BURMA:First came the deadly cyclone. Then began the real struggle to stay alive, writes Jennifer Cavagnolin Bogale
MA GAN survived tropical cyclone Nargis. The storm tore the roof off the tiny brick house where the 22-year-old woman and her extended family live, 100 kilometres southwest of Rangoon, also known as Yangon, but didn't carry her away. Then, two days later, she gave birth.
Now the baby girl is growing weaker by the day. Ma Gan is not producing breast milk, and almost a week after the storm blasted through, there is almost no clean water in the disaster zone. There is no medical care and precious little food. A grandmother has taken charge of the infant and is trying to keep her alive by feeding her water from a polluted canal.
"We have nothing. How do we go on?" lamented the family's patriarch, U Myint.
A drive down the road to Bogale on Thursday revealed a swath of destruction - a succession of flooded fields, fallen trees, demolished houses, bamboo huts folded flat like cardboard - and thousands of survivors camping here in the Irrawaddy Delta, desperate for help and in most cases getting none.
Bogale lies near the midpoint of the storm's path across the delta, one of the world's most fertile rice-producing areas. The town endured winds topping 190km/h and a storm surge that dumped almost two metres of seawater on the town and rice fields. Burma government sources have said 10,000 may have lost their lives in and around Bogale.
All told, the storm killed at least 22,000 people and left 40,000 missing, the Myanmar government has said; diplomats have suggested that the death toll could reach 100,000. About 1.5 million survivors are in urgent need of aid, the UN says.
On Thursday Burmese soldiers and police officers were operating many checkpoints in Bogale. During a visit to the area, a few Burmese aid groups were seen. One helicopter was spotted delivering supplies.
Ma Gan's house, not much bigger than a large car, is less than two kilometres outside Bogale. Family members and 20-plus friends and relatives were gathered on the family's small, wrecked plot of land. They had erected corrugated metal sheds around the damaged house.
Some were seeking relief from the vicious heat and humidity beneath a lean-to. The survivors seemed to wear the same look of exhausted acceptance, a traumatised stare, eyes blank. And their stomachs were empty.
The baby was born in a small shack made of wood and corrugated iron roofing, about the size of a small kitchen, too low to allow people to stand. Ma Gan's mother and other women in the extended family helped with the delivery and were taking care of the infant as best they could. Ma Gan, traumatised, was not joining in.
U Myint went into Bogale to try to get some rice or water, but supplies in the ravaged town were limited. "They sent us away," he said. "We have no food, no water. The paddy is no good." Recently harvested rice, now rotten, would normally be fed only to animals, but it is now the only food for local people. The rice provides no nutrients and can roil the stomach, but they have no choice.
There were more scenes of destruction and of waiting in Bogale. Hundreds of children sat quietly in a set of concrete school buildings that now serve as orphanages and shelters for the many thousands of people who lost their homes.
Further down the road was a similarly demolished community. A monastery that once housed 28 monks is now a temporary home for 600 people. They came with a few belongings - a small pot, perhaps, a woven bamboo mat - but often with only the clothes on their back. Now they waited.
People scavenged for fish in canals that had turned black as oil and were starting to reek of decomposition. Children and grandparents cleared debris, while men extracted rusty nails from broken wood beams.
The fierceness of this storm was unexpected. "We didn't know it was coming," said Ma Naung, a mother of three in the village of Pyiapon. "Nobody warned us. In the middle of the night, the winds knocked down our walls and water began to flood us out of our home." She and her children hung on to the floorboards. When the winds died down a bit, they made it to a neighbour's house.
Many around her did not survive. Thousands in Pyiapon drowned in the surging floodwaters, people said. Houses were ripped apart.
Another small community of the bereft was taking shelter beneath a concrete bridge. They waited out the heat and put out their few belongings to dry in the sun. A woman cooked a pot of rotten paddy rice.
Her name was Mayn. "My baby is sick," she explained. The two-month-old girl appeared severely malnourished, reminiscent of a skeleton, eyes and bones bulging, and in constant discomfort.
Mayn said she wanted to take her baby to the hospital, but it was destroyed by the cyclone along with its small reserve of drugs. All she could do was wait.
- (LA Times-Washington Post service)