Yangon/Singapore - Many young women in Myanmar's (Burma's)
Irrawaddy delta region have stopped wearing their hair traditionally
long, word goes.
Too many of them died in the metre-high floods brought on by
Cyclone Nargis, because their hair got entangled in tree branches, or
were strangled by their own hair as it wrapped around their neck.
Whether that is true or not is hard to verify. But hundreds of
thousands were traumatised by the worst natural catastrophe the
country has ever seen.
More than 138,000 lives were lost during the cyclone in May, and
some 2.4 million people lost their belongings, while about 800,000
homes were destroyed.
The world community reacted with outrage over the heartlessness
of Myanmar's military regime, which delayed deployment of troops to
the affected area so they could instead conduct a highly criticized
public referendum on the country's constitution.
Thousands of foreign relief workers were stranded outside the
country's borders because the paranoid regime denied them entry
visas.
Now, six months after the disaster, life is improving all over the
delta.
The next rice harvest is due, families are able again to feed
themselves, and field work provides income opportunities.
'The situation is now under control,' said Chris Kaye, a
representative of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Yangon.
'While we still have to provide food for 740,000 people, we hope
to reduce this figure to about half after the upcoming harvest has
been brought in,' he added.
But relief aid is still lacking in some remote regions to this
day.
'Many families in remote areas of the Irrawaddy delta still only
live in badly repaired huts, and children are malnourished and
sick,' said Helga Stamm-Berg of the non-governmental relief
organization World Vision.
But in its hour of greatest need and largely cut off from foreign
aid, Myanmar's society has showed enormous selflessness, compassion
and resilience.
'It was an incredible solidarity. My neighbour sold his wife's
jewelry, bought drinking water and noodles with the money and simply
started distributing the goods,' recounted a woman in Yangon.
'A unique culture of solidarity emerged during the cyclone's
aftermath' agreed Kaye.
'People not only raised some money for the cyclone's survivors and
then moved on, but they deployed all their resources for weeks and
months,' he explained.
Only four long weeks after the disaster and only after numerous
appeals by the United Nations did the junta finally open the country
to large-scale foreign aid.
Since then, a plethora of foreign relief organizations has
started working in Myanmar.
They build schools and latrines, pump salt water out of
contaminated pools, educate farmers about new farming methods and
bring new working animals and livestock into the country.
Still, Kaye estimates that the impending rice harvest of some 8
million tons will be about one third smaller than the usual yield.
'Due to the disaster the rice paddies could only be planted four
to six weeks later than normal,' said Klaus Lohmann of Germany's
Welthungerhilfe (World Hunger Aid), who currently is in Myanmar
together with 60 co-workers.
Then the paddies were invaded by freshwater crabs who started
eating the young rice plants.
'The crabs come every year, but usually the plants are already
stronger and less vulnerable by that time,' he explained, adding
that in some areas up to one quarter of paddies were lost to crabs.
Vocal outrage against the delayed aid from the military
government has been heard nowhere.
'The cyclone was the best thing that could have happened to the
junta,' said a local journalist in Yangon.
'After Nargis nobody had time to become outraged, and today the
junta has consolidated its power more securely than ever before,' he
told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on condition of anonymity.
A former political prisoner even defended the ruling generals.
'US first lady Laura Bush called the disaster an opportunity for
a possible regime change, and then foreign warships appeared off
Myanmar's coast allegedly carrying relief goods. One really couldn't
blame the generals for becoming suspicious,' he said.
Some of the foreign aid workers in the country also speak with
respect for the junta.
'One thing became clear: The government is not a monolithic
block,' said one of them who often has to deal with high-ranking
officials about aid programmes.
'Some of them recognise that the country can profit from
cooperating with the international community. But between these
technocrats and the leading generals there still exists a concrete
wall several metres thick,' he admitted.
USA
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