3rd June – Accounts from Inside

On June 1, our group chose to go to two villages around the Deydaye` township . The amount of funding we used was over 600,000 Ks (600 US $) plus material aids such as clothes, snacks, notebooks and stationery. We received 330,000 Ks from NICA and the rest of the money came from individual donors inside Burma. Over 200,000 Ks were used to buy seven bags of rice and another 200,000 went for beans and a few snack boxes for children. Also, we spent 130,000 Ks to buy medications since we had a volunteer doctor to treat the sick victims. The material aids we received include ten bags of rice, two hundred dozens of notebooks, 800 pencils, hundreds of clothes, two water guard bottles and snacks for children.

As we wanted to donate the stationery to the elementary school in Mayan village at Kun-Chan-Kone where we went on May 27, it was our stop-over on the way to Deydaye. It took us over two hours to reach Mayan village. As we had seen on our last visit, except two or three lines of unoccupied blue tents , we still did not see any government or UN aid efforts in the villages on the way to and around Kun-Chan-Kone, which is one of the hardest-hit areas. With the din of the hammer blaring into the air, houses are still being repaired. Old monasteries turned into wreckage were still on the ground; broken tree branches and twisted corrugated iron sheets still scattered almost everywhere. As it was Sunday, we also saw many other individual donor groups, but no obvious UN or government aids we often heard on radio.

At 11:00 a.m. we reached the Mayan village. The elementary school had still no roof and the broken bricks were still on the floor. We could not understand why the government announced that the schools were reopened. But the new academic year has started for Mayan children who have no school to go to. Our group donated notebooks, pencils and snacks for those children. And our volunteer doctor did some medical check-up for the villagers and distributed medicines. Then, we left the village. On our way, the dead body we saw last time was still in the field. Within a ten-minute-walk from the dead man we saw, a Buddhist religious ceremony was taking place for the forty villagers killed in the cyclone.

According to the official data, the death toll is 78,000 and over 50000 are still missing. Everyone knows that it is not accurate. “Since there is no systematic and effective relief effort by the government or UN or NGOs, there can be no accurate data on the dead or the missing,” said Ashin Nyanissara in his interview with RFA.

It took us another hour to drive to Deydaye`, the destination of our trip. As we wished to go to villages few donors go, we decided to go to the Yaybuwa located along the Irrawaddy river by boat. It is a village of 270 households. Based on the household list we got, we could systematically distribute rice, beans and clothes. And our volunteer doctor gave medical treatment to the villagers. Because we still had more rice and beans though the distribution was finished, we decided to go a village on the other side of the bank. Huge clouds were hanging overhead; the rain was on its way. The darkening sky and huge swath of river was threatening us, but we successfully crossed the river and reached a tiny village called “Kyaung Galay.. There ,we donated the remaining materials to the villagers. To our sorrow, we found that Kyaungalay was much poorer and in greater need of help than Yaybuwa where much of the distribution was done. But in neither village, no effective government or UN aid was seen.

Nyi Zay Min