Wed 29 Apr 2009 Filed under: Inside Burma,News The boat’s owner
points to a palm-covered bend in the river where dozens of
bamboo huts perched on spindly stilts-until Cyclone Nargis
devastated this remote region a year ago. “There were many, many
bodies,” Tin Maung Thein, 57, says through an interpreter,
gesturing toward a lush expanse of green where bloated corpses
once gently nudged the high tide mark. Nature has concealed the
scars in this tangle of narrow waterways in the Irrawaddy Delta,
where most of the more than 138,000 victims drowned when the
storm roared through during the night last May 2. But behind the
lush growth, tens of thousands of survivors still struggle to
eke out a life. Many lack clean drinking water. Rice fields
remain bare, even as food handouts wind down. More than 2,000
schools have reopened, but some are short of teachers. A half
million people live in rudimentary shelters. International
relief agencies have embarked on a three-year recovery plan, but
response to a global appeal fo