International Save the Children Alliance
Staff Diary from Myanmar
Aki, Director of Programme Support and Communications, Save the Children in Myanmar
(7 May 2008) I am one of the staff in Myanmar. I live in Yangon, right in the middle of the town. On Friday night (3 May) around 10pm, the storm started. Around the middle of the storm on that night, I lost one of my windows. The cyclone storm ended around 2 pm on Saturday (4 May).
By the end of it, no one could make a connection through landline or mobile phones. I looked out my house. I saw trees and telephone or electricity poles falling on the street.
Before the cyclone came, we-our staff both local and expatriate--knew about it. But we didn't expect it to be this severe. I heard that some local people stocked up some food and essential items like drinking waters and cooking oil. I had some food stocks left at my house but didn't really stock anything before the cyclone.
After the storm, local people started coming out of their houses little by little-- checking their houses, surroundings and their neighbours. If they were not busy fixing their own houses, they were busy helping their neighbours covering the house roof, taking trees out of the yard or shredding waters away from the house. As for children, I didn't see them coming out of the affected house that much right after the storm. However, I saw some of them still playing on the street near their house.
Where I live is in the heart of the city. It has been averagely damaged comparing to the most damaged area like the delta --- usually by car 4 - 5 hours or about 250 km away from Yangon.
Save the Children has the field office in Pathein which is the Ayeyarwady Delta. The south of Pathein is the most affected area because it is located just right next to the sea where the cyclone first got in Myanmar. Normally we can go there by car. Now it is getting really difficult to go there. We need to use boat and truck to reach there. It can take up almost a day or 10 hours.
Save the Children started doing the need assessment in three of our project areas in Yangon. Up until 7 May, we covered up to 50,000 people in those three townships. We provided cash, food ingredients likerice, beans, oil, salts and non-food items like plastic sheets, buckets, water purifying tablets.
We are extending our need assessment to one more township in Yangon tomorrow (8 May).
We already sent distribution materials off today by trucks to the Delta area. Within the items, there are ORS (oral rehydrating salt) as we foresee the possible diarrhea in children and people soon. So it's good to distribute it to avoid preventable death or severe illness among them.
Children are very the most vulnerable in the emergency situation like this. They have lost their normal way of life. They have lost their homes and everything they had.
I heard that from Burmese staff members who went out from distribution that children now lack clean water and food. A 9-year old boy said to our staff, ‘Can I have your clean shirt?'
Difficuties
We want to reach out as much as possible. We want to make sure that we give good help to affected children. Meanwhile, it is difficult to reach out as many as we want because we want to make sure that the help we are giving is realistic to each affected family or children.
Logistics
The distribution items are limited within the country now. We are looking for external resource urgently.
Last but not least, children in Myanmar desperately need assistance from us and from people outside. We tend to overlook their importance while we were busy trying to establish back the life of the affected people or town. The unchanging fact is affected children in Myanmar need our attention to help them now.
How you can help
Learn more about our response in Myanmar and how you can help.