Everything Is Broken (10 page)

First on the agenda: the availability of seed for planting rice crops in the delta. Stocks from the first crop of the year had been rendered inedible, as rice warehouses were flooded or had collapsed during the cyclone. Farmers in the region generally plant two rice crops a year and, to avoid longer-term repercussions and possible famine, it had become necessary to ensure that they would be able to plant the year’s second and final crop. As seed stocks and much of the equipment used for planting and harvesting were destroyed by the cyclone, the job of those assisting in the agriculture sector was to make sure that farmers had what they needed to begin replanting. The FAO spokesmen said they had been working on finding out precisely what kind of seed was available. While they expressed satisfaction that there was enough seed in-country, there was some confusion as to how to assess the exact quantity and quality of the seed and how to get it to farmers in the delta. Unable to provide any finer details, they offered up a much repeated phrase: “At the moment, it is still unclear.”

There were sighs of frustration around the table. A few people rolled their eyes with undisguised impatience. A man sitting next to me began doodling compulsively on his program sheet.

Whatever the condition of the seed, attendants at the meeting quickly agreed that time was of the essence and tried to establish what date the seeds needed to be planted by and how long the window of opportunity would last. Again, there were no straightforward answers. No one, at least no one in the room, had been able to establish the cutoff date for planting a second crop. I wondered why they didn’t just ask a farmer, but I must have been oversimplifying the matter, as the conundrum generated considerable debate around the table and the German FAO representative often began his sentences with phrases that implied only a seasoned expert could ever get to the bottom of the matter: “Looking at the problem agri-ecologically . . .” he would say ponderously.

The issue of seed and replanting totally unresolved, the meeting moved on to another item on the agenda: the emergency Flash Appeal. A flash appeal is an overview of immediate needs and requirements compiled by the UN and NGOs to justify the release of funds for use during the first six months of an emergency operation. The FAO was responsible for compiling the agricultural sector’s overview for the flash appeal and asked participants at the meeting for any useful information that should be included. The meeting coordinators explained that they had been severely hampered, as they were not allowed to do the kind of assessments they would normally do and were working with inaccurate secondhand information. At the very least, they seemed to know what they
didn’t
know. “We have a clear view of areas we have
not
assessed,” said the German in the aviator glasses, going on to list the townships from which he had no data: Kunyangon, Dedeye, Wakema, Mawlamyainggyun (shortened by the cluster participants to the more easily pronounced
Maw-gyun
), Bogale, south Laputta . . . Bewildered looks were cast across the meeting table—the list seemed to encompass almost the entire delta.

My neighbor’s doodling picked up pace. Though I had no other clusters to compare it to then, it looked as if the meeting was not going to be a roaring success, and the conversation implied that even those employed to conduct the emergency operation were clueless as to what was happening in the delta.

The discussion on livestock turned out a little better. One challenge for replanting crops in the delta was that so many buffalo and oxen—animals used for tilling the soil—had been killed in the storm. As the experts around the table contemplated the conundrum of the missing buffalo, one participant took the opportune moment to remind cluster members that they must operate within the cluster system at all times. By way of warning, he told the sad tale of the goats and assorted livestock imported after the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. At that time the cluster had agreed that there would be no restocking of farm animals. Yet some rogue NGOs had gone ahead and imported them anyway. As the animals came from different countries and were accustomed to different conditions, there was a 60 percent mortality rate and the project had to be canceled, much to the embarrassment of the organizations involved. The speaker delivered the moral of his tale with relish: “As we all know, you cannot just take a buffalo from Balochistan and put it in Kashmir.”

Knowing nods were shared around the room; everyone was united around the sorry case of the misplaced livestock.

At one point someone from the United Nations Development Programme listed UNDP agricultural activities being undertaken in cyclone-hit areas, such as the provision of seed, pesticide, basic equipment, and livestock. As soon as he began speaking, it became clear that he had in his possession some actual facts about the delta. The FAO reps were visibly irritated on learning of this hitherto withheld data. “We need all the information you have,” snapped the German coordinator. “This is not for FAO or for UNDP. This is for the country!”

Still rattled when he made his closing remarks reiterating the need for data for the flash appeal, the coordinator concluded with a curt command: “We need information in detail. You have until the end of the week. I don’t want any surprises.”

Like a naughty schoolboy, the doodling man next to me had scribbled on his notepad, in large letters, “WOOHOO,” and was busying himself with adding a constellation of exclamation marks.

One of the key aims of the cluster meetings in the context of Cyclone Nargis was to establish which areas had been reached with assistance and which had not, thereby preventing any gaps or overlaps in the delivery of food, shelter, and other relief materials. The system had met with varied results and, especially outside the UN, the effectiveness of the cluster system was hotly debated. There was tension between the UN and international NGOs, as NGO staff complained that UN agencies used the clusters to exert control over the entire humanitarian community. Some NGOs refused to attend on principle. An American woman, who runs her own charity in Burma, was vociferous about the “five-hundred-dollar-a-day so-called experts who have never set foot in Southeast Asia, let alone Burma” and said that attending cluster meetings was a waste of her taxi money. Another American succinctly referred to them as “c lusterfucks.”

Local Burmese NGOs initially were left out of the cluster equation; many did not attend because they were not contacted or because of the language barrier. Representatives of the Burmese government were also absent. It is usually expected that government staff attend the clusters in order to help extend coordination efforts. During the first few weeks after the cyclone, no one from the Burmese government came regularly to the cluster meetings, at least not in an official or obvious capacity.

