May 12th: Report on Myanmar

1. No foreigners allowed in any of the disaster areas.
2. No cameras allowed in disaster areas.
3. Donation / charity groups are springing up all over the country and the world. Many are raising cash. Many are collecting items (clothing, etc). Some items are being delivered to disaster areas.
4. Some areas are still off-limits, as survivors are over-eager to get their share of the distribution that sometimes it can lead to looting. People have reported being stopped at knife-point and asked to give more food / items, in some areas.
5. Once you get in the field, a lot of people come back literally with only the shirt on their backs. I.e. you go there with a jacket and a teeshirt, you only come back with your tee.
6. Bodies are still visibly floating in the water. Will take a few more days for them to sink or decompose.
7.There are 100,000 survivors. For example, $2Million will come to about a dollar per survivor for 20 days. As food prices have soared and no one can grow their own food anymore, a dollar a day is not enough to sustain life. So if we up the burn-rate to 2 dollars per day, the number of days comes down to 10 days. This is just for food. It doesn't include shelter, clothing, funds for business to re-start.
8. We need a few billions of US$ in total. How to get that? That's the big question.
9. Also with loss of human lives, so many many many cows and bulls have perished. These people cannot recover without their tools of trade along with farmlands.