50, Cyclone Nargis survivor
ETHNICITY: Burman
BIRTHPLACE: Irrawaddy Division, Burma
INTERVIEWED IN: Rangoon, Burma
During the interview Auntie Hla sat upright in her chair, her legs crossed with both hands clasped over her right knee. Her brightly colored longyi and button-down blouse were both neatly ironed. She spoke to us about surviving Cyclone Nargis, a storm that ripped through Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta in 2008. Marked by 132 mph winds and a storm surge of twelve feet, the cyclone was the most destructive in Burma’s recorded history. It killed an estimated 140,000 people and razed 700,000 homes to the ground. Though Auntie Hla smiled and laughed when we first met, recalling her experiences with the cyclone brought tears to her eyes.
I didn’t know about the storm before it came.
It happened just after the Thingyan water festival. Before the storm, I earned money by going to sell coconuts in Rangoon each week, and my son worked on a passenger ship that went through the waterways between Rangoon and the Irrawaddy Delta.11 We were living with my stepsister in a village in the delta. I was in debt after my husband passed away, so I’d sold my house and farm. I had borrowed money from others as an investment in my business selling coconuts. Sometimes I lost money because I had a bad day of selling.
I celebrated Thingyan in the village with my son, because he didn’t need to work during the festival. When I saw my son, he suggested that we could build a new house and live there together. My son was thirty at the time. He had been married, but he divorced his wife because her parents were against their marriage.
After the water festival, I went to Rangoon and my son took the ship he worked on to a workshop for repairs. On April 29, I came back from Rangoon. I arrived in the town where I usually transferred boats. It was raining heavily and it was windy. The sky was very cloudy and a little more gray than during the ordinary rainy season. The workshop where my son’s ship was being repaired is on the way to my village, so when I was on the boat to my village, I wanted to stop off there to see him. But because of the heavy rains, my boat couldn’t stop. As we passed the ship, I saw some people cooking on it, but I could not separate my son from the other people. I went directly back to my village, and had the idea to try and visit my son again. But I couldn’t go then because it rained constantly every day for two or three days.
I didn’t know the cyclone was coming. My village is very close to the sea, so we always have storms and it’s always windy. Some people said there was an announcement on the radio that a storm was coming, but I didn’t have a radio so I didn’t know.22 Some houses owned a radio, but they did not listen to the weather report.33 Even those who’d heard the news didn’t think the storm would be as heavy as it was, because they had never faced a storm like Nargis in their whole lives. They didn’t think it could be that strong. But this was not an ordinary storm.
I HAD NEVER SEEN WIND LIKE THIS
On the evening of May 2, I ate dinner with my stepsister, my brother-in-law, and their sons. We were having some after-dinner conversation when it started raining. It was a little windy, a little dark. Then it grew darker and darker. The winds became stronger and stronger, and the rain became heavier and heavier. The trees in front of my house shook. At eight o’clock, the wind was very, very strong—I had never seen wind like this. Our neighbor’s house was made of bamboo and we watched it shake. Then we saw the couple who lived there run to their parents’ house.
My stepsister’s house was mostly made of wood, so it was stronger and more resistant. At the time, I thought the wind would just last for five or ten minutes and then be finished.
We didn’t move, we didn’t leave our house. One of the walls of our house, the one where we kept our altar and statue of Buddha, was made of bamboo. Soon that whole wall fell. We pulled it up again and tied it with a rope. The roof of our house was made from leaves; it hadn’t flown off, but it was shaking very much.
Then the tide from the sea came in. In our village, the houses were not so far from the river, so it wasn’t unusual. But that day, the tide came not only up to the river but past it and then well onto the land. It came quickly—we could see the water on the street in front of my house. If you put anything into the water, it would be taken away with the waves. My brother-in-law was a fisherman, and I said he should get his boat, which was at a nearby river, and bring it back to the house. We thought that no matter what happened with the storm, we could stay in the boat.
It took my brother-in-law an hour to bring the boat back. By that time, the water was starting to rise over the front steps of the house. My brother-in-law tied a rope to the boat and pulled it right up to the house. My stepsister was very afraid; she didn’t know what to do. But I was not afraid, so I reassured her and told her to get in the boat.
I carried some things from the house to the boat—shoes, some clothes, some pagoda statues. The water was now up to my knees. The wind was growing stronger and the house was starting to fall, so I told my stepsister, “Hold on to the boat and don’t worry about the shoes.” I tied the boat to the house and to a heavy wooden trunk so it would not be carried away.
The neighbors were running and shouting, “Go to the monastery! Go to land!” Everything was getting destroyed and the water was everywhere. When I stood in my house, the water had gone up to my thighs, but when I stood on the street, the water was up to my chest.
Then the tide came again and again. The people who had boats were okay—they climbed into them. The people without boats were running and shouting with their children and babies, and some were falling down in the water. Coconut trees were falling everywhere. People went running down the streets toward high land, and my brother-in-law started pushing the boat toward higher land as well.
