For One Village, Recovery From Cyclone Is Slow and Brings New Debt

Editor’s note: Because the Myanmar government does not allow its citizens to speak to foreign reporters without permission, neither the village nor the people in this article are identified.

When Cyclone Nargis made landfall on the night of May 2, 2008, the tropical storm hit this village head-on. Any houses that might have survived the winds were smashed by the sea surge that rolled miles inland. As the waters rose around a Buddhist temple here, the senior monk ordered everyone inside and secured the wooden doors. Hundreds huddled and prayed that the concrete walls would hold.

“We were very lucky because the storm stopped just in time,” said a man laying the cement foundation for a new school. When finished, it will be the only other permanent structure here. Unlike lower-lying settlements, where so many drowned, this village lost just five people. “If it had been just a few more hours and the waters had risen higher,” said the masonry worker, “everyone would have died.”

In the days following the cyclone, the few sacks of rice stored in the temple were cooked and shared until supplies ran out. In this once self-sufficient village in the middle of the country’s rice bowl, most people had nothing left. Any hidden cash had been washed away. Cattle and pigs were dead. In the monsoon rains, survivors foraged for anything they could salvage.

As governments and relief agencies debated the terms of humanitarian aid delivery, Burmese troops fanned out into the delta, in Myanmar’s southernmost region. After a week, they finally made it to this village, said residents. But not with food or plastic sheeting. Soldiers were posted to prevent journalists and aid workers — who were barred from the delta — from reaching survivors. Monks who made it to the main road to seek help were sent back empty-handed.

From Brown to Green

One year later, bright-blue shelters provided by international donors dot the landscape, which has turned from fetid brown back to lush green. A few houses have been refashioned out of wood, bamboo, and woven palm leaves, but most residents still live in donated temporary housing. Villagers show off a fenced-in freshwater pond paid for by an Australian aid group. The new school will eventually replace tented classrooms.

Despite the lack of roads in this part of the delta, workers from Myanmar’s Red Cross Society move with ease among villages on long boats that ply the narrow waterways. Their boats part huge flocks of ducklings that were donated by international aid groups after most of the ones there previously drowned or were blown away.

The local Red Cross had a network of volunteers in the delta before the cyclone. Many started organizing aid and treating casualties within hours of the winds’ dying down. Working closely with the government, its staff members have pretty much unfettered access to the delta.

Once a month, Red Cross workers deliver sacks of rice supplied by the World Food Program. They train village volunteers in disaster management and good hygiene. A recent shipment included a donation of stuffed pink and orange hippos, which the children here cling to.

“No one from the government has ever been here,” said one of the village leaders. “We are hoping the government will help, but we are not expecting it. They did send us some sewing machines, but no one here knows how to sew.”

Cycle of Debt

This is clearly a village that is recovering. Children in donated school uniforms, in a tented classroom paid for by Unicef, shout out answers to their teachers’ questions. Boys play volleyball on a patch of raised, hard-packed ground along the river. The winter rice crop has been harvested. Women sit cross-legged, tossing rice in bamboo baskets to winnow the husks from the grain.

Yet images of a village that has returned to normal can be deceiving.

Saltwater from the storm surge severely damaged the rice paddies. The yield from the first planting after Cyclone Nargis was down by half.

Farmers here were given high-yield seeds and shared a donated tiller, but most still had to borrow money to cover the cost of fertilizers, pesticides, and labor. Even to harvest the rice pushed some deeper into debt. Now people are borrowing just to survive, said aid workers.

“Many farmers are not planting this season, because they can’t afford to,” said the village’s senior monk. “Seeds, the cost of pesticides, and diesel fuel to run the [irrigation] pumps are high. But rice prices right now are too low.”

The problems originate before Nargis.

One relief official based in Yangon, who asked that his name not be used for fear of angering the government, could not hide his bitterness. Villagers in the delta were already saddled with high-interest loans as a result of the government’s trying to squeeze more out of farmers, he said.

The delta typically produces two rice crops per year, he explained. But before the cyclone, when international rice prices were at a record high, the government “forced farmers into planting a third harvest,” he said. “They were forced to sell [to the government] at a price so low that they couldn’t make a profit. So farmers had a debt even before the cyclone.”

Subsistence Wages

Alarmed at a situation that could cripple families for years, several relief charities are offering villagers work in exchange for cash. Jobs building roads and digging wells pay a little less than $2 a day. They typically go to landless laborers and women who are now heads of households. But charity official acknowledge that such efforts are piecemeal at best.

In December the first official review by relief organizations and the Myanmar government noted that because the region is so reliant on rice production, until the paddies recover and farmers can afford to farm it will continue to depend upon emergency assistance.

No one knows how long that will be.

The United Nations has asked for nearly $700-million to pay for recovery efforts for three more years.

But a 19-year-old mother, living in one of the blue tents, rocking her infant in a hammock, knows it will take much longer than three years for her family to recover.

“We are so poor we don’t have any money to even begin to replace the house we lost,” she said. The family owns no land, so her husband is a day laborer. These days, of course, there is little work. They are forced to borrow to survive.

With a new house costing about $500 to build, the young woman said she had little hope of being able to move out of the tent anytime soon.

How long will it take to save that much money?

“Ten years,” she replied. “Maybe longer.”