Mangroves
It refers to the sometimes motley collection of trees and shrubs that grow in coastal habitats in tropical and subtropical climates. Yet, these nondescript resident of many a tropical coast play a huge role in absorbing the impact of windstorms like tropical cyclones. The absence of these protective barriers, as detailed here on the Beeb, played a large part in allowing Cyclone Nargis an unimpeded and untrammelled run into the country, slamming into it at 120 mph with a 3.5 metre storm surge, leaving possibly one hundred thousand dead and a million homeless.
And those images from the news services and in the newspapers show a scale of devastation that is utterly beyond our imagination and scope. Add to this a ridiculously insecure military junta masquerading as a government and you have the disaster exacerbated by a bunch of twits who have only just allowed the first United Nations relief flights to land. Earlier on, these flights were refused permission to land because the junta was reluctant (for whatever reasons) to accept help!
It just makes our upcoming Batam Build trip with the Habitat for Humanity all the more meaningful and perhaps by doing our little bit in building some houses, we will climb out of our cocooned existences and perhaps make it a better day for somebody else.
Reservations
When I heard the absurdly small first estimate of casualties, I wept. Because that obviously false estimate, made by Myanmar authorities who were looking for a quick fix and a desperate cover-up, meant that the casualties were high. When I heard 20,000 I knew it would be at least 100k casualties in days, and perhaps five times more over weeks from disease and exposure.
Those old tyrants impoverish their country, refuse to allow aid packages, attempt to withhold resources; it is the way of the gerontocrats. We all know that these fellows keep the rice for themselves. And now, a lot of the rice trail will vanish into the water.