Once we reached higher land, near the house of my brother-in-law’s parents, we used many ropes to tie the boat around big trees to anchor ourselves. My brother-in-law’s parents also got into the boat. It rained all night, and we had to constantly bail out the water from inside the boat so that it did not sink.
At first, during the cyclone, the winds were from the southeast. But after about 3 a.m., the winds came from the west. It was continuous—there was never a quiet time between the wind switching directions. We heard houses falling around us. My stepsister’s house was strong, but it also fell.
I didn’t know what time it was exactly, but around five or six o’clock in the morning, the tide started going down, but it was still windy. The sky was so red that it looked almost like fire.
During the night, I could only see the people I was in the boat with: my stepsister, her husband and sons, and my brother-in-law’s parents. But when the sun rose, we saw all of the houses that had partially or completely collapsed. Some of the houses had disappeared and floated away with the water. Some boxes and other materials had arrived in the water from other villages. At that point, I put my stepsister and her sons in a small house nearby that was still standing. I don’t know whose house it was, but I wanted to protect them from the rain.
Two or three other boats with families in them also arrived near the house. We were afraid of getting hit by a zinc roof, because a lot of roofs were flying through the sky.
It was still windy for another hour or so. After the tide went down, the boat was back on land.
ONLY ENOUGH WATER TO WET THE MOUTH
There are two main parts of my village, a southern part and northern part. No one died in the northern part where we lived—the houses were just destroyed and the police station totally fell. In the southern part of the village people died because that part is a little lower and there are a lot of fields. I don’t know how many people died there exactly. About seventy people died in the western part. In that area, near the cemetery, five people died in the same house. Only one woman died in the eastern part of the village, where a tree fell on her. We had to dig to get her body out from under it.
The morning after Nargis, people counted who was lost in each family and they searched around the village and found some of the bodies of the people who had died. They found villagers’ bodies in the corners of houses or in fields or in the rivers, and then they took them and buried them. Some people’s bodies were found because they started to smell. If we found a person’s body and knew the family it belonged to, we called the family members to bury the person. If we didn’t know which family the body belonged to, we would bury it ourselves.
After the water went down, we had run down to see our house. It was partly destroyed, and it had fallen halfway to the ground. There were two monasteries in my village, but one of them had been destroyed during the night so there was only one monastery left to stay at. I didn’t want to stay there because it was full of people.
My stepsister and her sons stayed in the house near the boat, and I stayed on the boat with my brother-in-law and his parents for three or four days. We made a roof with bamboo and leaves to protect us from the rain. Everywhere people wanted to die. There was no food to eat, no water to drink. Every house used a big pot to store drinking water in, but the sea water had entered the pots, so there was no drinking water. Fortunately, there was one water tank left in the monastery. The monks gave one bottle for every family. When we took a drink, it was only enough to wet the mouth.
We were hungry, but there was no rice to cook. Some rice shops gave people free rice, but it wasn’t good because it had gotten wet. The first day they contributed sixteen cans of rice per family, but we could only use it the first day because it went bad after a day. The next day they contributed one rice can per person, so if you had four family members, they gave you four cans.
We tried to get a fire going to cook the rice, but all of the wood was wet. There was a rich man who had a house situated on the higher part of the land built with brick. I went to the house and asked to have some dry wood to cook and he gave me some.
People from the village were saying, “What should we do? We have no food to eat. We’re hungry.” We ate coconuts and drank coconut juice because so many coconut trees had fallen. Some people didn’t get food for two or three days. The monks at the monastery also contributed food. At first they contributed rice and curry, but after one day they did not have enough rice to give to the villagers, so they boiled the wet rice in water and gave us the soup.
THANKFUL JUST FOR A DROP
During those first three days, nobody came to our village to help. We didn’t have any contact with the city and we couldn’t use the telephone. There were no ships or boats coming or leaving. There was no food to sell in the restaurants or food shops.
I believed someone would arrive in my village to save us. I hoped some government authorities would come—I wasn’t sure who would, but I thought some authorities would arrive. But I imagined that since we didn’t have any contact with another village or another town, other people didn’t know what had happened in my village.
After five days, some officials arrived with a helicopter. They brought rice, food, and a fresh-water machine. Altogether, there were six helicopters in one day. The officials said it had been a big storm and the strongest part had gone right through the southeastern part of our country.
I wasn’t angry that it took five days for the government to arrive. Some families were dead. Other some families had no food to eat. I don’t know if they were angry or not. But I was very thankful just for a drop of water.
The government constructed camps near the southern part of the village for the people who wanted to go there. But in my village, not many people wanted to go to the camp because it was far.
A helicopter bringing food and water arrived every day. They also brought a doctor. The local authorities contributed firewood and one can of rice per person.
