A road construction crew in Myanmar adds new surface to a highway north of Yangoon.

Naida Pasion
Director Of Programs
Save the Children

It’s been 24 days since Cyclone Nargis wrought havoc across the Irrawaddy Delta and Yangon in Myanmar. Since the day we mounted our response to the cyclone, we have kept track of our progress, expressed in numbers of people reached, the townships and villages we covered, and the aid we provided.

Each day, as we consolidate reports from our various relief teams providing assistance in the Irrawaddy and Yangon, the question always at the forefront is: How many people have we reached? Every time I look at the figure at the bottom of our report that notes “population covered” I always feel triumphant. It’s like winning an election, consistently increasing our lead against hunger, disease and homelessness as we go deeper into unreached areas in the Irrawaddy Delta as well as in Yangon.

Today, we have reached a milestone: We passed the 200,000 mark in our coverage. We have reached 209,000 men, women and children — 20 times the number on the first day, 20% of the estimated 1 million people helped by local and international NGOs. We have delivered 628,000 kilograms of rice, 67,000 packets of oral rehydration solution, 136,000 yards of tarpaulin, among other items, across 17 townships in Yangon and Irrawaddy Delta. And this is just a partial report from the field.

In Yangon where markets are working, we provided cash amounting to 2,000 Kyats, equivalent to $1.80 per family per day, in lieu of food. This is less than the price of a café latte at a Starbucks in Bangkok. (There are no multinational fast food chains in Yangon, and Bangkok is the nearest metropolis, just an hour’s airplane ride away.) The cash allows families greater latitude to make choices: “We just need some amount for food for a few days, and for bus fare so we can go to the city and work..” This from a man whose house had been completely flattened by the cyclone. A carpenter who lost his tools asked for a hammer ($2.50) and a hand saw ($6.20). He said he would be sure to find a job with all the rebuilding going on.

Behind the numbers, there are stories of great courage, patience and determination. It took our team from Yangon nearly four days to reach Haingyi Gyun and Pyin Khayaing islands in the southeastern part of Myanmar by truck and by boat. Some of the team were themselves victims of the cyclone: Their homes were damaged, they had no water and electricity. But there was no question that they wanted to head to the islands. As of today, we have reached 47,000 there, and the numbers are increasing as I write.

Our office building was not spared by the calamity. Two of our overhead water tanks were blown. Our entire third floor was wet, so we all huddled on the first floor (our offices occupy two floors in the building), working two to three on a table or hunched on the floor amid sacks of rice and rolls of tarpaulin. The cramped working space magnified the excitement palpable among the staff and the volunteers: Yes, we are proud to be part of the response. Yes, we will go where we are needed. And yes, we’re ready to leave NOW.

Each of us in the organization morphed into the persona needed to respond to the emergency: our regional HIV/AIDS adviser transformed into an expert communications/media coordinator; program managers became agile relief logisticians and distributors; artists became adept cartographers as they mapped townships and villages reached or yet to be reached by our relief teams. I have reinvented myself into a statistician of sorts, analyzing average numbers of people reached per day in relief distribution (8,600 and increasing); number of family shelters that can be built from our cumulative distribution of plastic sheeting (13,600 and counting); average number of children under 5 years old covered per day by food and non-food items distribution (1,032 and increasing).

Of course, we are ambitious. We aim to double our coverage. We know we can only do this if we can operate on full capacity, with a team of national and international staff reaching those unreached or underserved villages. We’re ready. We’re waiting at the threshold. Most of our “cavalry” is here or on their way.

With more support coming, I am excited to have another opportunity to reinvent myself. Someone else will now be watching the numbers, vicariously experiencing the adrenaline rush, the fulfillment that comes out of watching a child’s eyes light up because help has arrived. For a change, I will be out there helping to make it happen.

