Aung San Suu Kyi is accused of violating house arrest terms. The military junta says she harbored an American visitor.

Editor's Note: In 2004, Ani DiFranco traveled to Thailand and Burma where she visited refugee camps and met with dissidents struggling for freedom and democracy in Burma. She will speak to Anderson tonight about Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi who is under house arrest in Myanmar. A Missouri man is accused of swimming across a lake and sneaking into the home of the leader, according to a U.S. Embassy official.

From Ani Difranco's Website

On July 9, we visited "Dr. Cynthia's" medical clinic in the town of Mae Sot near the Thailand/Burma border. A Burmese woman named Cynthia Maung runs this medical clinic, which started from the back of a pick-up truck and has grown to cover several acres of land just outside of Mae Sot. Cynthia treats anyone who walks through the front-door, and people come from all around Burma and Thailand.

Read more about Ani's trip  (also knows as Burma) and see photos of her experience in Myanmar.

CNN

Officials in Myanmar say this self-portrait was found on John Yettaw's digital camera.

Three charges have been filed against a Missouri man who is accused of swimming across a lake and sneaking into the home of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi while she was under house arrest, a U.S. Embassy official said Friday.

A hearing for John Yettaw was held Friday at Insein Prison near Yangon, where Suu Kyi also is being held. The official said Yettaw is charged with immigration violations, trespassing into a restrictive area and contributing to Suu Kyi violating the conditions of her house arrest.

Yettaw's trial is scheduled for Monday.

On Thursday, a spokesman for Suu Kyi's political party said Yettaw was charged with two criminal counts: entering the country illegally and staying at a resident's home without government permission. Both charges would carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

It was not immediately known why there was a discrepancy in the charges.

Read more...

World Vision relief workers travel from village to village to distribute emergency supplies. In the months following the storm, there was often not enough land in the water-logged country to distribute supplies, so aid agencies would travel by boat.

Mia Marina
World Vision

The second day of May last year was just another day for coconut and rice farmers in Myanmar like U Myint Khine. They were building a road to improve access to a jetty, and sell crops for higher prices in bigger markets. That one small road was supposed to change their village forever.

But something else would change their village that day.

Cyclone Nargis, one of the country's deadliest natural disasters ever, tore up the coast of Myanmar and the lives of 2.4 million people, killing 84,000 and leaving another 50,000 missing. The timing was disastrous for a country dependent on agriculture.

The cyclone struck just before planting season, maximizing the damage. A million acres of rice paddy were inundated with salt water – 85% of seed stocks were wiped out and 2 million head of livestock were lost. Ponds, hatcheries and jetties were destroyed; fishing boats, nets and equipment were damaged.

That meant Nargis hit Myanmar with a double-whammy. Many fishermen and farmers were too busy rebuilding their lives after the storm to get out to sea or raise crops. And the rest of the country didn't have the food to eat or keep the economy going. Nearly a million people needed international food aid to get by.

The people who were hit directly, were hit hard. U Myint Khine says more than half of his village was out of work, and many lost family members - fathers, mothers, sisters, children. Many family breadwinners died, and afterward many others left their families behind and migrated north to look for work.

One year later, the coming crop season brings back some optimism. Farmers are preparing seeds and fertilizers and readying their fields for what they hope will be a harvest of more than enough food and plenty of livestock.

"We're coming now into the first full agricultural season since the cyclone," says Jeff Wright, emergency response manager for the nonprofit World Vision. "If the season is undisrupted and the crop is a good one, we could be seeing something of a return to 'normalcy' on that front."

World Vision is a Christian humanitarian charity organization that helps children, families, and their communities worldwide by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice. One of the programs we launched after the cyclone was "food for work" to help restart the road construction that U Myint Khine and his friends had begun before the storm. Typically, such programs provide a pre-determined amount of rice or other food staple to workers in exchange for their work rebuilding roads, bridges, and buildings in the communities hit by disaster like Nargis. The road will not only help the economy in U Myint Khine's village, but children will no longer have to wade chest-deep across the river every day to attend school.

"The 'food for work' program was aimed at helping the poorest of the poor," says Adino, World Vision's field coordinator in Myanmar. "In this case, daily wage earners who were unable to find work in the field or on fishing boats could participate in this program and provide for their families."

Today, farmers still depend on the weather. Food aid must be maintained and livelihoods must be restored in order to prevent malnutrition from jeopardizing the development of children across cyclone-affected areas.

