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Two weeks after cyclone, villagers surrounded by the dead

Survivors of Cyclone Nargis rush to get first in line to receive goods from a local donor at a monastery outside the capital of Yangon on Monday. Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Los Angeles Times The Spokesman-Review
Survivors of Cyclone Nargis rush to get first in line to receive goods from a local donor at a monastery outside the capital of Yangon on Monday. Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

WAT MYON, Myanmar – They are living with the dead.

More than two weeks after Tropical Cyclone Nargis wiped away all but one of this village’s houses, decomposing corpses still lie on muddy pathways or are trapped in eddies along the shore of the broad Pyamaia River nearby.

The stench overpowers every corner of U Thon Tun’s badly damaged home, where 25 survivors have taken refuge beneath a leaky roof patched with tarp. The wind and the rain, which pours down on them every day, fails to erase the sickly smell.

The villagers, all tenant farmers, want to get past their loss, go back to work and earn money again before another rice crop is lost. But their paddies are ruined, they have no seeds to plant and there are no tools to work soil flooded by the sea.

Without any tools, the villagers say they can’t solve another pressing problem: the corpses that are poisoning the river, where they wash themselves each day.

Soldiers sent in to gather the corpses suddenly disappeared Sunday and villagers say they heard the troops were refusing to dispose of any more bodies, leaving survivors no choice but to live with them.

“It’s not 10, it’s not 100, it’s thousands of bodies,” Thon Tun said. “We gave up collecting corpses around here. It’s impossible to bury them properly.”

Local authorities have provided small rations of food but not the seeds, equipment and water buffalo that villagers say they need to start planting by the end of June. The water buffalo they had died in the storm that thrashed the village and flooded the paddies that now cannot be planted without the help of cattle.

Meanwhile, saltwater is poisoning the soil and fresh water reserves.

So Thon Tun, 56, and the refugees who depend on him, have a lot of time to sit and think, to breathe in the inescapable smell and to worry what fate they might be condemned to suffer because they survived, only to face an agonizing wait for help.

“I didn’t die, but I feel dead,” said Hla Ye, 70, staring blankly. “The people killed by the cyclone are lucky because they don’t know anything about what came next. I wish I could join them.”