KYUNGYANGON SOUTH, Myanmar — As the cyclone raged around him, Ko Zaw Min clung to a tree with one arm while clutching his newborn son with the other.
He managed to hang on for 10 hours despite the howling winds and punishing rains of Cyclone Nargis, which decimated his life.
First the floods washed away his home. Then his newborn son died, unable to breathe in the rain-filled 120 mph winds. Ko Zaw Min’s 9-year-old son fell from the tree about 30 minutes later and was swept away by floodwaters.
Ko Zaw Min, whose wife and 11-year-old daughter also survived, said he held his dead baby through the night and finally let go in the morning to perform a simple funeral.
“I was so sad but could not do anything to save him,” he said.
He was dressed in the same T-shirt and shorts he wore that night. The cyclone took away everything else the rice farmer owned, including 70 baskets of rice from the last harvest.
His village — Kyungyangon South — was directly in the path of the cyclone. Every brick house was damaged, and huts such as Ko Zaw Min’s, made of woven bamboo poles and thatched roofs, were rendered to heaps of rotting vegetation.
“I lost everything, and I am scared,” Ko Zaw Min said, sitting in a brick house, one of the few still standing in the village. “I have no idea what to do.”
In another low-lying delta village, Pain Na Kon, only 12 of the 300 people survived. They now share a large tent and their larger heartaches.
“We are family now. We are from the same place. We are together,” said U Nyo, who lost his parents. The only survivors from his family are his wife and his 6-year-old niece, Mien Mien.
The 12 walked to the town of Labutta, wading for hours through knee-deep water, slush and mangrove debris.
“There were dead buffalos and dead bodies everywhere,” said U Nyo’s wife, Saw San Myant. “We didn’t dare look. We didn’t want to see.”
In the tent, the only signs of comfort were a few thin blankets, some high-energy biscuits and curry soup they found at a monastery in Labutta.
“We don’t know when they will also run out of food,” U Nyo said, casting glances at his niece, Mien Mien, who sat outside in the dark in the ravaged rice field.
U Nyo called out to her gently, but Mien Mien stared emptily into the darkness.
“She saw her father swept away by the water, but we didn’t see anyone else. We think they are all dead,” said Saw San Myant.