But the "food for work" program ended in April, and U Myint Khine says the village hopes the new road will help change their village for good this year, since the cyclone had stopped the road and nearly everything else last year.

Find a photo gallery of the area here.

Editor's Note: Mia Marina is World Vision's emergency response support manager for ongoing recovery efforts in Myanmar. World Vision is a Christian humanitarian charity organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice.

Villagers begin their day before sunrise, waking up to catch fish to sell at the local market and feed their families. The majority of the population in Myanmar's Delta region is dependent on fishing for their survival.

World Vision relief workers travel from village to village to distribute emergency supplies. In the months following the storm, there was often not enough land in the water-logged country to distribute supplies, so aid agencies would travel by boat.

Ma Nge Ma, 40, lost her husband, three children, and everything they had saved for 15 years in Cyclone Nargis. Here, she fishes with her brother and her three surviving children to try to provide food for her family. World Vision provided boats and nets to help many families like Ma's earn a living.

Children, wearing the traditional tanaka face paint, sing together at a Child Friendly Space in Myanmar. World Vision set up 108 Child Friendly Spaces serving nearly 17,000 children throughout the cyclone-affected country. The spaces help children work through their fears after surviving a disaster like Cyclone Nargis.

Tarpaulins from World Vision are offloaded from a World Food Program helicopter in Myanmar. More than 80 percent of the buildings in the cyclone-affected Delta region sustained heavy damages.

First Lady Laura Bush visits Karen refugees in national costumes during her visit to Mae La refugee camp in Thailand's Mae Sot town, Thursday.

Dan Rivers
Bangkok Correspondent

It was never going to put the press pack in the best of moods. A start time of 4:45 is so early, it’s almost a late night out for many of us. But we dutifully turned up to have our bags sniffed by a bored looking German Shepherd whose tailed had been curiously cut off (Security risk may be? Danger of flying cups and saucers, if he wags it too much??). It was then off in a huge convoy of mini-buses, SUVs, limos and police cars. A brief glimpse for me as to what it would be like to be royalty, having every major road emptied of traffic, and lined by Thai policemen. Our plane to the border was slightly less regal though – a C130, with netting seats in the back for the press and legions of secret service guys. An hour later, we arrived in Mae Sot, a northern Thai border town, close to Myanmar formerly Burma, to a torrential downpour.

Speeding though the lush green jungle along a surprisingly good road for exactly 45 minutes before arriving at Mae La refugee camp. I say camp but it’s really a mini-town of more than 38,000 refugees, mostly ethnic Karen who’ve fled from fighting over the border. Houses are meticulously built from bamboo, with roofs of over-lapping leaves. Laura Bush and daughter Barbara, along with their coterie of advisers, security guards and press officials must have seemed like an alien invasion to these isolated people. I wonder how the Karen viewed the insane rush that accompanied the whole event, 3 minutes here, 4 minutes there, the press being almost dragged and pushed from photo op. to photo op.

The Karen certainly aren’t in a hurry – many have been stuck in this camp with no chance of leaving for more than 20 years. The camp has its own shops, schools and economy, but it is still effectively an open prison for these people, who desperately want to return to their homeland.

We managed to chat to one family who were lucky enough to have been given permission to be resettled in South Carolina – the contrast from the camp in the Thai jungle to the southern United States will be huge and daunting. Yet they seemed excited. After years here living in a bamboo hut with no electricity and no running water, surely any change would be considered good.

Laura Bush has taken the issue of Myanmar to her heart – critics of her husband’s policies though would argue US sanctions are not working, and are only serving to increase the poverty of ordinary people. But as rushed, and incongruous as the First Lady’s visit was, it did throw a spotlight on the terrible plight of these refugees.

There are eight other camps like Mae La – with more than 140 thousand people in total, left in a bureaucratic limbo – unable to settle properly in Thailand, unable to return home, many hoping and praying they will get their resettlement papers and have the chance to join the more than 4,000 other people from Mae La who’ve started over in the United States.

By nightfall, we were stowing away like fugitives.

Betty Nguyen
CNN Anchor

There are your tough assignments and then there are those that border on the impossible. Myanmar is one of the world’s most secretive nations for a reason.

Foreign journalists are banned from the country. Tourists are even finding it difficult to get a visa, especially Americans. So the odds were already stacked against us.

I can’t say how we got in the country but that was only half the battle. Devising a plan to get down to the area devastated by Cyclone Nargis in May would be much harder.

