More than five weeks after Cyclone Nargis, the anguish of the Ayeyarwady delta is overwhelming. Long after the bodies have gone from the landscape, homes have been rebuilt, livelihoods restored, and the physical wounds have healed, emotional ones will remain.
The little boy sat alone in a corner of the monastery. His eyes were focused on the ground. He said nothing, unaware of the hubbub around him, locked into a world of his own.
Sandar Aungr, a 28-year-old Myanmar Red Cross volunteer, was scanning a crowd of cyclone survivors who had arrived in the town of Maubin. Some had been directed to the monastery and, as they settled down, she looked for people whose needs were most urgent.
“What’s your name?” she said as she knelt beside him. “Where are you from? Is anybody with you?”
He looked up. “Don’t remember,” he mumbled. “Don’t know.”
She held him in her arms and he started to cry. Sandar Aungr cried with him. He did not need to tell her his story. She had read it in his eyes.
“I’ll stay with you,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
More than five weeks after Cyclone Nargis, the anguish of the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) delta is overwhelming. Long after the bodies have gone from the landscape, homes have been rebuilt, livelihoods restored, and the physical wounds have healed, emotional ones will remain. The harm may be less visible but it is no less real for that, and the pain will never ease for many. The best they will do is learn to cope with it.
For the boy with no name, coping may be a long journey. What happened to him, what he saw, he does not wish to remember. Perhaps his parents survived, perhaps brothers and sisters did, but his eyes suggest that they were swept away by the sea surge that came with the cyclone. Efforts will be made to find out. In the meantime, Sandar Aungr works to bring him out of his nightmare.
She calls him Thar-nge, which roughly translated means My Little One. She hugs him a lot, shows him love and care, and asks other children to come over. Sometimes they do and he joins them in play. She is there in the evening to put him to bed.
He talks to her now, but only to her, and when her work takes her elsewhere he goes back to his corner.
The boy’s story, and those of countless others now emerging in the delta, reflect enormous need for emotional support, and show why the Red Cross Red Crescent systematically integrates it into relief operations today. Having someone to turn to - someone who will listen, share the grief and offer hope - is of immense importance to disaster survivors. Early and adequate psychosocial support – in relief delivery as well as in structured programmes – can help affected people cope better and prevent distress from developing into more serious conditions.
It isn’t just the young who are especially vulnerable. Sandar Aungr is helping another anonymous survivor - a woman, perhaps in her seventies, who is paralyzed down one side and has lost her power of speech.
“She is alone and she cannot tell me her name, where she is from or whether she still has family,” the volunteer said. “Someone found her somewhere and put her in one of the vehicles that brought survivors to my town. She must have spent many days in the wind and rain. She is very distressed.”
Although the woman cannot speak, Aungr is beginning to gain some information. She asks her questions to which she can nod or shake her head.
Meanwhile the Myanmar Red Cross has shown her picture in other survivor camps asking if anyone can recognize her.Nightmares are surfacing in other places. Sansan Maw, a Red Cross programme officer assessing needs and operations across the delta, found a 65-year-old woman, clearly deeply disturbed, in a Labutta shelter.
Like the little boy, this woman had withdrawn into herself and, when she finally spoke, she explained that her husband, her daughter, daughter-in-law, mother-in-law, and her seven grandchildren had all been swept away by the storm surge.
Her 22-year-old son had saved her from the torrent by hauling her on to a passing tree. They had drifted all night in the flood and in the morning came to rest on a river bank. They walked for miles to get home, fearing all the way what they would find.
Another son had survived but the rest had gone, their bodies ending up against the gates of a sluice. When the gates were opened, the bodies floated back and she watched them pass her by in the village.
Such is the anguish in the delta.
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Sandar Aungr, a 28-year-old Myanmar Red Cross volunteer, was scanning a crowd of cyclone survivors who had arrived in the town of Maubin. Some had been directed to the monastery and, as they settled down, she looked for people whose needs were most urgent. (p17778)
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A little boy displaced by Cyclone Nargis. More than five weeks after Cyclone Nargis, the anguish of the Ayeyarwady delta is overwhelming. Long after the bodies have gone from the landscape, homes have been rebuilt, livelihoods restored, and the physical wounds have healed, emotional ones will remain. (REUTERS/Stan Honda/courtesy www.alertnet.org)
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The harm may be less visible but it is no less real for that, and the pain will never ease for many. The best they will do is learn to cope with it. (p17780)
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