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1972
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lunedì, maggio 26, 2008
Birmania. Gli ultimi tra gli ultimi. Un viaggio di due reporters dove non arriva nessuno, nei villaggi dimenticati di chi non ha perso la speranza solo perché non l'aveva nemmeno prima. Letture straordinarie per farsi ancora un po' di male.
Storia di Then Kin e di suo nipote, che è diventato matto cercando ogni notte nei campi la moglie e il figlio: Sitting dejectedly in a hut surrounded by the debris and stench that are the aftermath of the powerful cyclone that struck here three weeks ago, Then Khin, 70, reflected on the grim task of rebuilding what is left of her family and their home. Since Cyclone Nargis devastated the area May 3, this isolated village in the Irrawaddy Delta has been all but ignored by the junta. As of this past weekend, it had yet to be reached by international relief workers. Then Khin lost 15 family members when Nargis swept through. For those in the family who survived, life is a litany of woes and the recovery has only just begun. A 29-year-old grandson of Then Khin has gone insane, wandering day and night through the fields looking for his wife and son, both of them swept away by the furious floodwaters that came with the cyclone. Her eldest granddaughter, Thit Khine, 31, who lost her husband and both her children, remains haunted by the memory of her 2-year-old daughter, Thwe Tar, who was clinging to her mother's neck when the storm snatched her away. Still another grandchild of Then Khin, a 14-year-old girl named Myint Myint Kyi, lost her ability to speak for two days after losing all of her immediate family: both her parents and her 7-year-old twin brothers. When she finally came to, she was a different girl, no longer interested in school. Cho Mar survived the storm by hanging on to the top of a tree for a day, and she could only watch as neighbors were swept away by the walls of water brought by the cyclone. She lost both parents and her 8-year-old brother. "We were hopeless before, we are hopeless now," she said. "This river, this delta, is our world. We will live and die in the same place where my parents lived and died." Storia di Thaung Tan, un villaggio tra i tanti, dove i birmani hanno imparato a mendicare, e mendicare non è per niente birmano: It took three weeks of waiting for help that never came for the emaciated man to overcome his innate fear of authority in a country under army rule for the last 46 years. "I didn't care whether they got angry with me or not," the man in his late 40s said, recalling the moment he challenged officials deep in the Irrawaddy delta to release the small amount of aid left in their charge by Myanmar's military government. "I walked up to them and said: 'We are not getting anything, and that is not good enough,'" the man said. He was too scared to give his name. People in nearby village said that since the cyclone struck they had just five visits from outsiders, all of whom were private donors. Elsewhere in the delta, thousands of people now devoid of any livelihood are resorting to full-time begging beside roads. "Just throw something," droves of children shout at passing vehicles. Ventiquattro giorni. |
A Fabio.
A Luisa.    Asia e dintorni Normblog |
