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Zarganar, a popular Burmese comedian and social activist, has been heavily involved in volunteer disaster relief aid in the cyclone-damaged areas. An estimated 400 Burmese involved in the entertainment world joined together to do volunteer work in the delta.

Question: Can you talk about the situation on the ground since the cyclone struck Rangoon and the Irrawaddy delta?

Zarganar

Answer: We started our [volunteer] emergency relief work on May 7, and we are still working. I have been to all the townships struck by the disaster, except Nga Pu Taw.

There are 420 volunteers in our group. We divided our volunteers in groups to work more effectively. The places we go to are usually places nobody has been to yet. We have been to 42 such villages, most under the administrative area of Dedaye Township. Three of these villages are large village tracts where the paddy [rice] purchasing center was located. 

We went to three large village tracts in Bogalay Township. They hadn’t received aid not only from the government, but also from UN agencies. No NGOs had reached there yet.

Q: What did you see there? What do they need at this moment?

A: I can give you an example. There was a large village tract called Ma Ngay Gyi, where 1,000 families used to live and 700 houses were demolished totally. The other 300 houses left remnants of house-poles and floors. In total, 221 people died in the village and 300 are missing. Nobody knows where they are.

We arrived there on May 22 and until that day, and we saw bodies floating in streams. Survivors there received 7 tins (measurement with condensed-milk-tin) of rice from authorities and an instant noodle pack from some independent donors. Apart from that, they received nothing else. That was the scene we saw 20 days after the cyclone.

On May 28, we went from Bogalay to Tin Maung Chaung, Kyein Su, Hteik Chaung Kyi, Kan Su and Shwe Bo Su villages. The villagers there had received no assistance as well. They had almost no clothing and almost all the children were virtually naked.

In numbers, there were 542 households there and all the houses were heavily damaged. There was a small pagoda left on high-ground. The villagers gathered themselves on the platform of the pagoda and sleep together. There were no UN or NGOs there yet, and they had received nothing. Our private group gave them what we had. The most horrible thing was that they had no water to drink and collected water when it rained. We gave them 10,000 bottles of drinking water.

Q: Has any of the international aid that the regime received reached those areas?

A: There are temporary shelters in Laputta and Bogalay Townships. Some people can stay in tents in those shelters with four or five people to a tent. The people staying there eat rice and rice gruel. Those people receive some assistance, but they are few in number. The people in the villages get no assistance.

Q: The UN said only 25 percent of the storm survivors have received assistance up to last week; do you think that estimate is correct?

A: It’s fairly correct. Only a few people can access these shelters. The other survivors are stranded on islands and in distant villages with hardly accessible roads. They usually rely on boats for transportation.

I would like to share a sad story with you. I met an old lady who had 11 family members and 10 of them died in the storm. I saw many people like her. I saw many traumatized people on the delta islands. Only boats can get in there.

Q: You saw many people suffering trauma and depression?

A: I see three types of people suffering trauma. One type is very violent, and sensitive. They are angry, and I can't say anything to them. They are aggressive all the time.

The second type is people crying and moaning all the time. They think about what happened again and again, and they repeat what happened over and over. 

The third type is silent—no talking, very little movement.