Three men are standing in a circle on a Rangoon street, speaking into a mobile phone on speaker. It seems almost comical that they regard this as their safest option, but in fact they drove for an hour to find a quiet street, and to talk on their home phones not only increases the chance of being detected by the Burmese military but could also lead to their families being arrested.
The men are talking to me through Ma Mar, an Australian National University PhD scholar who works tirelessly for the country of her birth through the Canberra-based Australian Burmese Association.
They have just returned from remote villages in the Irrawaddy Delta, the southern tip of Burma devastated by Cyclone Nargis on May 2-3, where they joined a group of friends in an extraordinary trip to help the survivors with money raised by the association. Ko Thu, Ko Kyaw and Ko Myo (not their real names) are all in their 30s, middle class by Burmese standards, and educated. They are also scared. They have reason to be: arrests have begun.
A well-known Burmese comedian who goes by the stage name of Zarganar has been arrested after going into the Irrawaddy Delta to donate relief items to survivors of Cyclone Nargis.
Two days later, the state-run newspaper, New Light of Myanmar, accuses ''self-seekers and unscrupulous elements'' of colluding with foreigners on fictional stories from the delta with the intention of ''tarnishing the image of Burma''.
This is Burma, a totalitarian state run by a paranoid and brutally repressive military junta. A place where you need to be careful about even what runs through your mind, lest you say something out loud that gets you locked up, tortured or killed. Now, the basic human impulse to help fellow countrymen and women after a catastrophic natural disaster, is considered a threat to the regime.
''We aimed at those who had no help,'' says Ko Thu through static on a bad line. ''We wanted to help those in most need, so we went to very remote areas that were difficult to access.''
Although I don't understand what Ko Kyaw is saying until Mar translates, I catch his hesitation after I ask about the state of the villagers when they arrived.
''Their skin was yellow,'' he says after a few moments. ''They were shaking, frail, and when they knew we had food they came out shaking and shivering. They were so weak; they hadn't eaten for some time. The whole village flocked to see us they were ecstatic, just completely overwhelmed to see us.''
The aid expedition went to villages that had still not received even basic aid food, drinking water, shelter a full month after the cyclone hit. As late as last week, more than a month after the cyclone, basic relief was still to reach most of the cyclone's estimated 2.4 million survivors, according to the United Nations.
US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates has said the cost of the junta's obstruction was ''tens of thousands of lives''.
The actions, or rather the inaction, of the Burmese military junta in the days immediately after Cyclone Nargis often defied comprehension, at least to those unfamiliar with its callousness.
The cyclone devastated the Irrawaddy Delta, one of the richest sources of rice for Burma and much of Asia, leaving an estimated 133,000 people dead or missing, yet Government relief efforts were nowhere to be seen for days. When the military did appear its efforts seemed, bizarrely, to be almost entirely directed at organising the May 10 referendum, which enacted a new constitution that consolidates the junta's already unassailable power.
Foreign aid workers were denied access to Burma without visas, while vast amounts of emergency aid supplies sat uselessly offshore in ships and planes, waiting for approval from the isolationist regime. In the first week of June, four US Navy ships that had been sitting off Burma full of relief supplies returned to normal duties after the junta repeatedly rejected their offer of help.
As something of an authority on Burma, Mar, who fled the country 14 years ago, has never held too many illusions about the junta. She recalls watching helplessly from the Thai-Burma border as the regime snuffed out last September's saffron revolution, in which thousands of monks took to the streets in protest against the regime.
Yet Mar was still shocked by some of the things she heard in the days and weeks following Nargis. Regularly in contact with a friends in Burma, she learned first-hand that soldiers were actually selling rice to cyclone survivors outside of Rangoon; that corrugated iron was being sold, maximum of four sheets per house, to Rangoon residents; and that homeless survivors were ejected from schools and monasteries in the lead-up to the referendum.
''Selling rice!'' she exclaims. ''Can you believe it? The Burmese are not just angry at the military, they're disgusted.''
The days immediately after Nargis were hellish for Mar, as they must have been for most other Burmese expatriates. Sick with worry she hadn't heard from any of her five sisters or her father she dropped all thoughts of working on her anthropology thesis and spent most of each day scanning news reports on the internet and watching news bulletins on television. Sleep, when it came, was fitful.
Eventually she heard from her family, who were all OK, but the news from Burma just seemed to get worse. There were really two disasters: first the cyclone, then the aftermath in which the regime seemed to abandon the survivors to a slow death from starvation and disease.
Two weeks after the cyclone the Australian Burmese Association organised a function in Turner that raised nearly $7000. Other donations came from Sydney, Melbourne, and even Germany, taking the total to $20,000. Concerned by news stories about restrictions imposed on international aid agencies, the association decided to send the money directly to a grass roots volunteer organisation in Burma called Saytana Shin (''generosity'' in English).
Mar explains that Saytana Shin is an organisation highly respected by the Burmese for its integrity. Made up of people from a variety of backgrounds, from professionals to labourers, it works with more than 30 Buddhist monasteries to help people in times of crisis. Her friends Ko Thu, Ko Kyaw and Ko Myo the three men on the mobile phone are members.
