Take yourself back to last May, just before Cyclone Nargis struck. When did you first hear about it?
The cyclone was predicted to hit Bangladesh. I was working with World Vision staff there, helping them to prepare, to work out evacuation plans. As we followed the pattern of the cyclone, we realized it had switched directions and was heading toward Myanmar. Our Myanmar staff was heading toward the area they thought it would strike. But it ended up hitting in an area further south.
What did you do when it hit?
We tried to get in touch with our staff in Myanmar. We had no idea how bad things were on the ground until we talked to them. A few of them made their way to the office to phone us, and that’s when we began to get a sense of the picture. The office was wrecked, flooded, trees thrown all over the place.
And you were in the World Vision regional office in Bangkok, a thousand kilometres away. What were those days like for you?
For that first week, myself and my colleague James East were sleeping about an hour a night. We worked really hard to tell the world what was going on in Myanmar. And we were expecting – I was expecting – to deploy to Myanmar. Each day I would pack my bags, drag them down the stairs and get ready in a taxi, only to find out that I hadn’t got a visa yet.
Our staff in Myanmar continued communicating with us through phone calls, explaining what they saw, what was happening on the ground, what kind of supplies they could get, what kind of supplies they needed. Telling us that they had sent out a “rapid assessment team” to get a lay of the land. And we took that information and communicated it to the world as best we could. Because we knew that people there needed help.
It must have been difficult to be so far away. Tell me about your wait for a visa.
World Vision colleagues in Myanmar were working with the government in Myanmar to get me a visa. The government offices were overwhelmed, any government would be in a disaster this big. Sometimes I would dial 22 times before I could get a line through to our World Vision office in Yangon, to ask about the status of my visa.
How many days did you do this? How many days did you pack your bags and wait for the visa?
The cyclone hit on the evening of May 2. May 3 we still didn’t know how bad it would be. By Monday, May 5, I was ready to go, expecting to go, waiting to go. And each next day was much of the same, waiting to go, waiting to go. Until May 12 when the Sichuan earthquake struck in China. And by then we had a bigger team assembled in Bangkok and I switched my focus and began working on the quake.
What was it like, having followed the crisis in Myanmar so closely, to turn and shift to another one?
It was overwhelming. And I say that because we had all the media sitting in Bangkok, waiting to get into Myanmar. And we’d had a lot of conversations, fruitful conversations, about the needs in Myanmar. And then, all of a sudden, to turn around and realize that tens of thousands of people had died all over again in another country just across the way – it was heartbreaking, really. And especially in China because you knew that there were so many children in school at that time, and you knew that a lot of the schools had collapsed. And you heard amazing stories of children rescued from the rubble. But for every amazing story there was a number of children who weren’t rescued.
What happened then? Were you deployed to China?
It wasn’t easy for people who were not Chinese to respond, so I went to Hong Kong because that’s where our World Vision China office is, and worked through Hong Kong. I suppose the disasters (Myanmar and China) were the same in a sense in that we realized the capacity of our colleagues in-country to respond. But also, it set up a new method of working remotely for us.
Having not been able to go into either situation, what did you learn about operating from a distance that you’ll be able to apply next time?
A lot of it came down to preparedness. I realized that if you’re prepared for something that you know is going to happen – because in Asia we know that disasters are striking more frequently and with greater severity – we have a chance of giving more. And we can be prepared, not only us, but the communities as well. And that is a huge step toward communities being resilient in the face of disasters.
You finally visited Myanmar in March. Having heard about the unbelievable scope of the devastation from your colleagues, how did you find things?
I think I had compared it to the Tsunami, with rubble everywhere. When I went to Myanmar, I was surprised at how quickly some of the communities had cleaned up, how quickly they’d rebuilt their bamboo huts. Although the quality of the new thatched roofs is not the same as before. And there are still a lot of needs to be met.
What about the children?
The children are beautiful, and the children are eager – children like Nway who just want to make a difference. They want to be something, anything.
It was amazing and inspiring to see how their parents, aunts, uncles, appreciated our programs, and how these programs had really taken off. They were saying things like – “Wow, a child-friendly space, we didn’t know we could create something like that under such simple conditions.”
They were talking about the games and activities that the kids were playing, they didn’t know these kinds of things were out there, and the kids were so happy, and they were becoming so creative and outspoken, their communication skills were growing.
How is this changing the community?
It’s interesting to see that long-term development is happening because of this. For instance, the kids used to play along the pathways and they would fight with each other and the adults would come out and sort the fights and get angry with one other. But when the kids go to the child-friendly space they’re orderly, they’ve got a teacher, and they’re sitting and doing things, and the parents come and listen and they learn and they just say that the community spirit is different – things are better, the children are brighter.
It sounds like the kids have been the seed of healing in these communities.
I think that would be fair to say. On a bad day, Nway’s uncle was sitting there lamenting about the fact that he didn’t have any more buffalo. He used to have 10 and rented eight of them out to other villagers as a source of income. And then in bounces Nway, she’s just learned to balance the fruit tray on her head and she’s going to teach it to her little baby sister. Children have been so important. They’ve really kept people going.