People displaced by Cyclone Nargis by their tents in the Kyondah village, Myanmar

Editor's note: Save the Children is the leading independent organization creating lasting change for children in need in the United States and around the world. Scott McGill works for the organization and is currently helping with aid for the victims of Myanmar. He shares his experiences here:

Scott McGill
SavetheChildren.org
Asia Regional HIV/AIDS Adviser

It was a very good day for two major reasons here in Yangon. A good day, despite it being nearly three weeks since Cyclone Nargis changed life forever for so many in this corner of Myanmar and despite the deadly secondary consequences accruing for over 2 million people as a second disaster begins to reveal itself.

The first reason is that finally help has arrived. I am not referring to the intermittent air shipments arriving on the single runway at Yangon’s Mingladon Airport over the past few days, bringing the most basic commodities for those struggling to survive in rapidly deteriorating conditions in the Irrawaddy Delta region. Although, of course, the food, tarpaulin, medical supplies, construction materials, water purifiers and, equally important, clothing arriving are almost literally manna from heaven.

Thunderstorms have continued to roll in over the Delta areas. Survivors — even where they have been fortunate enough to get hold of a piece of tarpaulin to fashion a shelter — are cold and wet. The ground is sodden, cold and damp. Too often survivors were left literally with the clothes they were running in as they frantically tried to escape to higher ground or climb a tree to somehow get above the near 25-foot storm surges and flash floods. Or to simply stand where they were, valiantly holding their children on shoulders or even above their heads for seven hours as the water lapped around adult necks and faces.

Some survivors have talked of their desperate shame in being left entirely naked by the force of the water tearing off their shirts, dresses and lungyi (a long skirt-like sarong almost universally worn by both men and women). Such public humiliation and nakedness for most Burmese would be a fate worse than death in terms of their culture norms. For children — warm, dry, adequate clothing as the country enters six months of monsoon is absolutely critical to their survival.

Over the last week, the help that finally arrived for us in our main office in Yangon has come in the shape of our expert Disaster Response Team, pulled from various parts of the world to assist those of us who have been doing the best we can with limited staff and quite limited experience — including me, climbing my own almost vertical disaster-response learning curve. These colleagues had been with us in spirit and had been supporting us by telephone and occasional e-mail contact (when the Internet sputtered back to life) – but had been frustratingly physically distanced from us as they worked to get visas. They are the experts, come to take up the reins from those of us previously unfamiliar with the mechanics and protocols of a response to a disaster of such size and scale. They have been a welcome invasion, sweeping into the office, rapidly setting up equipment, coolly making methodical assessments of the situation, setting up a makeshift but highly efficient disaster response centre. Specialists in child protection, education in emergency, nutrition, health and those staff who know exactly how to logistically get what we need in, to where it is needed and in what exact quantities. They are familiar with emergency situations and know precisely what to do.

Of course we were all extremely pleased to see them — the original team is beginning to get tired out, and the response we have been engaged in now needs to be carried out more systematically in order to massively scale up our response as well as keep it going it over the next 6, 12 and 24 months. Full recovery is clearly going to require such a sustained trajectory.

A couple of days afterwards, I took the first few hours off since Nargis hit. Simply going to the store, ducking into the barber’s chair and getting home before dark were treats I never imagined would mean so much. Ultimately many of us will be handing over our tasks to these specialist teams and going back to our original programs — knowing we did our very best and that the response is in safe hands and that even more people will be reached and given what they so urgently need.

Oh yes – I had a second reason for it being a good day. The electrical power came back to the house. Forgetting my “green” ambitions for a short while, I took great delight in flicking on as many lights as there were at hand and enjoying as hot and as long a shower as I could manage. Somehow it felt a lot like something close to normal had returned, and I felt a little lighter. And a lot cleaner too.

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Victims of Cyclone Nargis rush to get first in line to receive donated goods from a local donor at a monastery outside the capital of Yangon, Myanmar on Monday May 19, 2008.

Editor’s note: World Vision is a Christian-based humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide. Laura Cusumano Blank works for the organization. Here is how she found out she would be traveling to the region to help the victims:

Laura Cusumano Blank
World Vision emergency communications officer
www.worldvision.org

I just hung up the phone with Thai Airways. Almost two weeks to the day that I got the "how quickly can you get to Bangkok?" wake-up call, I'm heading back to New York City. It feels like the last time I saw my husband, my apartment, and my favorite corner coffee shop must have been two months ago, but it's only been two weeks.

