This is an email from my cousin who lives in the capital of Mynamar, formerly Burma, where she lives with her husband who works for the UN and their two small boys. Unbelievable, it’s so hard to comprehend.
An update i’ve been sending to a few people:

Things are pretty dire here. I’ve never been in anything like this before, the devastation is just so massive. The storm was unbelievable, lasting 10 hours. The delta, where the storm first landed, is just flattened. Stories are still coming in but they are bad. Last night an NGO rep stopped by, he just got in town from being in one of the worst places down there. He said the place is just totaled - bodies lying everywhere, 40,000 people missing just from the one island where has was. They lived by bunkering down among rice bags from the last harvest (clever). Hakan thinks the death toll will surpass 100,000.

Yangon was really badly hit as well, though not with the loss of lives that the delta is facing. Trees uprooted everywhere, signposts down, houses flattened. People whose houses were made with bamboo/wood had them completely flattened. Imagine the local people, just scraping by as it is, and now faced with unbelievable suffering. Half of our staff has lost their houses, the other half have lost roofs or portions of their houses. There is limited running water, electricty or telephone in Yangon. And it’s going to be like this for a while we think. Drinking water is becoming scarce and food will soon too, we fear. Diesel is a major concern - nothing can move without it, and they aren’t selling it officially yet - unofficially if you can find it, you pay $10 per gallon which all but the richest cannot afford anyway. There are queues for miles on each road where there is a gas station - those that still have gas are givign it out at 2 gallons a day. My student told me she can no longer go to work because there is no petrol in her car: she waited all night the other night in a queue but never got any.

At our house we have no power or telephone. We now have running water (since yesterday) but we are using it very carefully because it is pumped up by use of the generator and we have about one week’s supply of diesel to run that (and the car) if we use it for several hours each day. All our staff is now living in the staff quarters behind our house with their families. I have been running around buying basic food for them and us - we’re providing a WFP-like food basket for all of them and their families - the least we can do. I’ve also hired extra family members to help with their family’s income - there’s certainly lots of cleanup to be done. And i’m trying to sort out how we can help them all rebuild their houses - i have a plan, a Habitat for Humanity type thing, where the guys all help each other rebuild the houses and we help financially and logistically. But for now it’s difficult to do anything because of the scarcity of building products - and anything that is still available is going up in price by the hour.

We stay put for now - Hakan is in charge of the WFP emergency operation they are launching now (as his boss is the Acting UN resident coordinator these days), and I have just been pulled into the UNDP Task Force, so will also be hopefully be able to help a little. The boys are out of school, the schools both have no roof and no electricity, so we wait to see when they reopen.

But we are safe, and we will be fine, so we are so much better off than many. We are lucky to have the UN office connection; otherwise we would have no way of telling family how we are (like so many others) - it is the only connection still standing in town of course.

The local massage lady’s story is poignant - she has been saving up for a long time (since i’ve known her?) to buy land and build a house. She finally finished construction a few weeks ago and last friday had some of her expat clients over to celebrate the new place with a lunch. That house is totally gone now. It will be a long recovery process for everyone, i fear. And the question many are thinking though not yet raising - will this be the breaking point for people? Will this put people so over the top that they will have no choice but to get out on the streets in millions this time?

All for now
Love Janice