About two weeks later, we got tents and mosquito nets from the ICRC—International Committee of the Red Cross. Donations from many organizations came to my village. An Italian organization gave a bag of things to each household. The bag included: a pot to cook rice, a small pot to cook curry, five plates and five bowls, one steel cup, five spoons and one big spoon, a knife to cut meat and vegetables, one kilo of beans, some soap, one towel, two longyis for men, a blanket, two T-shirts, a nail clipper, five toothbrushes and toothpaste; and a plastic box where we could keep drinking water or oil if we faced a difficult storm or flood in the future. I was so happy, I almost cried. It was enough for our family’s survival—for cooking and drinking. We thanked the donors by sending them blessings in our prayers.
I didn’t see any international donors come to the village because the local authorities distributed everything. I only saw Burmese people who provided the materials locally. So I am not sure where all of the donations came from. I asked a volunteer once and he said some of them came from Japan and from the Burmese Traders Association.
IN MY MIND, MY SON WAS STILL ALIVE
After Nargis, I didn’t know if my son was still alive or not.
I was hoping this storm had only happened in my village. Two or three days after Nargis, we still didn’t have any contact with the town where my son’s ship was being worked on. Four or five days later, the shopkeepers from my village had to go to that town to buy some food and other supplies. When they came back to my village, they told me that my son’s ship and another ship had both disappeared. The people who worked on those ships were also missing.
When I heard that, I didn’t think he was dead because he could swim very well. He was very young and active. I thought he could have floated along the water and landed somewhere else where some people saved him.
We rebuilt my stepsister’s house with the help of many other villagers, and I stayed there, waiting for news about my son. During this time, I sometimes volunteered for the military and the local authorities on construction projects. The soldiers were working too, and they treated me well.
There were five people missing from my son’s boat—the manager, two of his family members, my son, and another young man. I went so many times to the ship manager’s house to inquire about my son. The manger’s wife said she had taken a boat along the river to try and find them, but she had no success. If I had the money, I would have searched for them with a boat like she did.
There were lots of rumors saying that the men had amnesia after the storm and were now living in a different township. The manager’s wife went to investigate the rumors and try to find them, but she still didn’t find my son or the others.
People in the village said that the five people, including my son, had tried to save the ship because they were very faithful to their boss, and that if they had abandoned the ship they could have survived.
A few months after the storm, the ship owner got news about where the ship had sunk. It was totally damaged—if they lifted it with a crane or something, the ship would be destroyed. One month later, the owner tried to get the ship out again, and this time they tried to just get some parts of the ship, but it was still stuck.
Finally, the manager’s wife told me that if my son and the other men were still alive, they would have come back home sometime during that six-month period. Eventually we made donations to the monks to hold a funeral ceremony for the men at the place where the ship had been tied before it disappeared. In Burmese culture, we usually donate to the monks seven days after somebody passes away, but I didn’t think my son was dead, so I didn’t donate for six months. In my mind, my son was still alive and had arrived somewhere else. I thought he would turn up.
As soon as I donated for my son’s funeral, I left. I didn’t want to stay anymore. I had to assume that my son had passed away. I was unhappy, and I couldn’t control my mind—maybe I was going mad. I knew that if I didn’t leave this village, I would only think about my son’s death.
IF WE CAN PREPARE
After my son died, I didn’t want to stay in the delta anymore. I decided to go to Rangoon to stay with my relatives and look for a job.
I found a job through my relatives, working as a live-in housemaid for a family in Rangoon. When I first met my boss, I told her, “I’m honest and I can do anything you want me to.”
I’m currently living in the house where I work. Every day I get up early in the morning, cook rice and curry, and then go to the market. I also wash and press clothes. I feel like I’m in my own house while working for this family. They treat me like a sister and share their food with me. They also buy me clothes and give me 15,000 kyats per month.44
When I’m sixty to sixty-five years old and no longer working, I’ll have to go to a home for the elderly because I have no son. I’m saving money in preparation for this. I only buy the things I need, and I don’t buy any beauty products because I am already middle-aged.
After the cyclone, some construction companies built houses to donate in my village. But only some people got the houses, like the president of the village and some other rich people. I didn’t know how to get a house and I didn’t want to ask about it because the village leader already knew about me and my situation.
I hope we never again have to face a disaster like this in my country, but if we can prepare and a storm actually comes, maybe there will be less damage.
I lost only one person. Some lost many people—whole families were lost. If I compare my situation with theirs, mine was not as bad.
1 The Irrawaddy Delta region is a vast, densely populated area that is both Burma’s largest rice producer and vital to its fish harvest due to its rich soil, streams and rivers.
2 Indian government weather forecasters say that they gave their Burmese counterparts ample warning of the cyclone’s severity as early as April 26, but did not receive a response. On May 2, the Burmese government sent out warnings to residents in the danger zones, but many residents remained unaware of the severity of the coming cyclone. For more about Cyclone Nargis and the SPDC’s reaction see, appendix VIII.
3 Typically shared by community members, radios are critical to receiving accurate news throughout Burma that would otherwise be censored by the military junta’s information blackout.
4 Approximately US$15.