It's hard to leave this post feeling like there is so much work left to be done in Myanmar. I guess that's the challenge of being a communicator. My job ends when the real work on the ground begins. By then, the story has most likely died away, and yet another emergency has popped up in yet another forgotten corner of the world.

At this time next year, will people still be asking me how to pronounce the name of this country? (For the record, it's MEE-ann-mar). Will they remember how many people were affected by this storm? (At last count, close to 2.5 million). What about the tens of thousands of children who were left orphaned? Where will they be in a year? Who will take care of them?

The tears haven't come yet, but I know they will. I wonder when it will happen? Talking about newly orphaned children, ever growing death counts, and the migrating homeless from the delta region has morbidly become second nature to me. But how can I possibly go home without being moved by the people who are left behind? I'm sure the tears will come when I least expect it – when I'm telling a joke, drinking my corner coffee shop latte, reading a book.

But when they do come, I won't hold back. Because I know that I've suffered little compared to the suffering of the people of Myanmar. And I know that I'd be willing to do this all over again if it meant having the opportunity to be a voice for those who've lost theirs. Give me one more chance to advocate on behalf of the poor, the suffering, the weak, the impoverished, and I'll do this all over again. Even if it means another 7am wake-up call.

Read Laura's post when she arrived in Myanmar. LINK

Victims of Cyclone Nargis smile as they receive donated goods from a local donor at a monastery outside the capital of Yangon, Myanmar on Monday May 19, 2008.

Editor's note: Save the Children is the leading independent organization creating lasting change for children in need in the United States and around the world. Scott McGill works for the organization and is currently helping with aid for the victims of Myanmar. He shares his experiences here:

Scott McGill
SavetheChildren.org
Asia Regional HIV/AIDS Adviser

Working in a disaster, you need to recalibrate your expectations and loosen up your locus of control — and do it fast if you are to healthily adapt to existing within certain limitations, including handling quite a few "no's".  But these past few days it has been much harder.

Managing the frustration of dealing with obstacles, tolerating the helplessness, telling yourself you are doing as much as you can while being painfully aware that there is so much more to be done.  I see it in the faces of my colleagues every day.  When I told some of them what my blog would be about this evening, they nodded in understanding and with similar tired but encouraging smiles.

Then as I sat down to write, I felt that it was much more pressing for me to talk about the people here facing even greater obstacles and challenge and somehow ingeniously rising above them.  For absolutely certain, this catastrophe is a very tall order in resilience and recovery.  Cyclone Nargis has eviscerated a densely populated part of the country and left barely told horror, vast swathes of misery and a depressingly long trajectory for recovery, which we are all in the development and aid community are only just beginning to come to grips with.

Land that may not be arable for many planting seasons to come, deadly fouled water sources, close-knit fishing villages wrenched apart, sole survivors of extended families of 30 people.  I cannot begin to imagine how survivors and their communities even begin to put it back together.

But if my local colleagues are anything to go by, then there is hope.  Throughout this whole response — despite their own homes being damaged by the storm here in Yangon; their worries about families and friends; their challenges with getting enough power to pump water into tanks, with navigating spiraling prices for simply the basics, and with getting to work despite (a) massive hikes in transport costs, (b) roads jammed with fallen trees and debris — they have been dedicated to accepting only a “Yes.”

Yes, we can corral trucks and drivers, boats and motorbikes to get the distributions out to where they are needed. Yes, we can go into affected townships, partner effectively and respectfully with their community leaders, locate the suppliers, buy up as much as we can and get that to those who need it most.  Yes, we can ensure children separated from their families are kept safe and that, in such turmoil, keep all children protected from any further harm and help them to begin recovering from the trauma of the last week.

There is so much being done and the work has only begun.  Yes, my local colleagues may be “long-suffering,” as so much of the media routinely describes them, but they are so much more than that.  I am learning from them where to channel that anger and those frustrations and keep focused on what I can do and not on what others tell me I cannot.