26 Aug 2008 , Source: AlertNet, An AlertNet correspondent
REUTERS/IFRC Each day a 10-year-old boy stands near the shore in Labutta, looking out to sea. Wreckage from the devastating Cyclone Nargis that swept the delta in May lies close by, but he seems oblivious to everything around him.
"He's there because he thinks his relatives will come back, but they've all died," says Edwin Gille Patalagsa, a disaster expert from the Philippines, who has just spent five weeks in Labutta, one of the hardest-hit towns.
Such stories are not isolated cases. When Patalagsa's team mate, Indonesian Putu Sutawijaya, was in Bogale, he met a couple whose four children were swallowed up by the floodwaters in front of their eyes. Unable to cope, the wife tried to drown herself.
"Her husband saved her so she survived, but when we try to talk to her, sometimes she's normal, sometimes she just stares blankly," Sutawijaya told AlertNet.
Patalagsa and Sutawijaya are members of a regional disaster response team from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
They and four others spent two months in Myanmar, working in six cyclone-hit areas with the local Red Cross in needs assessment, relief and logistics.
Both aid workers say there is an urgent need for psychological support for the survivors to whom the trauma is still very fresh. Some refuse to go back to the villages they came from - they don't want to be reminded of what they have lost.
Currently, IFRC has 25 volunteers trained in psychosocial support in eight townships in the delta, but the needs are great. According to a joint report by the United Nations, regional bloc ASEAN and Myanmar's government, 23 percent of households surveyed reported psychological problems due to the cyclone, while only 11 percent said they had received any care.
CROPS DESTROYED
The May 2 cyclone left almost 140,000 people dead or missing, 800,000 displaced and affected a total of 2.4 million, making it one of the most devastating cyclones ever to hit Asia. But the survivors are not only contending with emotional scars - worries over food shortages loom large.
On Friday, the U.N. World Food Programme delivered its last planeload of supplies as the free "air bridge" between Bangkok and Yangon came to a close. Aid agencies will now have to charter their own planes or rely on slower sea and land routes.
"When we arrived one month after Nargis, most of them had enough supply of food items but not enough non-food items," Sutawijaya says. "But the situation had changed when we left - they have less food items because the agricultural land is not producing."
In an area where most people rely on farming for a living, flooded rice fields and damaged farming equipment is akin to losing your job, savings and home all in one go. The towns of Bogale and Labutta are among the worst affected.
"Livelihood is the most pressing need," Patalagsa says. "Some farmers can't start farming because they can't pay for the labour. Many fishermen also lost their boats so some now move from one village to another working as casual labourers."
Even when farmers have received rice seeds in Bogale and Labutta, there have been problems because the seeds are not suitable for the local soil or because it is too late to replant crops.
"The window of opportunity for planting crops has now closed. Farmers will have to wait until November 2009 for their next decent harvest and will struggle to find enough food," aid agency Save The Children said on the three-month anniversary of the cyclone.
The current monsoon season has compounded these problems, with torrential downpours making it hard to plan operations. The high cost of transportation has also added to difficulties in distributing aid. There are still villages in Labutta that have received minimal assistance, according to Patalagsa.
"There was a time when we had to postpone an aid distribution for four days because of the weather," he says.
Despite the bleak outlook and harsh conditions, the aid workers say there is some good news - there hasn't been any major outbreak of disease.
With people living in small communities dotted throughout the delta, illness is less likely to spread than in a built-up area, Sutawijaya says.
The aid workers have been impressed by the tireless efforts of local volunteers. But the one thing that will stay with them above all is how friendly and helpful people have remained amid all the hardship.
"When we give out aid, they don't loot or come and grab it. They come over, but to help distribute it," Sutawijaya says. "It made us feel very emotional."
http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/reliefresources/121975358392.htm
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