May 15, 2008

You just never know when that 7th grade home sciences course is going to come in handy. Today my 32-year-old Sears Kenmore sewing machine and I embarked on a rainwater-collector prototype sewing project. We’re trying out different designs that are simple to set up once they get to the field. Yesterday, we had a group of church people, a senior monk, several HOPE staff and some miscellaneous friends of HOPE staff, all crammed into office area, gathered around a pile of tarp, brainstorming how to design water collection equipment for the situations they are currently aware of in the Delta. With a prototype in hand, we will quickly get someone else with more appropriate equipment to produce more of these rain collectors.

We had contact with the medical and relief teams this morning. They have been kept in place by a storm for the past 24 hours, but plan to leave today for a group of villages that is directly south, near the coast. People straggling through the teams’ current location have reported that the situation remains dire for people in those areas to the south, and no help is reaching them yet. In order to get there, the teams have to go by boat. It has taken awhile for them to find a boat willing to take them down there with their equipment and supplies. They have managed to borrow some lifejackets for team members, so eight people will go out this morning and be down there for a few days, out of contact.

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The conditions on the roads and bridges to the Delta are terrible now, with so many heavy vehicles trying to cross and with all the rain. The wait to cross the damaged bridges is many hours and people are getting stuck waiting overnight to cross. We had vehicles of partners going out yesterday and today, but yesterday’s vehicles have not arrived in Bogalay as yet. Once upon a time, it was a quick and relatively comfortable, four-hour trip to Bogalay. Re-supplying the medical teams and field volunteers of our other local partners will probably need to be done by boat sometimes, as well as by road. HOPE staff members here in Yangon are racing around trying to find a boat we can contract with to make those supply runs for us. In additional to the rainwater collection kits, medicine, and clothing, we are also trying to get food out to these areas. HOPE has actually hired a couple of people in our office on a temporary basis, to help us handle the logistics and purchasing, since what was once our small, sedate and serene office of consultants and trainers is now throwing itself headlong at the task of supplying our local partners so they can meet the urgent needs they encounter in Delta communities.

We hear that visa restrictions will be eased for certain UN technical staff, but not for international agencies otherwise.

A huge Thank You goes to each and every one of you who has sent or is sending donations to any of the organizations putting relief supplies and/or funds in here. Please don’t stop giving. Relief is getting to people in need and local volunteers are continuing to work tirelessly to support people most affected by Nargis. I know you are hearing stories of how the relief supplies are ending up being sold in the markets of Yangon. None of us at HOPE has seen any of those supplies in the markets here, and we’re actively keeping our eyes open. Further, no one we know who is repeating that story has actually seen any such supplies, either. We realize it is a real danger and a real possibility, but thus far we haven’t seen any evidence of it.

It has now been almost two weeks since the cyclone hit and we have neither power nor phone service restored at our house and no phone service yet at the office. The electrical power supply representatives came to our neighborhood yesterday and said that if we want to have electricity restored to our house anytime soon, we need to pay them to restore it. Otherwise, our house will be put low in the queue and it will probably be a very long time before we have our power restored. They did not specifically state how much they want us to pay, nor did they say how long it would take them to restore power if we were to pay them. The main point of their message was to let us know that if we don’t pay, they won’t be putting any energy into getting electricity hooked up to our house. This isn’t actually surprising, but it does let you see the stark reality of the economy here.

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Currently there appears to be little immediate possibility of power being restored in any case, since the power lines and poles are all still lying on the ground, tangled with the huge piles of tree branches, leaves and other debris crowding the edges of the roads near our house. Those “piles” actually extend more than a city block and are taller than I am in many cases, and in some places are actually on both sides of the roadway, so imagine what is still left to be done to clear the place out and put up new power lines. Yangon used to be lovely because of its many huge trees. Now it looks relatively bare and ugly.