Burma still struggling one year after cyclone Nargis

But then roaming, well-nourished pigs stumble across  ubiquitous heaps of kindling, the remains of trees uprooted by the cyclone, which are now sold at the roadside for firewood.  

People live in huts and small houses, but the shining  corrugated iron indicate they have brand-new roofs.  

The local economy is buzzing with numerous small shops selling everything from potato chips to soap, but the walls often only consist of plastic sheets supplied by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).  

There is hardly anybody among the area's 7 million inhabitants  who hasn't been affected by the disaster one way or another.  

"My husband was squashed to death when our roof collapsed,"  recounts Aye Aye Win, 47, of the small settlement of Khone Latha.|

"When I returned to our village, my sister had vanished and I  haven't seen her since," says a waiter in Pyo-pon.  

"In our village alone, 15 people drowned," reports Myint Myint  Htay, 40, in Ng We Taung

On the night of May 2, 2008, Nargis raged for 12 hours through the river delta, reaching a speed of up to 215 kilometres per hour, one of the most devastating cyclones in recorded history.

It triggered a 5-metre-high flood wave that washed across the  flat coastal land and resulted in 138,000 dead and missing, more  than 1 million homeless and some 800,000 destroyed homes.  

Myint Myint's husband Win Soe, 37, recalls the night of terror  as if it had occurred only yesterday.  

"The wind lashed against the walls (of our house) before it finally collapsed," he says. 

   Shortly before midnight, the storm's eye had reached the area and  an eerie silence suddenly settled. He grabbed his children and ran to the house of Myint Myint's parents a little further down the street.

But when all hell broke lose once again, that home also collapsed. The family climbed on to the raised road nearby, which, dam-like,  overlooked the surrounding low-lying paddy fields. That decision  saved their lives.  

The rapidly rising water level started to lap across the road  surface, but eventually receded after several hours.

"We didn't see any relief workers for about two weeks. What little  rice we had recovered, we gave to the children and sustained ourselves with frogs and coconuts," Soe Win said.  

After the cyclone had subsided, tens of thousands of survivors  had to wait for help in vain for days, even weeks.  

Foreign representatives of the Red Cross and other international  disaster relief organisations were barred by Burmese military  rulers from entering the region.  

Even local helpers had to cope with countless hurdles.  

A woman from the port city of Rangoon, herself a Nargis victim,  collected money and bought supplies for the victims.  

But her group was stopped a mere 15 minutes out of town at the first of many checkpoints that the military had erected.

"We carried rice, salt and fish paste, but the guards demanded  that we hand over everything to them, because they would be more  capable of distributing the goods," she remembered.

Even three weeks after the catastrophe many survivors had still not received any assistance from the authorities.

After an international outcry, junta chief General Than Shwe eventually invited hand-picked foreign representatives to visit tent camps. 

The guests filed past neatly dressed and contently smiling  families lined up in front of their tents. The tents behind were  empty. 

One year after the catastrophe, those homeless camps have all but  vanished. After a few weeks the junta forced those people to return to their devastated villages and rebuild their homes, often with little or no food or tools provided. 

   "A lot has been done, but there still is a lot of need (in the affected countryside)," admitted U Kyaw Thu, a government representative and head of a tripartite working group comprising Myanmar, Asean and the UN established to facilitate the region's rehabilitation.

Some 691 million dollars will be needed over the next three years, because 100,000 people still live in improvised huts that might collapse during the upcoming rainy season, he said.  

Many others need their livestock replenished, as hundreds of  thousand of cattle, pigs and chickens drowned during the cyclone.

 Saing Ti Ta Lankara, a 59-year-old Buddhist abbot in the town of Maw Kyun was in Rangoon when Nargis struck and hastily returned to his  monastery, where 400 refugees had taken shelter.  

Hundreds more arrived over the following days and were taken care  of by the monastery, but the abbot brushed aside any notion of  psychological trauma among the survivors.  

"Buddhists are adept at handling tragedies and do not need psychotherapy," he asserts.  

"Suffering always is the direct result of misdeeds in  someone's previous incarnation. Nargis was the delta peoples'  punishment for misdeeds in their previous lives," he adds.//Kristina Rich// Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) - April 29, 2099