“Oh, god, those meetings are so depressing!” sighed a European doctor who had been working for a charitable organization in Burma for many years. “They are all so concerned about ‘overlap.’ Let me tell you, in this country, this is not a problem. Just start walking from here and go north, go south, go east, go west. I don’t care which direction you go, you will not find any overlap.” We were chatting over beers one evening at an outdoor bar, and he puffed on a cigar-size cheroot, reflective for a moment, before bursting out with a final thought on the matter: “And you know what? If you
do
find overlap, then you’re happy! You’re shit happy! Because it’s almost impossible to find anyone getting any kind of help here!”

From the doctor’s perspective, the hours spent debating the pros and cons of various approaches and mapping out areas of overlap and underlap could be better spent just getting things done. “It’s not rocket science,” he said, leaning in close, as if divulging a great secret. “These people in the delta have been through a major natural disaster. What do they need? They need food, water, and shelter. So just give them that!”

The agriculture cluster I attended closed on what seemed like a sour note as the coordinators asked, “AOB?” or, any other business?

A woman from Save the Children introduced herself, saying that she had just arrived in Burma for the first time the previous day and was seeking sources of information. “I really need some stats on livelihoods in the delta,” she said. “Does anyone here know where can I access the data?”

The meeting participants turned to the top of the table, looking to the FAO reps to answer the question. Being well-established in Burma, the organization must have had the information but, if it did exist, the file on delta farmers and fishermen appeared to have been marked classified. One of the FAO men said that they were not able to release any data on the topic yet, as they were obliged to have it cleared by HQ in Rome and their regional office in Bangkok.

More sighs rippled around the table, and I got the sense that everyone left the meeting feeling a bit flat. Luckily, the hotel staff had organized a little pick-me-up out in the marble-floored foyer. As the attendees sipped warm cups of tea or coffee and munched their way through a buffet of finger sandwiches and cream cakes, the mood appeared to lift slightly.

 

THERE IS AN
archaic type of prophecy in Burma known as
dabaung
. Passed on by word of mouth and spoken in poetic form,
dabaung
are said to arise spontaneously from the population. Despite the antiquated methodology, a
dabaung
that surfaced after Cyclone Nargis gave an accurate reading of commonly felt but otherwise unexpressed emotions. The
dabaung
was easy to recite, even in my stilted Burmese, and I found myself repeating it often, like a nursery rhyme I couldn’t shake out of my head:

Or, in English:

[frequent fires have razed whole neighborhoods in the parched city],

[the cyclone uprooted hundreds of trees, leaving behind piles of timber],

[this last line contains the prophecy that the new capital will one day be filled with bones, presumably those of the ruling generals].

When I happened to recite the
dabaung
to a Burmese academic connected to Rangoon University who often helped me with my research, he told me that there could be some truth to the prediction. His colleagues had been involved in a seismological survey conducted together with Chinese specialists and had found that there was a fault line running directly through Naypyidaw.

Whatever the seismological readings, the
dabaung
was also like an expression of wishful thinking conducted en masse; with no public outlet for venting frustration against the regime, dissent was manifesting in the form of whispered rhymes.

 

 

 

A WEEK HAD PASSED
since Ban Ki-moon’s announcement and the atmosphere inside Burma was darkening.

The U.S. ships left the coast during the first few days of June, having waited there for three weeks. The commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Timothy J. Keating, said in a press release, “We have made at least 15 attempts to convince the Burmese government to allow our ships, helicopters, and landing craft to provide additional disaster relief for the people of Burma, but they have refused us each and every time. It is time for the USS
Essex
group to move on to its next mission.” The British and French ships left too. The
Mistral
had sailed to Phuket in Thailand to off-load its cargo of humanitarian relief goods for transshipment to Burma, where UN agencies would take responsibility for getting it to the cyclone zone.

While there had been some improvement, concessions made by the regime were niggardly and not at all in keeping with the expansive promise that “all aid workers” would be allowed into the country. Visas were being granted, but the process was slow and the visas were for ridiculously short periods of time, with many aid workers arriving in Burma on three-, five-, or seven-day visas. Only a very limited number of aid agency staff in Rangoon had been able to get to the delta, and the access they achieved initially was severely limited. Once they had gone through the laborious process of applying for travel permission to leave Rangoon, many were only allowed to make one-day trips and had to be back in the city by nightfall. Each foreign aid worker who went to the delta at that time had to be accompanied by a government liaison officer, who, as one Italian UN worker told me, wrote down
everything
: “I swear he even marked down in his little notebook each time I smoked a cigarette!”

With the majority of international aid workers trapped in Rangoon, the rumors that travel restrictions would be extended to Burmese people were validated by various actions taken by the authorities in the delta. Soldiers at checkpoints started handing out a leaflet stating that it was time to wrap up efforts to help storm victims, as the relief phase of the operation was over and rehabilitation had begun. The text told donors to stop giving aid to people sitting by the road, claiming that they were not real storm victims and had only gathered at the roadside to receive free handouts. From now on, those who wanted to help should contact the Disaster Management Committee in the relevant townships. It seemed a polite enough note, but it was accompanied by increasingly harsh vigilance. Cars and trucks carrying aid were frequently impounded and their contents confiscated. In one instance, a convoy of twenty trucks was stopped on its way back to Rangoon; the drivers were arrested and kept in jail overnight.

In the last week of May it came to light that the government was resettling people in the delta. Camps set up in and around the main delta towns were closed down. Schools and monasteries where storm survivors had taken shelter were forcibly emptied. Survivors were loaded onto boats and ferried back to the destroyed villages they had recently escaped from. In some areas the clearances happened quickly; as the emergency phase was now officially over, the authorities wanted people back in their villages by June 2, when the next school term was scheduled to begin. But survivors had no idea what they were returning to; was there even anything left at the places they had once called home? And how would they get food and water there?