Moe Yu May
RANGOON, Jun 4 2008 (IPS) – Ko Ko Aung remembers the moment when he thought he had lost his older brother, Wai Yan Soe, to the powerful waters that tore through their house on the night Cyclone Nargis struck, one month ago.
First Wai Yan Soe floated away from where he gripped a pole near our house, and later I [did], the 11-year-old said, in a hesitant voice.
By then, the brothers had given up calling for their parents and two sisters for help. They had seen all four drown when a giant wave struck their home in a village near Labutta, one of the townships that took the worst beating in Burma s Irrawaddy Delta.
Ko Ko Aung clung to a trunk of a palm tree all night to avoid being dragged off by the currents of the widening river. Many things floating in the river hit him as they went by. I was so exhausted and it was very painful, he recalls
After a while, he managed to climb to the top of the tree, where he fell asleep. When he woke up the next morning, the water level had dropped and the scene before him was desolate: he found no one around.
Cyclone Nargis killed between 130,000 to possibly 300,000 people, and affected between 2.5 million to 5.5 million people.
Related IPS Articles
I climbed down and tried to look for someone, but I found no one and felt scared, Ko Ko Aung said. I climbed up the tree and stayed there for two nights.
He survived without food and water until he spotted a few villagers who had also survived the cyclone heading towards a Buddhist monastery in a nearby village. It was there that he ran into Wai Yan Soe, 14, who had escaped drowning by holding onto a bush along the river.
Today, Ko Ko Aung and his elder brother are among 30 children orphaned by the cyclone that have found refuge in a Rangoon monastery. Many children followed me and asked me to bring them along as they are helpless, Uttara, the 52-year-old senior monk of the monastery, said in an interview.
The 30 orphans under his care account for only about half of the vulnerable children he met when he rushed to the ravaged area soon after the worst natural disaster in Burma (or Myanmar) stuck in the early hours of May 3. It s a tragedy but I can t manage for all, he explained. I can only take some who I think I can handle.
The monk s concerns about the cyclone orphans are shared by U.N. agencies and humanitarian groups that have been trying to offer relief and comfort to the millions affected by Nargis. The United Nations Children s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that at least 2,000 children have been orphaned or have missing parents.
There were 280 such children registered in Labutta, but we need more information to have a comprehensive picture, Alexander Krugger, child protection specialist at UNICEF s East Asia and Pacific regional office, in Bangkok, told IPS. We have begun to register all unaccompanied children in the affected villages.
At the same time, UNICEF is facing a challenge from Burma s military regime over the best way to care for these traumatised children. The junta which has stood in the way of relief measures for the cyclone victims and severely limited foreign assistance to the delta wants the orphans sent to state-run homes.
The junta has announced plans to build orphanages in Labutta and Pyapon, another badly affected township.
Children may account for a large number of those who died, since about 40 percent of the people living in the delta were children under 18 years, states Save the Children, a British charity.
Institutions are detrimental to child development, especially for children under five, Krugger added during an interview with Marwaan Macan-Markar, IPS correspondent in Bangkok. The government is aware that UNICEF is advocating for family-based care.
Part of UNICEF s strategy to help the orphans and other children cope with the trauma of the cyclone is to have them join child friendly spaces, where the children can play, have opportunities to express themselves through art and feel safe in a secure environment. Currently, 80 such spaces have been set up in the delta, but the number is set to increase to 100. Each space holds between 50 to 350 children.
Concern for the children also stems from the emotional scars of the trauma they endured. Orphans are more vulnerable because they do not have a natural protective environment, says Kaz de Jong, mental health specialist at Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF- Doctors Without Borders), the global humanitarian agency that has many teams working in the delta. In the camps in Labutta, children who are the sole survivors are withdrawn.
The quiet and withdrawn children were among many traumatised survivors that de Jong met while working in the delta. I have seen a lot of people who are very sad, very anxious, he said at a press conference in the Thai capital on Wednesday. People report they have difficulty to sleep, that they wake up at night. They see the last images of relatives [who died] coming back in their dreams, nightmares.
For Ko Ko Aung and Wai Yan Soe, Buddhist prayers and safety at the monastery are helping them to cope. The one who prays for them is their eldest brother, Thiha, who has been a novice at the monastery for four years.
He prays for us every night before bedtime and I feel safe sleeping besides him, says Ko Ko Aung, looking at Thiha.
