By Nina and John
Canadians on this trip: Mark and Dawn Marshall, Tim Norman, Ross McClellan

Our first trip was with Serge Pun and Associates (SPA) travelling from Yangon to Pathein with 109 of their donors, volunteers and staff all involved with the initial emergency response. It quickly became apparent as to why international aid agencies all had so many difficulties and were met with a logistic nightmares trying to deliver assistance to the homeless victims of Cyclone Nargis.

We departed Yangon City at 7:00PM for the 100-mile journey on a very rough road. After arriving in Pathein 10 hours later, at 4:30am, we transferred to an express riverboat for a further 4-hour trip arriving at the village of Auk Pyun Wa on Middle Island at 9:00AM. At one point our river boat lost its steering coming to a halt up on mud flats due to deep fishing nets set up by local village entrepreneurs.

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The Kitchen Soup project is going great and delighted to help.
Sorry for late Reply because I was seriously ill for 3 days and I could not go anywhere. I went to clinic and now I feel better but I am coughing non-stop. I also take medicine for cough but it is not better.

I go to help every Friday to cook and deliver the food with my new friend Merlyn. We together feed the children rice and curry and also check what the monk needs for coming week to feed the children. There are 138 primary students, who can not afford to attend school so instead they come and study school lessons in this Monastery. There are 3 teachers, 5 cooks and about 15 monks at this Monastery. Last month, we made a meeting with teachers and monks to donate weekly to feed the children.

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Our trip is the first visit for them (villagers) to get donations from people. But Pwyal Tan villages had received the donations before because that village is located beside the river so it is easy to go there, not so for the rest of the 3 villages…The other three we visited are difficult to due to the narrow stream and when tide is low it is not possible to even go to those villages (Aung Hlaing village, Nyi Naung Gyi and Nyi Naung Lay village).

Current their situation is, next day of after storm (storm was on 2-5-08) most of villagers moved to Mawlamyaingkyun (MLMG town) to get food and stay. They stayed to the Monastery, hoped and waited for food and clothes to come. But I think Sayataw (presiding monk) and the people from Mawlamyaingkyun just couldn’t provide enough foods. So some people went to a teashop, got food and then didn’t pay the cost so run away.

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