Bangkok (Mizzima) - Ghosts and restless spirits are severely hampering the full recovery of the Irrawaddy Delta, a year after the area was hit by the devastating Cyclone Nargis. Now that the monsoon season is at hand, many of the survivors of Cyclone Nargis are growing apprehensive, believing that thunderstorms are a bad omen.
Originally tens of thousands of survivors suffered in silence from post-traumatic stress, grieving and survivor guilt. Now there has been a shift as the cyclone survivors are suffering from severely high anxiety reactions – especially to rain and wind.
“Single storms and heavy rains in the past few weeks have triggered increased anxiety amongst the survivors,” according to Medecins Sans Frontieres psychologist, Dr Sylvia Wamser who has spent much of the past year counselling many of the survivors in Bogale area, which was particularly badly hit by gale-force winds. The anniversary of Nargis is causing many to relive the tragedy of a year ago.
 Although the Delta is now returning to normal, a year after Nargis, the task of recovery and reconstruction remains monumental. Millions of survivors are now haunted by the memories of that night and the “ghosts” are there to remind them.
The ghosts of the dead and the missing usually come when there is no moon and when the wind picks up, Dr Sylvia Wamser told Mizzima. “They can hear them walking along the rice terraces and along the riverbanks,” she said.
“Some of them cry out: they sound sad, and others are angry,” said Maung Maung, an elderly male farmer whose village, deep in the Delta, was washed away. He lost most of his family, except his wife and two grandsons. “We are all frightened when they wail.”
For millions of survivors, who lost loved ones and all their possessions, life can never be the same again. “I cannot believe what happened,” said a 27-year old male survivor in the Bogale, in the centre of the Irrawaddy Delta. “Before Nargis, I had a happy family and enough income. My family and all my possessions were all destroyed in a single night.”
Hla Htay escaped with his family in a boat, but it was smashed to pieces by the strong winds and waves. “All my family members fell into the water. My children were crying and shouting for help, I can still hear them now,” he said. He lost his wife and four children that night – only one son survived the ordeal.
Throughout the delta, the story is the same – survivors who have lost many of their loved ones. Nwe Nwe, a 40-year old woman lost 36 members of her family. “I moved from my village after Nargis, because I couldn’t bear the memories there,” she said. “I can’t eat or sleep, I don’t dare leave the house. Every night I have strange and evil dreams -- I’m now afraid of nighttime.”
Overcoming these deeply-held fears of ghosts has been a major challenge for counsellors, like Dr Wamser. "It was important to help them understand that nightmares are normal after such a terrible incident,” she said. “And its not that your loved ones are restless souls wandering aimlessly around.”
“After the cyclone, I had very strange dreams about my children,” said thirty-five-year-old Kyi Kyi Win, who lost three of her five children during the height of the cyclone. “I constantly dream that my children are asking me to follow them. I get very scared and I feel like I am in hell. I went to a fortune teller and he told me that the children will go to a good place because they are innocent, but I still get unusual and strange dreams.”
“When it gets windy I can’t eat anything and I cannot sleep. It makes me think about the cyclone and about my dead children and I can’t stop crying.”
Kyi Kyi now constantly suffers from headaches and back pain. She also has trouble concentrating and has lost all interest in working. “When I think of my dead children, I just want to die,” she said.
Many aid workers say the survivors’ hidden or silent scars from the cyclone are much harder to heal than providing food and shelter. “It’s easy to help the villagers rebuild their livelihoods – to buy tools, fertilisers, livestock, fishing nets and boats, but its much harder to help them repair their minds so that they can effectively rebuild their lives,” said Kaz de Jong, a psychology expert with MSF who visited the Delta in the first few weeks after the cyclone.
The signs of post-traumatic stress are all too evident, according to aid workers in the Delta. People are still suffering from nightmares, limited attention spans, listlessness, problems concentrating and loss of appetite. They also complained of a host of physical symptoms -- back problems, headaches and other pains – all psychosematic results of trauma.
The key thing is to talk about it – talk to their neighbours, talk to the monks or talk to the priests, according to Dr Wamser. “It’s important to explain to them that there are alternative explanations -- meteorological and scientific -- than simply Karma to what happened. They need to understand that there is something they can do, they are not helpless, they can control their own destiny,” she said.
Almost a quarter of households in the cyclone zone have reported signs of deep psycho-social distress, according to a recovery plan launched in February by the United Nations, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Burmese government. But only 11 percent have received help,
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has trained more than 600 volunteers who make regular home visits in about 600 villages to help survivors cope with their loss.
MSF was one of the first aid agencies in Burma to recognise the significant mental problems Nargis had created. They have been running counselling sessions in the Delta from the start of the massive relief effort. In the past year they have managed to provide some form of counselling for more than 60,000 people, including 3,000 who received intensive therapy.
“The basis of our success with the work we have been doing is to teach patients relaxation techniques and to encourage them to open up and to talk about their feelings,” said Dr Wamser.
“Everyone was saying how resilient the people of Myanmar are,” said Brian Agland, country director for the aid agency CARE in Burma. “While that is true, there are still people who haven't gone through the process of fully grieving and understanding what happened,” he said.
But in Burma this is an up-hill struggle. The country’s health system is rudimentary at best; while mental illness and traumatic stress issues that are relatively new concepts to the country’s medical profession and government administrators. But they are ones that will have to be tackled head-on if the survivors are to fully recover from the affects of the cyclone a year ago.
“The longer you wait to treat these psychological problems, the more complicated the long-term mental health problems will be,” said Dr Wamser. ”Through relaxation therapy, meditation and prayer, they can tap into their own resilience and resources, which will help them kick-start a process of getting back on their own two feet.”
Psychological support is very important in coping with major natural disasters, especially in the long-run, according to the European-based NGO, MSF. “Mental health should be part of the initial relief response, along-side the first food parcels and first-aid kits,” Sebastien Matte, MSF programme manager in Burma, told Mizzima.
“Our psycho-social work has offered people in the Delta the possibility to talk, express and share their feelings. We hope they are now better able to understand, deal with their reactions and so able to tap into their resources as well as be better prepared for future disasters.”
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One year after Nargis 