The junta government has sealed off all entrances to the Irrawaddy delta. Checkpoints are set up in nearly every town. For days we pored over maps and scouted out the safest routes.

Spinning with frustration, we finally came up with an idea. It was risky. If caught, we could be deported and the locals helping us faced prison time. We had to move quickly and carefully.

Read more...

CNN's Betty Nguyen reports on Myanmar farmers struggling to survive after cyclone Nargis. Even after the disaster, it's a hard road ahead as they try to salvage their crops.

Betty Nguyen brings us to Myanmar two months after cyclone Nargis hit. With the help of some locals, she was able to document the devastation and despair still evident. Watch her special report.

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.

How you can help...

A homeless Burmese boy drinks clean water at a monastery for a temporary shelter on the outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar.

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. She shares her experiences with us:

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

Two weeks ago, Myanmar was the lead story in every broadcast, the cover story of every newspaper.

But that's yesterday's news.

Since Cyclone Nargis hit the coast of this tiny country in Southeast Asia, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck China and violent attacks have spread throughout South Africa. And that's just this week's headlines.

I'll be honest. There was a day earlier this week when I couldn't take another news report about Myanmar. I couldn't tell one more story about a child becoming an orphan. I couldn't watch one more clip of people running after food being thrown from a truck because they were so desperate for a handful of rice...   All I wanted to do was escape to my quiet hotel room, order room service and read the latest celeb gossip. Did you know Angelina's pregnant with twins?

Compassion fatigue happens to all of us. It certainly happened to me this week. I find myself constant struggling to balance life with one foot in the developed world and one foot in the developing world. My natural inclination is to shut down, to ignore, and to disregard the struggles that I see around the world because compared to them, my life is so easy. But I can't do that. The people of Myanmar didn't choose where to be born, and neither did I. Because of the advantage I've been given, I must give that advantage to someone else. And so can you. 2.5 million people in Myanmar need you to remember them, long after their stories have been told in the news.

How you can help…

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.

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:

Children help out clearing debris from under the monastery May 10, 2008 in the village of Kyaun Da Min a few hours south of Pyapon, Myanmar.

Scott McGill
Save the Children.org
Asia Regional HIV/AIDS Advisor

Life is trying to return to normal here in Yangon. Although petrol lines still meander down the street and drivers stand around waiting them out (chatting and puffing on green cheroots), the rotting debris of fallen leaves and branches and other evidence of the damage inflicted on the town is slowly swept up and trucked off.

The Yangon streets — once dominated by canopies of leafy, gnarled elderly mango trees — have been transformed permanently. It is almost disorienting to suddenly turn a corner and see buildings once hidden suddenly stripped of all greenery. We are still nervously dodging fallen or dangling power cables propped up by hastily fashioned bamboo struts, hoping that everything is tied up and somehow restrung before someone does, in fact, turn the power on. Generators chug and hum across the city. Somehow, we still seem to be able to get a continuous supply of diesel (however, prices remain beyond the reach of most people who club together to pay $15 for a generator per the hour to pump water into their apartment block tanks).

We contributed $20 today as our share on our street to re-erect power poles and reconnect the spaghetti mess of snapped and tangled cables. Our house guard and his friends climbed up a ladder and reconnected our telephone line and, for a few days, we had crystal clear, uninterrupted international calls accessed on the first dialing, but this has frustratingly gone for some reason.

It does not seem that it has been just over a week since we were wading through waist-high water from our house to the next-door plot of land to check on a family of five living in a one-room cabin where, though raised off the ground, water was beginning to lap around the wooden door. Such was the inundation from a relentless seven hours of rains accompanying Cyclone Nargis.

We helped them wade back to the house to get some shelter, dry out and eat some hot food. We were the lucky house on our street: Despite a flayed and flooded garden and the odd toppled tree, our roof remained intact and our generator at the time it hit was fully stocked with diesel. We spent Saturday as the storm subsided setting up the laptop with Disney DVDs for kids next door and a fried rice and hot tea, “soup kitchen” feeding our neighbors who, in turn, helped us move the fallen trees so that we could get some access in and out of the house while mopping up water with as many towels as we could find. Somehow our satellite TV reception remained on throughout the storm apart from the odd flicker, and we have kept our eye on the steady stream of cable news reporting what developed so slowly from a breaking news item to a story of catastrophic proportions headlining day after day as the situation unfolded.

