MYANMAR: Doing good in the Ayeyarwady River Delta

Photo: IRIN

Wading barefoot through thigh-high water

AYEYARWADY DELTA, 8 September 2009 (IRIN) - Cyclone Nargis redrew the coastline of Myanmar in May 2008, wiping out hundreds of villages and ruining thousands of lives. Yet it also opened up a space for local NGOs and private initiatives to provide desperately needed help when the military rulers of Myanmar - highly suspicious of foreign aid and NGOs - were slow to grant outsiders permission to deliver assistance. IRIN spent two days in the Ayeyarwady River Delta with one such home-grown initiative.

Day 1:

It is hot and humid. Maung Sein, once a school drop-out, now a successful businessman in Yangon, former capital of Myanmar (Burma), has been wading barefoot through thigh-high water in the flooded paddy fields for almost an hour.

The soft mud underfoot is often ankle deep. Could that something strange in the murky water be a crab, a harmless fish, or perhaps a snake? "Isn't this very interesting?" Maung Sein says, grinning as he turns around now and again to encourage the band of volunteers following him.

They are here to help the residents of Boe Ba Gone and Thai Kone build a connecting road between the two villages as part of a UN World Food Programme (WFP) food-for-work project. The road is not finished yet, so everyone still has to go through the paddy fields.

Photo: IRIN

Maung Sein, the founder of the Noble Compassionate Volunteer Group demonstrates how to use a tarpaulin to collect rain water

Maung Sein breaks into a Burmese version of the American folk song, "Coming 'Round the Mountain", to keep spirits up. "We used to do this from morning to night when we were helping people after [Cyclone] Nargis," he grins, struggling his way through the slush.

He formed the Noble Compassionate Volunteer Group (NCV) just days after Cyclone Nargis struck the Ayeyarwady and Yangon divisions of southern Myanmar on 2 and 3 May 2008; nearly 140,000 people were declared dead or missing.

"When I saw all those people who had lost their homes, their families - I knew I had to help them," he says. There was no aid coming in, so he raided his own coffers and raised money from private and business donors in Myanmar.

NCV started with two volunteers but now has over a hundred; it is one of the largest local NGOs and has the biggest reach in the delta. "Besides the 100-odd volunteers we also have five to seven volunteers in each village," he says.

The volunteers - mostly 20-something - offer a huge variety of skills: there are farmers, engineers, film production assistants and young graduates, united by their willingness to help.

They have built helipads for aid choppers to land amid the paddy fields, houses and toilets, roads and wells - the cyclone destroyed almost all the infrastructure, and then the salt water carried by the storm surge made the water in many open sources undrinkable.

"When I saw the scale of devastation I just wanted to do something; I wanted to be able to tell my grandchildren one day that I was there and I helped," says Thet Thet Zaw, a former film production assistant.

Villagers wave and shout greetings as they recognize the approaching blue NCV T-shirts. They have an animated discussion with the volunteers about the road - the completed section has made it easier for them to reach the local market and school children no longer have to plod through the paddy fields.

The food they receive from WFP for their work is "very welcome", one villager says. It is rice-planting season and everyone looks forward to harvesting the staple food.

Wading becomes more arduous as the water becomes deeper and turns into a stream. Soaking, everyone piles into a traditional boat that takes them back to the Bogale River, part of the Ayeyarwady River system.

We stop at a monastery for the night. After a quick bowl of rice and fish for dinner, Maung Sein discusses the day.

"I am trying to get them [volunteers] to question and express their opinion," he says. The discussion lasts until midnight. Everyone at last falls asleep on mats spread out on the monastery floor while mosquitoes buzz around; frogs hop across the mats during the night.

Photo: Myanmar Information Management Unit

Map of the delta showing two of the villages that IRIN visited with NCV

Day 2:

Everyone is up at 5 a.m. The sleeping mats are rolled up, mosquito nets are squeezed into bags. Outside over an open fire two volunteers are mixing fried eggs into a big pan of rice for breakfast. Rainwater collected in a container allows everyone to have a quick wash in the bathing tent.

After a short briefing on the day's programme and breakfast, the volunteers board two boats headed for Gaw Du, the southernmost village in the delta, on the shore of the Andaman Sea.

The team stops at two more villages on the way to review food aid distribution and check on a new well they have dug before making another trek through more paddy fields. Maung Sein demonstrates how to use a tarpaulin to collect rain water.

In the next village the volunteers learn that some beneficiaries of the WFP feeding programme have been selling their identity cards. In a meeting Maung Sein pleads with them, "The donors love you and have sent this food only for you - don't abuse that love." Some of the villagers look embarrassed.

The villagers of Gaw Du are mostly poor fishermen. The children have recognised the T-shirts and line up near the jetty, waving wildly in welcome because Maung Sein always plays with them on the beach.

Everyone dashes to the beach. Maung Sein challenges the children to see "who can stand the longest on one foot". The children respond eagerly. Many of them saw hundreds of bodies washed up on the shore after Nargis. One little girl says she still has nightmares; none of them have had counselling.

Some volunteers use the time to get to know the parents and discuss what they need. The NCV has distributed fishing nets and containers for collecting rainwater to almost all the households.

Nargis destroyed most of the tree cover in the village, which lies right on the edge of the delta, leaving it exposed to the sea and vulnerable to the wind and water in the Bay of Bengal. "We have to build a cyclone shelter here - the people have nowhere to run to when the next cyclone comes," says Maung Sein. "That is my next project."

He returns to Yangon now and then to keep an eye on his business, which covers some of the operational costs of the NGO. But "home" is now Bogale, the main town in the delta. "My life at the moment is for the beneficiaries."

Do the volunteers miss their homes, jobs and friends? "This work gives me lot of satisfaction," says May Thinn Thinn Soe, 25, a graduate from the Yangon Institute of Economics, one of the first volunteers to join NCV.

"After I saw the destruction caused by Nargis, I didn't really care about anything any more - I just hope one day my parents will understand."

Navigating a way back to Bogale through the fishing nets spread out for the night is tricky, we stop at another monastery for the night.

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