View from the Tundra (Minneapolis)

About the same time I wrote my previous blog entry on Cyclone Nargis in Burma (Myanmar), I emailed Jim and Debbie Taylor at IDE.  It’s been several days, but they just got their internet back and replied to me (things in the capital city may be improving, but I’m sure the Irrawaddy Delta is in seriously bad shape, and may be worse after this upcoming new storm passes).  I thought I’d post this email from them in Burma. Note that I asked them for the best way to provide financial assistance, and I’ve highlighted their response to that question below:

[Side note: the picture that appears with this posting is one I took at Inle Lake in 2005. This was part of one of the longest and emptiest stretches of market I have ever seen. There must have been 50 vendors for every shopper in this market on the way to a crumbling temple. This man paints with his one appendage, and yet manages to produce works of art I couldn't touch. Amazing the spirit of the Burmese people.]
Dear Greg,

Thanks so much for writing to ask about us. That’s very thoughtful of you. And thanks for mentioning the people of Myanmar in your blog.

Here’s our latest update:

What a horrendous and surreal week it’s been. We’re finally getting our bearings and finding some time to respond to emails. (We also finally got internet service back a few days ago .)

It all started last Friday when we saw reports on the internet that a cyclone was brewing in the Bay of Bengal and might hit Yangon around midnight. At the office we told our staff about it and sent everyone home early that afternoon. Our power and phone went out about 11pm. Having never been in the direct path of a cyclone, we didn’t quite know what to expect. About midnight, the rains and winds started to pick up. With each passing hour, the winds became more violent; we started getting worried when our big front metal gate swung open, breaking the lock and coming off its hinges. Then the big, tall trees in our yard started to lean to the side. It was especially unnerving to see the heavy ceramic tiles start flying off our roof. By 4am, the howling winds were so strong, they pushed rainwater sideways, causing a river of water through every porch door, flooding both our upstairs and downstairs. The windows started to blow open by themselves, so we scurried around shutting them and latching them down. As we were madly trying to close one window downstairs, we watched a 60-foot tall, durian tree in our back yard become uprooted, keel over and crash to the ground.

The 120mph winds continued until noon the next day. We were up all night, and for those harrowing ten to twelve hours, we were tense and stressed out — thinking our roof was going to blow off any minute, or that the windows were going to burst and shatter. We never want to repeat that kind of night again.

Around noon it was still raining but the winds were finally dying down, Jim and Judson ventured out of the house and down our lane to inspect the damage. From the upstairs bedroom, I looked out and saw a barren horizon, with fallen trees in every direction around us. Jim and Judson came back about an hour later, completely bug-eyed after what they had seen. They had to hack through a jungle of downed electrical and phone cables, branches and climb over logs, just to get to the end of our lane to the main road. The main two-lane road, Inya Road, was impassable by car or bicycle. There were downed trees about every ten yards. Judson said, “I felt like I was in those apocalyptic movies - there was devastation everywhere, it was eerie and quiet, like it was the end of the world.”

We spent much of the day, connecting with neighbors and finding people walking in a daze on the now unrecognizable streets of our neighborhood. The phone lines were gone, the electricity was cut and we were running low on water from our well. There were fuel shortages and prices of rice and basic necessities doubled overnight. That night, we had a candle-light dinner and we all went to bed at 7:30pm (now we how rural families live every night.) We all were physically and emotionally exhausted from the cyclone and slept for 13 hours straight. It was such a relief to have a windless and calm night for a change.

Here’s the latest update since that fateful day of 2-3 May 2008:

· We had 20 trees down in our yard. We still don’t have electricity or water at our house. Our phone just came back on yesterday -for local calls only.

· Our office was heavily damaged in the cyclone. We had five big picture windows shatter . Inside, it looked like a tornado had ripped through; computers and monitors were scattered every which way and shreds of paper were everywhere, even stuck to walls like speckled wallpaper.

· We’ve now accounted for all of our staff. We were operating in those areas affected and were worried about them. Many of their homes were damaged but staff and their families are safe.

· We sent staff out to the affected areas to see how bad it was - there was not much on the news at that point. Within two days they began to come back with stories of utter devastation. Entire villages were wiped out and families traumatized with the loss of several family members. Many of you have probably seen the graphic footage on CNN of floating corpses in the river channels and in the rice fields. Yesterday our staff returned from the delta area and they are still seeing dead bodies - it seems there has been no effort to retrieve them. The death toll is now estimated (realistically) at over 150,000.

· We now have 100 staff deployed and have been working around the clock to get supplies out. We’re focusing on providing clean water supply and shelter to hard-hit villages. We were in a fortunate position to have an affordable and portable 200-gallon water bag we’ve developed with Stanford University product design students. We were planning to introduce this new product for irrigation to farmers, but now we’ve ramped up production and are making them for communal clean water supply. We will supply villages with our foot pumps if needed, along with Waterguard (purifier) from PSI, another international organization. We’re fortunate to be one of the few organizations already operating in the affected areas so we have networks and political space to work effectively.

Yesterday, Debbie went out for a day trip with Judson to visit some affected areas. We visited a village where half of the houses were flattened. We spoke with families who had nothing left, not even an extra set of dry clothes or a pot to cook with. We also met women and children who had become widows and orphans overnight - their husbands were fishermen who never returned from the sea.

The most heartbreaking thing in all of this is that the Burmese people do not expect any help and are extremely grateful for what little they get. [edit].  Our team passed out plastic sheeting for roofing to a poor family who had been taking shelter underneath a neighbor’s house. The mother of three children was so grateful to be able to have a roof over their heads and to be able to move back into their own home. With tears in her eyes, she told our staff, “I want to bow down and pay homage to you, to express my thanks for your help.” (A very traditional Burmese way of paying respect.) How humbling.

We feel we’re in a pretty unique position to help now so we’ve geared up to do as much relief and recovery as we can over the next few critical months. The monsoon season is fast approaching and we are in a race against time, both to provide shelter and to help farm families get their critical monsoon rice crop going.

If people would like to join us in helping families recover, you can send checks made payable to International Development Enterprises, and sent to IDE, Contact person: Zenia Tata, 10403 West Colfax, Suite 500, Lakewood, CO 80215. Please indicate on the check that the funds are designated for Myanmar. You can also give through the web at www.ideorg.org. contact person: Zenia Tata at ztata@ideorg.org. Donations will come directly to us in Myanmar.

Again, it has been a once-in-a-lifetime week. We haven’t had time to stop and reflect and let our emotions go. We feel a tremendous sense of loss but have had to keep going at a hectic pace, to prevent more loss of life. Sometimes, it’s hard to imagine more intolerable suffering or a more tragic fate for people who deserve so much more. Our staff have all rallied despite their own loss and our office has become a hive of activity and energy. We’ll write more later [edit].

Jim, Debbie and Judson