And that is kind of what I have been assigned to doing as we all in the Myanmar office assumed different roles from our “day jobs.” (I am usually the Asia Regional HIV/AIDS Adviser for Save the Children). I am trying to keep track of the media coverage from “over there” — ensuring that our daily situation updates about which affected areas we have reached, what we have managed to achieve despite all the obstacles (e.g., distribution of food and other commodities — is all fed through to our regional office in Bangkok, which in turn updates our head offices and the media. This is easier said than done with our Internet access still beyond reach, so I hop in one of our office cars down to the World Food Program office where they have not just high-speed Internet but wireless! A few other NGO staff members duck into the office and also hook on to send their own updates and reports, answer urgent demands for information as well as simply try and steal a few minutes to send quick notes to family and friends to assure them that they are OK and not to worry.

In addition I am also working with the team to try to get the stories out to the wider world — especially communicating the voices of children who are so often most overlooked but yet most affected in disasters. Our teams have been talking to children and their parents about what happened to them and their circumstances now as they conduct distributions. Initially in the Yangon townships, we heard very similar stories of extremely scared children describing their corrugated iron roof being torn off their homes, huddling together with mother and siblings as the seemingly endless rain and wind chilled them to the core and destroying what little they had, and flimsy houses eventually collapsing. However even though their homes are now overcrowded, increasingly squalid schools doubling as shelters dependent on handouts, their families are at least largely intact if not exactly hopeful about their future.

Now as our teams reach the Delta region we are reading stories and also seeing photos from our teams that reflect — if it were possible — an even darker and grimmer scenario. Children separated from their families, crowded shelters, injuries sustained from flying debris and fallen trees as well as infected wind burn from the sheer speed and slow lumbering movement of the cyclone system as it inched over the delta to slam into us in Yangon.

As one of the media contact points, the other day a young man was hurriedly pointed in my direction. He had come from the Delta region and had photos to show us. Slightly distracted by the progress report I was writing to our regional office — trying to make their deadline, describing outcomes of meetings and the latest twists and turns in our efforts to respond adequately and as quickly as possible — I took his camera and started scrolling through the images. The small digital screen did not help, but initially I thought I was looking at five children of various ages no more than 6 years old, sleeping in orderly rows. Sickened I suddenly realized that these images were in fact some of the youngest victims of Nargis. Up to that point I think I had been keeping the thought of what could have happened to those out in the Delta as the days passed far from my mind, focusing on what we were doing from our office in Yangon. But this image brought it all joltingly clear and the images stayed with me all weekend.

Other photos came in today. Finally shots of our fantastic national staff who have been quietly working in such a skilfull way with local authorities, communities. They are ingeniously hiring boats, procuring rice from local suppliers, working through the night to get to stricken isolated areas. These pictures do not show them center frame, magnanimously handing out food and other essentials to grateful recipients — rather they show them sitting in small groups discussing with the local elders, senior monks and other community leaders, engaging those most affected and most knowledgeable, asking what they need and getting them to guide our efforts as to what is required, in what quantities and where. Planning, coordinating, and by no means undermining their authority, experience and leadership, but working together. And with that I need to head home and eat before the generator is retired for the night.

How you can help...

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 and is currently helping with aid for the victims of Myanmar. She shares her experiences here:

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

I guess when you work in disaster relief, it always seems like the world is ending. Moving from one disaster to the next leaves little room to pay attention to the latest news back home.

First, a cyclone hit Myanmar and left tens of thousands of people dead – and countless more missing.

Children became orphans, fathers lost their sons, grandmothers became parents to their grandchildren. If that wasn't enough, two days ago, an earthquake hit China, and the rising death toll is now competing with the number of dead in Myanmar.

Add to all of that the recent weather reports about a tropical storm developing off the coast of Myanmar with the potential for a cyclone to form within the next 24 hours.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Yesterday, the World Vision office in Bangkok had a power outage – no email, no land lines, no air conditioning, no lights. Can anything else happen here?

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Editor’s note: World Vision is a Christian-based humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide. Some of the aid workers dispatched to the region share their experiences helping the victims of the Myanmar Cyclone. Because of the inherent danger in Myanmar, World Vision is witholding their names.

From World Vision aid worker
www.worldvision.org

"I've met people who walked for days to get to Yangon from the Delta. They told stories of sleeping on the roadside, of bloated corpses floating on swollen rivers and of bodies strewn across the road. It had been days since they’ve had clean water to drink...

