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"There is still so much to do in the Irrawaddy Delta"

One year after cyclone Nargis struck, killing nearly 140,000 people, the situation in the southeast of Myanmar (Burma) is still troublesome. With the destruction of fishing boats, habitats, and the majority of crops (60% of the rice fields were ruined;  rice makes up 80% of the country's food supply), the residents of the Irrawaddy delta still face considerable difficulties: 50,000 disaster victims are still living under plastic tarpaulins and rely on humanitarian aid for food and access to drinking water.

SOLIDARITÉS has been in the delta since May 2008, setting up programs adapted to the geography of the area, which is composed of numerous sea inlets and estuaries. The 55 villages of the Irrawaddy delta are actually situated in the middle of mangroves and accessible only by boat. It is at least a seven hour journey from the SOLIDARITÉS base at Bogale.

To find out more and to understand the logistical challenges facing the SOLIDARITÉS teams, we met with Paul Salvanès, program coordinator.

How has SOLIDARITÉS responded to the needs of the population ?

Like everywhere else, our mission here is to respond to the primary needs of the populations: water, food and shelter. To do this, we first set up a water access and sanitation program, and distributed water during the dry season, which has just ended.

We had to set up an original method of water distribution by boat, "water boating". It was the only means of reaching the populations of the delta. It was very complicated from a logistical standpoint: our teams had to work seven days a week, without time off, in order to supply the population with sufficient quantities of water (the minimum amount being 5 liters of water per day per person). We also built water tanks and distributed terra cotta jars, which the villagers use for water storage, in order to rebuild the reserves that they had before Nargis.

Next, we set up a food security program and an agricultural program, with distributions of seeds to aid recipients. Since most of them lacked financial resources, they also used seeds to pay day laborers who worked on their fields.
Fishing, along with agriculture, is the main source of revenue. In order to restore this activity, we trained 60 carpenters and 200 assistants and built 300 boats according to local traditional techniques. We also distributed "crab traps" and fishing nets to 1,300 families.

Finally, we set up a shelter reconstruction program. Aid recipients were involved, trained by SOLIDARITÉS volunteers; together we built 650 shelters, and another 650 will be built in the next 3 months.

Have you seen results of SOLIDARITÉS' actions ?

At the beginning of April, I met a woman named Byue Chaung. She told me that, after Nargis, she borrowed $10,000 USD from rich villagers, in order to loan to poorer villagers because no one had any confidence in them. Sadly, since the harvest was bad they didn't have the money to repay their debt, so they gave her a piece of their land instead.

Before Nargis, this woman had 35 acres of land. She found herself with 110 acres and no money to pay back her own debts, no seeds to cultivate her land, and no way to hire day laborers. She didn't dare return to the village for fear of seeing her creditors, and so she stayed cloistered at home.

SOLIDARITÉS supplied her with some seeds which allowed her to sow her fields and hire day laborers, paying them with a small portion of the land that they were working. It will take her three years to repay her debts and return to her pre-Nargis standard of living. Byue Chaung will still need our help for a few more years.

Like Byue Chaung, the lives of thousands of inhabitants in the Irrawaddy delta depend on our actions: there is still so much to do and to abandon them is to condemn them.

Update : june 2009