A new life for San Lwin

By Myat Thu Rein, Reporting Officer, Myanmar Red Cross Society

San Lwin (Photo: Myat Thu Rein/Myanmar Red Cross Society)

Life as a boatman now, seems worlds apart from the night Cyclone Nargis struck the Ayeyarwady Delta,for San Lwin, 37.

His five year old son Pyay Phyo died in the 1 and 2 May 2008 disaster which left 84,500 people dead and 53,800 missing. An additional 2.4 million people mainly in delta, were severely affected, according to the United Nations. Thankfully, San Lwin who was swept away in the storm surge, managed to find his wife Mi Mi Nwe alive, clinging onto a tree. A fisherman then in Kyein Chaung Gyi village in Bogale township, San Lwin also lost his home and boat as well as equipment in the cyclone.

On the evening of the cyclone, “the wind got stronger and the sky darkened. The wind was so strong it blew off the roof and walls of the building we were in.”  To escape the increasingly bad weather, San Lwin put his wife and child in his boat not suspecting that the waters would sweep them away.

Today, San Lwin is grateful that the ordeal is over. He now works for the Myanmar Red Cross Society’s hub office in Bogale. He transports hub staff and Red Cross volunteers from the town centre to villages where recovery activities under the society’s Cyclone Nargis Operation are taking place.

Bogale is one of 13 townships targeted for assistance under the three-year operation which aims to reach 100,000 families. The relief and recovery operation (2008 to 2011) seeks to assist affected communities through the following programmes: shelter, livelihoods, community-based health and first aid, psychosocial support, water and sanitation, and disaster preparedness and risk reduction. The operation is conducted with the assistance of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the coordinating body for about 186 national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies throughout the world. 

San Lwin’s knowledge of the river and minor waterways, and that of his two boatmen colleagues, make them important assets for the hub office. 

His working hours are flexible – sometimes, he makes overnight trips with recovery teams, and some days, he waits in the office for news of the next field trip. 

“I’m happy here,” he says of his job which began in August 2008. He had heard about the job through an assessment and relief officer based at the Bogale hub office. 

“My wife is also happy. She is going to have a baby soon”. 

With their home and livelihoods destroyed in the cyclone, San Lwin and Mi Mi Nwe, 22, struggled to regain their lives – a life so different from Kyein Chaung Gyi, the village San Lwin lived in since his childhood and where he caught fish, prawns and crabs to sell in the market.

After cremating their son – Pyay Phyo was swept away in San Lwin’s boat by the storm surge and his body was found four days later amid piles of wreckage – San Lwin and Mi Mi Nwe made their way from Ngar Nan Pat village to Bogale township. They had been in the village for 10 days prior to the cyclone because San Lwin had to conduct some fishing business there. 

They walked, travelled by boat and even swam across streams, to make the four-day journey to Bogale, in the aftermath of the disaster. 

“We ate banana stems and leaves to make our hunger go away,” recalls San Lwin.   

“The fields and the rivers were filled with floating bodies. There were dead people hanging on trees and piled up on river banks”. 

When they reached Bogale, the couple sought refuge in the home of Mi Mi Nwe’s uncle. They did not receive assistance because Bogale township was not as badly affected as villages where storm surges reached up to 1.2 metres high. 

“Besides helping my wife’s uncle with his fishing business, I started a stall selling cigarettes and betel leaf but I made very little money – just enough for a daily meal for my wife and I”.

San Lwin transports a recovery team to a village. (Photo: Myat Thu Rein /Myanmar Red Cross Society)

The new life was tough but the couple did not want to return to their village, Kyein Chaung Gyi. There were too many painful memories there. “All my relatives there – 22 of them except my mother-in-law – died.” The village of about 500 farming and fishing households was nearly wiped out by the disaster.

Thankfully, San Lwin and his wife are recovering their lives and have a baby

to look forward to. The earnings from his new job have enabled them to move from a simple shelter he built in September 2008, to a stronger structure which they are renting.

He is also saving some money for the future when his contract as a boat man ends in 2011. He plans to use the money to a buy a boat to trade vegetables for a living.

“The best my wife and I can do is learn to cope but we will never go back to Kyein Chaung Gyi again”.