The travelers on foot told me about a 12-foot tidal wave that wiped out an entire village after hours of intense wind and rain...Disaster preparedness would have saved lives. World Vision deployed staff members to northern communities where the cyclone was first predicted to make landfall.

We were working with communities to prepare them for strong winds and heavy rain. Then the storm suddenly changed directions and headed south...

The people in this area had to escape by sea in small boats. I am told many drowned, unable to move through the violent waves fast enough...Many of us did not prepare our selves for the possibility that this storm could ruin our homes and steal innocent lives...The shock of losing loved ones, crops, livestock and homes can be deep and lasting.

I wonder if this will make people afraid to stay, afraid to sit with the ghosts of their loved ones and the fear that this might someday happen again."

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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:

Waiting to receive aid

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

Last Wednesday morning began with a 7:15 a.m. wake up call and the question – "How quickly can you get on a plane out of JFK to Bangkok?" I pulled my suitcase out of the closet, grabbed my passport, and started throwing some clothes into my bag. Jeans, boots, t-shirts, granola bars.

Within an hour, my boss called back. My ticket had been booked – with no return date – for the next flight leaving for Bangkok. I would be meeting up with a team of communications staff from around the world – Laos, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada – to help coordinate World Vision's media response to the cyclone in Myanmar.

17 hours later, I found myself in the middle of Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, exhausted but eager to get started. I had traveled to Bangkok two years ago for vacation, but I never thought I would get the chance to return – and certainly not under these circumstances. Our office, on the 13th floor of a downtown high-rise, has a wall of windows that overlook the city. The sun would set and rise again before I got to sleep that first day.

In my first three days in Bangkok, I slept just 9 hours – and worked 63 hours. Tonight, I'm hoping to get at least 6 before coming back to work. The work is constant and draining – but exhilarating, too. From the moment I landed, I felt like I had been made for this job. My background as a journalist and my interest in humanitarian work had led me to World Vision, and World Vision led me to Bangkok. I know I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

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Kay Jones
360° Editorial Producer

I’ve been speaking with several aid groups about the relief efforts (or lack of right now) in Myanmar. Here’s the latest info from AmeriCares:

"A plane holding 15 tons of emergency medical supplies is loaded and ready to take off from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport as soon as it receives clearance to land in Myanmar. AmeriCares – a nonprofit international relief organization – is sending the aid to help bring relief and comfort to the victims of Cyclone Nargis. The shipment contains medicines such as antibiotics, analgesics, ointments and multivitamins as well as medical equipment and supplies to treat the immediate needs of those injured and to help prevent the anticipated spread of illness and disease throughout the region."

Hopefully, with word of a US cargo plane being allowed to bring aid into the country, the governing military junta in Myanmar will be more open to other aid groups. We’ll keep on it and keep you updated here and on 360°.

If you’d like to help, you can check out Impact Your World at CNN.com.

These are some of the reports coming in to CNN from the victims in Myanmar:

"All people I saw are crying so much and searching for the bodies of loved ones. There is bad smell from the dead bodies on the way we came. There are bodies where they have not yet searched. We found about 40 dead bodies on this way. A group of cows and buffalos are among victims. Everywhere... In the bushes, and in the streams. Everywhere..."

"The tide came up. Trees fell on people. There are many dead bodies lying under trees. Now many people do not have home to live in. I found so many dead bodies on the way, and so many animals that were terribly killed. A large group in each location. Not just children, also adults, elderly ones, all. Only 6 are left alive in the entire village.""The tide comes up with the storm. So people came out from their homes and tried to sleep on the road. I think there may be more than 1,000 people sleeping on the road. No homes are left. People are now searching for the bodies of their family members. Many families lost love ones, 3, 5, et cetera. We are so lucky that we survived. We left all our property and brought nothing with us when escaped. We escaped at night."

Many of you have written to us about your desire to help the victims and frustration because of the junta's resistance to aid.  Today one of our editorial producers at AC360° got this note from UNICEF:

"A killer cyclone has struck Myanmar...and eight million children need medicine, food, clean water and shelter.  These kids need our help now. UNICEF is there, delivering emergency supplies and racing to save children's lives and protect them from the chaos and destruction left by the storm.   Please...let's all stop what we are doing and help.  We can save the children of Myanmar.  Go to www.unicefusa.org and make a donation today.  Thank you."

You can also go to this CNN.com page for a list of other organizations providing aid in Myanmar and other ways you can help.