Word: struck
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...junta excels at fear. Twenty minutes before meeting San San Khing, I was stopped at one of several checkpoints that have been set up in disaster-struck areas to keep foreign journalists and aid workers without the proper government permits out. A polite immigration officer took down my passport details, as well as the name and address of my local driver. His colleague told me that the cyclone had blown down his house. They didn't say it, but their demeanor was apologetic - a slight sense of embarrassment that their orders were to keep their wounded country closed...
Apparently, the country's top brass disagreed. Although certain districts ravaged by the storm had their polls postponed until May 24, Too Chaung was declared one of the cyclone-struck regions that had already "returned to normalcy," as the government-run newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar, put it. That would be news to Too Chaung's residents, who were still tying together bamboo poles and palm fronds to build crude temporary shelters the day of the referendum. Villagers who voted in a nearby school filed out quietly afterward, hardly looking pleased about participating in what the junta has touted...
...donations that didn't have the proper documentation to convince the soldiers patrolling the checkpoint. Within the town itself, where two-thirds of buildings were battered by the cyclone, some soldiers were tossing storm debris into military trucks. But other army men were busy questioning suspicious-looking outsiders. It struck me that almost as much effort was being expended keeping foreigners out as bringing...
...people of the delta fend for themselves. Farming families dry their recently harvested rice on nets spread out on the Bogalay road, and hang their damp clothes on the dead power lines. In the Bogalay area, the harvest was almost complete when Nargis struck, although much of it now lies unhusked in cyclone-crippled rice mills...
...century, we allowed our public life to drift toward too much show biz, too little substance. Yes, the low-information signals - the bowling and tamale-eating - are crucial; politicians have to show that they are in touch with the lives of average folks. But a balance needs to be struck between carnival populism and the higher demands of democracy, and as a nation, we haven't been very good lately with the serious part of the program. As a result, there is a festering sense - I've seen it everywhere I've traveled this year - that the country...