on pans and the girls can do this after I've gone.
Went to Sitagu Sayadaw monastery - the monk that I planned to visit all along. Absolutely brilliant organisation- going out to many far-flung villages, doing medical as well as food runs. Have left $2K. Would like to give them more.
Will also try and promise something for E who wrote in the mails you sent. He's also doing excellent work round here. It's either his team or Medecins sans Frontiers. However, MSF is operating in western extreme, whereas E is doing Eastern/central delta - I think. Will call and find out.
Sept 1st 2008 , Aug 27th 2008 , May 29th 2008 , May 27th 2008 , May 23rd 2008
May 27th 2008
Went to 14 villages on Sunday (second trip outside town) deliberately selected (with the help of one of the villagers in a central junction point) for not being on the normal donation runs. Ranging from 400 to 2810 people per place (precise figure due to monk keeping an accurate record on his blackboard. Cannot tell you the whole story here but am keeping a diary. The humility and patience of these people who are waiting to be fed and helped is beyond the ability of a simple email to convey. Most of the road blockages have been cleared by hand but we were in difficult terrain with a jeep that Winsome supplied plus an ENORMOUS truck capable of carrying even far more rice and people than we took. We were 14 people, got the rice from Wah Wah's friend who is a rice production wholesaler/merchant. Got it at wholesale price. 100 Large 50 kilo sacks, plus small bottles of oil. Rice merchant let us hire their lorry cheaply, gave us 6 lads to help us for free. Stocked up, drove to the checkpoint where they were registering all charity vehicles and drivers. There were many hundreds of vehicles forming a convoy ALL simple Burmese citizens just out to do good, to help these poor people.
It is safer to travel in a convoy, half an hour into the wait, the checkpoint chaps just gave up and waved us all on, just writing down the vehicle plates. We then took off from the main drag, drove for 1.5 more hours into the southwest delta towards the small village town of KunChangone. Here broke for lunch when a local guy came to talk to us and thank on behalf of community that people like us were coming out to do this work. We asked him where there were villages with few donations or more deaths and talked him into coming with us to show the way. This is when we visited all these little villages who had either no or one day's food. The monks have been doing an absolutely wonderful job of looking after their flocks. The headmen are also amazing. Could teach the English a thing or two about managing people.
As soon as we alighted in a village they would have all their people summoned into sub-groups , then called them out by head of household names to come and receive their rations from us. One headman said there were others outside who just came to steal rations so he had issued his own flock with tokens, made them line up and give us their tokens in return for a ration. My team were absolutely brilliant. Totally organised without any instruction into a conveyor belt - opening sacks, bagging up rice and oil, tying bags up, handing them down a human chain to me and another at the end, the village lad had a loud voice so called out each name as I handed over the things. When all over, at the end, WW said this gift is from May, from England, and I said it came from all our friends and associates in UK who had given out of great sympathy and desire to help. They broke out into a big round of applause and blessing and sent their love and gratitude back to the English. Said it's the first time they had ever encountered anyone from outside Burma.
Several woman burst into tears and though not usually hugging society, hugged my hands and wouldn't let go. They were already so impoverished in these areas except for freshwater wells and fish and prawns. Their rice is now dead and gone (doesn't like salty water) and they have no idea how to get themselves organised to grow more again quickly. No international aid had ever been to this corner of the delta (even though this is not as far from Rangoon as the beginning of the cyclone trail). I promised them that people outside had not forsaken them, not to worry we would all do what we could outside Burma to get help to them.
This Saturday, am going to where an orphanage and school being set up by nuns and my old school friend from Mentor org. Have donated US 1K already and am going to look at her set up for longer term support. Under nuns, they are safer as otherwise stray girls can have unmentionable things done to them.
It costs US 2K to do one big 100 rice sack trip to delta including driver and lorry. You can't distribute much more than that in a day with the team of 14, mainly because travelling down muddy tracks is very slow. We actually took two local strange things made out of tractor engines and other peculiarities designed to go down these tracks, plus Winsome's jeep, leaving the lorry and main supplies in the care of the central monastery. Don't worry about sending more money yet. I have enough left and can make promises to the others which Winsome can honour even after I have left.
You MUST convey to all our donor (and maybe even non-donor) friends that seeing these people's faces when I hand them their packages is enough to melt the hearts of anyone. Tell them, I guarantee that I absolutely directly put the goods into their hands, that on each trip what I gave them would just feed one family for a day, that far more is needed to keep them going. Many head monks and head men told me their need and concern outside food is to get the schools built in time for June 1st start of term. They are begging for help for those things, books uniforms, teacher salaries etc so I can leave something for them to build with, but ongoing costs eventually still needed.
I feel completely safe, and am going again next Sunday to places only reachable by small boats with engines. Start at Kunchangone, dismount, hire 3 or 4 boats, go to many villages on coast that cars have never gotten through to, even Burmese charities haven't gotten there.
I am so proud of these Rangoonites who are well aware that they themselves have suffered mostly material damage, that others are so much worse off, and have gathered all their neighbourhood donations to go out to wherever they can, but they all say, "we are not experienced in the art of rebuilding, all we can do is feed and give clothes". Too much to say, don't know where to start or end but hope this is enough for you to build a story in better words than these. I find myself transliterating from Burmese speech construction to English, can't be bothered to return to English grammar.
Sept 1st 2008 , Aug 27th 2008 , May 29th 2008 , May 27th 2008 , May 23rd 2008
May 23rd 2008
Brilliant news about income but could do with knowing more will come in for mid term.
Much trouble with internet so short message. Arrived fine. Everyone fine and v. grateful. WW has stretched our money for family a very long way. She's used the leftovers to go on 3 mercy runs to outlying villages already. Will assess how much more we need to go from emergency repairs to final repairs for family. Am going to visit my other relatives tomorrow if can find them. Will assess their damage and let you know whther we need significant more or just a bit more.
Will visit Fieldwork girls soon to see what it was like there at their houses. Doing a trial run to give out donations tomorrow, within Yangon suburbs.
Have been asked to donate something towards set up costs to start up an orphanage for 60 children (ex MEHS classmate doing it, who also works with that English schools recruiting man we met in Mandalay). Probably US 3K.
Think I will need to spend 2K to 3 K per charity for basic help - could give more to be nice. Think our funds will cover most things, though now I'm beginning to wonder how we can help on longer term projects - maybe fund raising drives, trusts or something.
