Helpless and Stranded

By MIN KHET MAUNG / DEDAYE, IRRAWADDY DELTA
[Source - Irrawaddy]

The look on Lei Lei’s face is one of hopelessness.

She takes no notice of the school uniform that a private donor had left for her. Instead, the 12-year-old girl stares ahead at the vehicles passing back and forth along the highway. On her back, her sick sister coughs relentlessly.

Every time a car passes by, Lei Lei raises her hand and shouts, “Please give us some food!”

Children line up to receive water from a local donor on the outskirts of Rangoon. (Photo: AP)
A truck stops a bit farther ahead and Lei Lei’s head swiftly turns in its direction. She sets off running, her baby sister bouncing up and down in the sarong over her shoulder.

Some of her friends are already waiting with hands scratching the air toward the truck drivers. They push and jostle their way closer to the back of the truck where two men are throwing packages down to those desperate souls below them.

After a struggle, Lei Lei emerges with a small pack of steamed rice. She shares some with her sister and eats the rest greedily.

Today was the 19th day that Lei Lei had spent begging for food on the highway—some three weeks since Cyclone Nargis destroyed her family home in Bogalay and killed her father.

She said she does not feel self-pity as all the survivors have to queue in lines all day to get a handout of food and drinking water.

“I feel sad when I hear that other children will go back to school next month though,” she says.

“But for now, I need food, not schooling.”

According to a recent government announcement, all schools in Burma—except in the areas devastated by the cyclone—must reopen on June 2. In the Irrawaddy delta, schools are still a long way from being rebuilt.

UNICEF says up to 90 percent of the schools in the cyclone-affected areas have been damaged or destroyed, totaling some 3,000 primary schools and affecting more than 500,000 students. The academic year for those areas will be delayed at least two months.

In the meantime, the Burmese junta is bargaining with the international community to leave all matters of aid and reconstruction in its hands.

“This time last year, my father took me to Rangoon to buy text books and stationery for school,” Lei Lei recalls tearfully.

She lays her small hand on her sister’s forehead to check her temperature.

“My sister has got a bad cold,” she murmurs. “She has been out in the rain for so long.”

Though they have plastic sheets for shelter at night, they have no protection from mosquitoes.

Like other traumatized survivors, Lei Lei also dreams about the fatal night that swept her father away.

"I cry out at night," she admits.

"My mother cries in her sleep,” she says. “When I ask her in the morning, she says she was thinking about my father.”

"Sometimes, I get involved in quarreling and fighting with other girls my age,” she says. “We are all trying to get as much food as we can.”

On May 16, flocks of cyclone victims rushed to a field where a helicopter was about to land. Fights broke out. Lei Lei says she was pushed aside by the crowd and fell over. Her baby sister was almost trampled.

In the end, no one got any food. The helicopter had only landed to take on more gasoline. The crowd’s fighting had proved futile.

When asked what she expects of the future with regard to education or her dreams, Lei Lei frowns and shakes her head.

"I must be on the side of the road from dawn to dusk every day," she says solemnly.