After Nagris

Dear Family and friends...I managed to leave Myanmar yesterday - Siam is still there trying to get back upcountry. Although we had heard a rumour by Sunday in Yangon, about the devastation in the delta region, it was very shocking to hear when I arrived in Kolkata last night, that there are more than 10,000 deaths.

Yangon was in the path of Nagris throughout Friday night. From about 3am I watched it through the lull then the second wave which hit about 6am. We were very safe in The Strand, but many people have lost their roofs and homes, there is no electricity, no water, no telephones.. There are trees uprooted everywhere - Siam's Myanmar-based colleague Max, has an Australian housemate Chris who is an engineer. He tells me the enormous number of trees that have fallen destroying buildings, bringing down power lines and blocking roads all over Yangon, is due to their shallow root system which is a result of the high water table.

So little information is passed on to the people - we heard the Minister for Tourism (a general) was due to fly in to Yangon yesterday so there was confidence a generator would be connected to supply electricity for the airport to reopen on Monday. We were fortunate to have CNN in the hotel which provided updates throughout Thursday and Friday on the path and the intensity of the cyclone, but how could the people of Myanmar prepare for it when there was no information before, nor assistance after, to clear their homes, their roads and reconnect utilities.

By Sunday, diesel had risen from 5000 Kyat to 7000. We managed to get the last from this roadside stand for Max and Chris' generator -
- by the time I headed for the airport the next morning, petrol costs had forced the price of the taxi ride from 7000 Kyat to 30,000.

Who will really help the people of Myanmar? I read in The International Herald Tribune on Friday that a human rights organisation was issuing criticism of the ubiquitous Footscray guide book publisher for publishing a guide to Myanmar (c2005!! is the most recent that I know of). ..Meanwhile the ordinary people are already paying an enormous price for boycotts and sanctions. They would be so happy for you to come to Myanmar, even if it's just so they know they are not forgotten... Why do we make the people suffer. And just in case we forget about our own glass house.. the photo above is taken from our hotel window of the Australian embassy right next door. By Saturday afternoon, as you can see if you look closely, the cats were back on their tin roof, but not a dickie bird from Embassy staff up until the time I left on Monday, to offer assistance or even just contact through the hotel, to Australian citizens.

To the Friday night hotel staff who just kept on working for 36, 48 hours; to the staff who lost everything in the cyclone, who had homeless families and ill relatives to look after, and who walked miles to get to work because there was no other way to get there, these are the people of Myanmar.
I am so glad I met you.