Saytana Shin wasted no time when the money from Australia arrived through a trusted agent. They raced around Rangoon buying rice, blankets, tarpaulins, drinking water, medical supplies, and clothing. Many businesses offered generous discounts when they learned they were selling supplies for Nargis survivors. They hired boats, borrowed tractors, and filled their cars and trailers with the supplies.
Taking leave of their families and jobs, the group then headed into the Irrawaddy Delta. There were no comforts: one of the group's photos shows the men sleeping on the hard wooden deck of a large ferry they hired.
As if the challenges of getting to remote villages surrounded by flooded rice fields were not enough, the aid expedition had to dodge the military. Recent news stories in the international media have told of soldiers at road blocks conducting searches of every vehicle, checking the identification of all the passengers, and turning many people away from the delta.
''We had to be very secretive,'' Ko Myo says. ''If we went openly, the military would stop us to take our supplies. In order to avoid them we had to avoid the main roads, which made the journey much more arduous.''
The men told Mar that their cars and trailers frequently become bogged in mud. They said the five-day expedition was exhausting. ''I can see from the photos that they lost a lot of weight,'' she says, smiling.
It wasn't long before they saw the first bodies. Many floated among the carcasses of cows, bloated from weeks in the sun. Some were alone; others lay in groups of five or six where they appeared to have huddled together during the cyclone. They were often in grotesque shapes, hanging from branches or over river banks. The men put on masks to cope with the smell.
Over five days the expedition visited many villages, including Kunchon Kong, Mawgyun, Po ya pon, Laputta and Bogalay. Most of the villages they reached were scenes of utter devastation.
The survivors were huddled together with no shelter, having been exposed alternately to torrential rain and burning sun. Some had lost even the clothes on their backs during the cyclone; in photos men can be seen wearing female longyis (sarongs), defying a powerful taboo out of necessity.
Ko Thu says the cyclone survivors were ''like ghosts''. They were physically and emotionally devastated. To survive they had cooked leaves and pulled rotting meat from the carcasses of cows. Some were too weak to walk, and those that could shook uncontrollably as they tottered unsteadily towards their rescuers. When one of the bags of rice was accidentally dropped in the water several villagers fell into the water, clutching at it. ''They were so overwhelmed to see us,'' Ko Myo says of one of the villages. ''We were the first to arrive with any food and supplies. This was the first time they got any clean, dry longyi and clothing. They hadn't eaten for some time and they tried to find any kind of pot to cook rice in.''
The expedition realised with alarm that they hadn't thought to bring extra cooking pots, assuming there would be plenty at the villages. In one photo from the expedition a man cooks rice in a pot while about 20 emaciated villagers sit nearby, looking on hungrily.
The monasteries were invaluable to the aid expedition. Because young men are obligated under Buddhism to spend time as a monk, in a kind of religious national service, each monastery had many links with surrounding villages. The monks knew which routes to take. They could tell Saytana Shin members which places needed medical supplies, which ones needed clothes, or where food was needed the most. In many cases the monks simply took control and distributed the aid as required, which was also a safer option since even soldiers, Buddhists themselves, respect the monks.
The importance of monks in the devoutly Buddhist country can not be overstated. Mar heard from friends in Burma that in the days immediately after Nargis, when Government relief efforts were nowhere to be seen, it was the monks who set to work clearing trees from roads and sheltering the homeless.
''The Burmese trust monks, who are very special to them,'' Mar says. ''If monks say something, the people will follow.''
Mar explains that a central concept of Buddhism in Burma is in the practice of Dana, the obligation and virtue of giving. People regularly donate to the monks, even the poor. The monks themselves practice Dana by donating back to the poor, or anybody else in need. Even soldiers practice Dana, which is one of the reasons why when the saffron revolution was put down, the monks refused gifts from them the highest insult to a Burmese Buddhist.
The power of the Dana tradition means that monks are uniquely placed to distribute aid free from military interference, Mar says. ''Even though military might try to stop the aid process in some areas, they cannot break a thousand-year-old tie between the monks and the people.''
Back in Rangoon, standing out in the street around a mobile phone, Ko Thu, Ko Kyaw and Ko Myo recall how difficult it was to leave the villages in the Irrawaddy behind. ''They have nothing to survive on, and no help is coming,'' Ko Thu says. Mar covers her face, suppressing tears.
The men say they have enough money for maybe two more trips to the delta, which are so arduous they need to take about $5000 of supplies each time to make them worthwhile. They don't know how long they can continue taking time away from their jobs and families, but they will shoulder the heavy burden of responsibility for the people they left behind because they feel they have no choice.
''We won't give up and will continue doing whatever it takes, because we know it's the only way they will survive,'' Ko Thu says.
As the conversation winds up, the men thank Australians for their humanity and generosity. ''You are very far away, yet you sent us money and your hearts reached all the way here to us,'' Ko Kyaw says.
''We desperately need help. Only outside help will allow us to continue.''
People can donate to the Australian Burmese Association by contacting them on 0401742608, or by email on helpburmese@live.com.au
For more information visit http://www.helpburma-cyclonevicti ms.blogspot.com/ or http://saytana.wordpress.com/