Written by Christina Northey, CARE International
The other day, I was asked if I would consider writing about the one year anniversary of Cyclone Nargis. My initial reaction was to think, “Why me?” I left Myanmar on the 28th June 2008 and I haven’t returned. I started to think about why I hadn’t gone back. Working in the humanitarian sector, it’s easy to come up with many reasons. There is always another emergency, another cyclone, another flood that captures our attention. We argue that we’re not meant to be there for very long, the first phase is over, it has moved into the transition phase, into rehabilitation, into recovery…the list is endless.
Another reason, one that we seldom talk about is that sometimes it’s difficult to return to a place you have seen at its absolute worst.
If I am honest, I saw the best and the worst. CARE, like many other agencies, undertakes reviews, reflections and evaluations of all its emergency responses. As I write this, there is an evaluation of CARE’s Nargis response sitting on my desk, waiting for me to read its many recommendations. We are highly critical of ourselves, looking inward and re-assessing every decision made, every action taken. Rightly so, we should be critical of ourselves in our quest to constantly improve. But, in all of this reflection, do we lose sight of what is the best, indeed, the great, that comes from an emergency response?
For me, amongst the great are my CARE Myanmar colleagues. They didn’t leave on the 28th June. They stayed and worked tirelessly with affected communities to rebuild shattered lives. They willingly uprooted themselves from their families for months and worked long hours in isolated and challenging conditions. They helped first with immediate food, water and shelter assistance, then with the rehabilitation of livelihoods, infrastructure and businesses. One year on, thanks to their efforts, CARE has supported over 300,000 people to recover from the impacts of Cyclone Nargis.
But for some more of the worst? It isn’t enough. There is a lot more that needs to be done to help people affected by Cyclone Nargis. The world has moved on, we have been hit by the global economic crisis and there are dire predictions of increasingly less funding for those who need it the most. The UN’s Nargis appeal fell short of its target and there is increasing pressure on all agencies to help people affected by the cyclone who are falling through the cracks. In the commemoration of the one year since the cyclone, we should not forget them.
A couple of weeks ago there was another cyclone forming and gathering strength in the Bay of Bengal, on trajectory to Bangladesh and Myanmar. We reviewed our emergency preparedness plans, tracked its course and held our collective breath. It raced across the southern coast of Bangladesh, resulting in a number of deaths, unfortunately. It then lost strength just as it made landfall in Northern Myanmar. We let out a sign of relief and moved on, conveniently forgetting the perfect storm that continues to affect those who have already lost so much to Nargis.