Women walk past homes in Chaungtha village destroyed by Cyclone Mala.

WHEN the water was up to U Myint Sein’s chest, he knew it was time to abandon his home, a reed hut in the village of Chaungtha on the Bay of Bengal.

Fighting 200-mph winds and the rising flood brought by Cyclone Mala, he and his wife waded to a nearby monastery, where their children were already safe in hiding.

Later that morning he went back to try to salvage their belongings. When he arrived the water was up to his neck, and the hut had disappeared, swept away by the sea.

More than 100 homes were lost when the cyclone slammed into Chaungtha on April 29, felling trees, demolishing breakwalls and tearing the roofs off hotels at the popular beach resort nearby.

The storm devastated villages and towns across the Ayeyarwady Delta and the Rakhine coast, reaching as far inland as Yangon, where it damaged factories, wrecked homes and sent billboards flying.

At least 21 people died and 14 were missing nationwide, according to the state-run media.

With little help from outside, the townspeople were left on their own to deal with the aftermath, with homeless families sleeping in monasteries, sharing food and relying on neighbours for help rebuilding their homes.

“We had no time to save our possessions. We were too busy saving our own lives,” said Daw San San Aye, U Myint Sein’s wife.

The family is staying at a monastery in the village along with dozens of others left homeless. Her husband pushes handcarts for a living, and like many in the village, the family has no money for rebuilding.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I have no idea how we can carry on.”
Details of how the storm hit are etched firmly in the minds of the villagers.

The winds picked up to a steady howl in the early morning hours that Saturday. By 8am, waves five metres high – taller than many of the beachside bungalows – were crashing into the shore. Water swept across the narrow peninsula that holds the village and the beach resort.

“The wind was so strong people couldn’t stand up on their own,” said Ko Maung Maung Myint, a local resident. “It was even impossible to drive, the cars would swerve so badly.”

With the hotels already evacuated, many of the villagers scurried to three hilltop monasteries outside of town. When the storm passed in the mid-afternoon, they went home to see the damage done.

The more substantial buildings in the commercial district had mostly been spared, but the poorer quarter beside a narrow bay in back of the town was in ruins. The homes there are made of bamboo and reed, many of them perched on stilts above the water. Those that were not toppled or swept away had been filled with water, destroying almost everything inside.

“We didn’t expect anything like this – that’s why we lost all our things,” said U Soe Lwin, who was left homeless by the storm. “If we’d known it would be this bad we could at least have saved some of our belongings.”

Three days after the storm, some business owners in town were still bailing water from their shops. In the village, washed-up debris remained everywhere – the shattered remains of houses, sprinkled with lost dishes, Buddha images and discarded shoes. Kids and pigs from the village rooted through the piles.

U Aung San and his family were laying soaked books and CDs in the sun to dry, the roof of their hut badly damaged. He lost a fishing boat in the storm, and said it will take at least a month to make enough money to rebuild. The cost of building materials shot up after the storm, with the price of wood tripling overnight.

Government help in the village consisted of handing out rice donated by local merchants.

The village wells remain contaminated with salt water from the storm, forcing residents to carry water from a hilltop outside of town. In the evening when the weather cools, women and children bring in heavy jugs of water on sticks across their shoulders.

At the monastery in the village, homeless families sleep in rows on the concrete floors of two large compounds. They share food donated by other families and bathe together at a well in the courtyard.

Local resident U Soe Win said some who lost their homes chose to stay near the hilltop monasteries where they fled the storm. He said they plan to build new homes and grow crops there, where they believe they’ll be safe in the future.

Asked if Chaungtha will ever fully recover, local resident Ma Aye Than looked doubtful.

“We hope so,” she said.