Meet the ‘Handy Youths’ of the Irrawaddy Delta

Members of the Handy Myanmar Youths
help build “budget huts”
for homeless survivors of Cyclone Nargis.

A group of young people led by a well-known Burmese Internet blogger, Nyi Lynn Seck, is at the forefront of reconstruction efforts in the cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta, helping to build simple shelters for the homeless.

Nyi Lynn Seck calls his group the Handy Myanmar Youths—and they’re certainly proving to be handymen in the flattened villages of the delta.

Using bamboo and tarpaulin,
members of the Handy Myanmar Youths
help build “budget huts”
for homeless survivors of Cyclone Nargis.

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Cyclone Victims Migrating to Thailand

Cyclone survivors travel on a fishing boat from the cyclone devastated city of Bogalay, 125 km (78 miles) southwest of Rangoon in the Irrawaddy delta. (Photo: AP /Myanmar NGO Group)

“I came to Thailand because the situation back in the Irrawaddy delta was becoming critical,” said cyclone survivor Ma Win. “We had received no aid. My child was seriously sick and suffering from diarrhea. I was ill too; we only had boiled rice to eat for three days.”

As soon as he heard about the disaster, Ma Win’s husband left Thailand where he was working and headed home to Laputta to look for his wife and six-month-old son. They had survived the cyclone, but their house was destroyed. He immediately decided to take them back with him to Mae Sot on the Thai-Burmese border.

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Rights Groups Report Post-Cyclone Abuses

Burmese and international human rights groups have accused Burma’s ruling junta of committing serious rights violations in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, heightening concerns that the regime’s refusal to allow an open and transparent international relief effort is endangering the safety of victims of the deadly storm.

In a statement released on Friday, the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP) said that inmates of Rangoon’s Insein Prison were being forced to eat spoiled rice, even after the International Committee of the Red Cross replaced “moldy, foul and inedible rice” damaged by exposure to rain.

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Business Booms for Some in Irrawaddy Delta

While agriculture, fisheries and the salt industry are struggling to recover, guesthouses and restaurants in Laputta, a major delta center, are reporting that business is booming. Buses from Rangoon to Laputta are packed, and operators are advising travelers to book three days in advance.

By a bitter irony in a region where thousands are still going hungry, restaurant owners and grocery stores in Laputta report booming business. UN and relief agency staff and other foreign visitors are good customers.

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