Caritas Internationalis

Dear Friends,

After 45 days of hectic work, the church and its group of committed volunteers, take a pause from the long journey of re-building our people’s lives, to express our deep gratitude to all of you who stood by us and the people of Myanmar in their hour of darkness.

Thousands are returning home, or where their home used to be. Children return to school, knowing some of their friends will not be here. Farmers are returning to a slowly healing land, wounded by the marauding sea on that fateful day. The Ayeyawady River is subdued into serenity after straddling killer waves and exhibiting dead bodies for a month.

It has been a heavy month for the church. In Dedeya, Fr Benedict and his group valiantly buried dead bodies, exposed to sun and rain for a month. It is a challenging work, for days together, many villages were a valley of bones, and now they are rested with dignity in a place. Elsewhere the caregivers, our volunteers, faced threats to their own physical and psychological health, living amidst contaminated water and rotting bodies. Some have to be carried back to Yangon for medical attention.

All the parishes have been turned into disaster response teams. Food and Non Food Items are distributed through them. Many times the Buddhist monks are fellow sojourners in this act of mercy. Just a month ago, no family had wish or wherewith all to send their children. This month, with our support for uniforms, books and fee, hundreds of children are returning to the school. This return is healing and is the first signs of life to the battered communities. Hundreds of Temporary shelters are coming up. Seeds are distributed. The Church is designing a healing process through Psycho-Spiritual training and trauma healing services.

The nightmare is slowly replaced with hope. Catholic Bishops Conference of Myanmar (CBCM), all the religious and faithful and the Caritas international is reiterate their commitment. We thank all of you at this juncture. Our work has been very challenging, done under great restrictions on access. But you all made our work rewarding by standing by us with your great fellowship. Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI evinced fatherly concern from the day one. He mourned with the Myanmar Bishops when they met him for their ‘ad limina’ visit. His Delegate Archbishop Salvatore Pennachio rushed in by the first plane available and personally interacted with the survivors and the caregivers all through these days. The churches from various nations contributed their mite and prayers to our work.

It has been a month of pain and sorrow for our people. But the tide is turning, because people like you felt their pain from far and rushed with assistance. The Church could save lives because of you. On behalf of those thousands who survived we owe a deep debt of gratitude to all of you. Once again we realize that the Universal Church is a mother who reaches out where there is a tear, a human brokenness.

It is still a long journey. The full recovery will take at least two years. Cyclone Nargis was nature’s nuclear attack on our people. There are villages destroyed without any trace. The farm lands are polluted with the sea water. The human asset is diluted, social assets destroyed, natural assets mutilated with wanton destruction. The poor of Myanmar, already handicapped by some of the worst permanent disasters, are crawling back to normalcy.

So our journey continues. The urgent needs are for setting up homes, shelter and regenerating the livelihoods through supply of seeds to farmers, encouraging micro enterprises. This has been a month of challenge, but a blessed challenge because we felt the power of human oneness, the support of the Mother Church and great generosity of human sprit among Myanmar people through their selfless service to their suffering brothers and sisters.

Our heartfelt thanks to every one of you,

In Solidarity
Archbishop Charles Bo SDB

Monday 2nd of June marks the start of the school year in Myanmar and also one month after Cyclone Nargis. However, for so many children there will be no school to go to. For the children in the delta region their lives have been turned upside down. Many of them lost their parents and their homes.Last week I visited a village called Aima and some surrounding island villages called Pha-ya-lay-gone, Pein-ne-gone, Ta- yoke-gone, and Lein-maw-gone. Aima village is in Labutta township in the southern delta region and is very difficult to reach.

It took almost ten hours to get there by boat. There, I met families who are still struggling to survive and feed their children. In this area all the schools have been destroyed. For the children of Aima, the horror of the cyclone still haunts them.

Many children cry at night and when it rains. The children fear the worst and re-live the trauma of the night of the 2nd of May. In this village there are so many inner wounds that must be healed over time.

To date very little aid has been able to get to these communities. For the first two weeks the only aid received by these people was from the Catholic Church.

They told me that without this, they would not have survived. The government now only supplies two cans of rice per person per day, which is not enough for people to live on. In some cases people have been asked by the government to leave temporary camps and return to their villages. In many of the villages there was still no shelter, food or clean water and the government only supplied them with a few kitchen utensils.

My trip to Aima also demonstrated how important it is for the Catholic Church to continue our work and ensure that we support communities as best we can. To date we have been able to supply food, clean water, tarpaulins for shelter, cooking utensils and medical supplies to approximately 20,000 people in Labutta township.

We now must continue to support them, firstly to survive but also in rebuilding their lives. The people I met remain modest in their requests, and ask only for food and shelter.

The start of the school year is also an important reminder that we must prioritise the needs of children who have been affected by Cyclone Nargis. The Church will play a role in ensuring that children are reunited with family members and are given toys and space to play in. We must ensure that children can also return to school as soon as possible. Without routines such as school and normal daily activities, children will find it much harder to heal and miss out of vital education.

On my recent trip, amidst so much death and destruction, the resilience of children was brought home to me by many stories that I heard.

In one case a lady called Veronica told me of how she and her three month old child were stuck in their house when a tree fell over and blocked the door way. The floodwater rose inside the house so she piled furniture up and climbed above the water. As the water level rose she had just her head and her baby above water and one foot left until the water reached the roof of the house. She remained like that until the following morning and the water gradually subsided. Veronica told me this story and then added that during this time her baby had not cried once.

I also heard the story of a five-year-old boy in the village of Lein-maw-gone. He had been separated from his family and when the floodwater rose he could no longer stand on the ground so he grabbed onto his dog. He held onto his dog as it began to swim. The dog kept swimming for hours until he could eventually bring the boy to the safety of dry land. Sadly, following this amazing feat, the dog died of exhaustion.

Having met the people affected by Cyclone Nargis and seen the conditions they are now living in one month later, my recent trip left me with both hope and anguish. There is still a great deal of suffering and people need considerably more aid and help to survive and rebuild their lives. However, I am also optimistic that the Church can play an important role in meeting these needs. It is with this in mind that we must go forward, work together and serve those in need more effectively and to the best of our ability.

Archbishop Charles Bo