Determined to help

Tulsa 6/7/2008

Tulsan Chin Do Kham returned from his cyclone-ravaged homeland of Myanmar on Tuesday with a new determination to help the Myanmar people.

Speaking the language, dressed in traditional Burmese business attire and traveling with a group of native pastors, Kham was able to get into hard-hit areas that were closed to other Westerners.

He traveled 180 miles in eight hours to reach one heavily damaged area in the Irrawaddy Delta region, passing through five military checkpoints.

At each checkpoint, soldiers asked the driver if any foreigners were in the van.

"If they had known I was an American, we'd have been in big trouble," he said.

Myanmar's military junta has been reluctant to allow aid workers into the country to help survivors of the May 3 cyclone that killed more than 100,000 people. U.S. Navy ships laden with relief supplies left the Myanmar coast Thursday, forbidden to unload aid for hundreds of thousands of cyclone survivors.

Kham said soldiers drove villagers who were seeking help away from roads so foreigners would not realize
how bad the conditions were.

"They don't want to expose how poorly managed the country is," he said.

He said his fact-finding trip was exhausting, but fulfilling.

"I was able to do what I intended to do," said the former Oral Roberts University professor.

Most heart-wrenching, he said, was talking to people who had lost their entire families, their homes and their means of livelihood.

One man said he tied himself to a tree as the storm and a 12- to 14-foot tidal wave swept through his village. The next morning, his entire family of eight was gone, never to be found. His house was gone; his rice farm was inundated with saltwater, and his water buffalo, necessary to till the soil, were gone.

In the township of Bokalay, Kham was told, 70 of the 125 villages were gone. He talked to a man who said only seven or eight people in his village of 100 survived.

Villagers told him that before the cyclone, they were alerted by radio that a storm was coming with 40-mph winds. They were unprepared for the magnitude of the storm, with winds well over 100 mph.

He described people as depressed over their losses and resentful toward their government, which has done little to help them.

The need for housing, food and potable water is desperate, he said. Most wells in the hard-hit areas were flooded with saltwater.

Kham said he plans to return to Myanmar in July with money to help people.

He hopes to raise $300,000 to build 1,000 bamboo homes at $300 each and additional money to buy water purifying machines at $2,200 each.

"That's where my heart is, with these people," he said. "Foreigners will never have a chance to see them."

Kham is planning fundraising events through his Global Outreach & Community Development organization, P.O. Box 702322, Tulsa, OK 74170.

Before his trips into the rural areas, Kham worked for five days near Yangon, a major city and the former capital, with a Tulsa medical team from In His Image International.

"They were very well-received," he said.

"I've never seen a harder-working team."

Blair Kesler, with In His Image, said the team of eight doctors, one nurse and four helpers, including eight Tulsans, held medical clinics at seven locations, including primary schools, orphanages and private homes.

They saw 1,300 patients in five days and distributed 700 pounds of medicine and supplies and three water purifying machines.

In addition to providing medical care, team members counseled and prayed with disaster victims and their families.

Oklahoma's Southern Baptist relief team, headed by Sam Porter, was among many Westerners unable to get visas for Myanmar.

Porter's team of five Oklahomans and four Texans spent 10 days in Bangkok, Thailand, adjacent to Myanmar, where they trained Myanmar church leaders in relief procedures.

"We really feel good about it, even though we never set foot in the country," Porter said.

"We may have done more for them, because we trained them to do it themselves."

He said the team wrote a manual on how to organize and distribute aid while they were in Bangkok and sent the trained Myanmar workers back into their country with water purifiers.

"The biggest news, that none of the international media is reporting, is that the military government went to the faith-based groups (in Myanmar) and asked for them to help with the recovery work," Porter said.

"They knew that they were organized and compassionate people."

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