By U Win Aung

Kyaunt Palin Village, Paletwa Township

16 August 2008.

Our villagers are mainly farmers. Since September 2007, rats began to destroy our farms and plantations. As a result, we had no additional food stored for this year.

We have been experiencing shortage of food which had driven us to borrow rice from other villagers such as those from Miza and Troy Ai village in order to survive.

In many occasion, we felt we just waiting to die. We work hard on the field so we need to eat and fill our stomach with the rice that we borrowed. We cooked it with some Yam and banana tree’s trunk. It may not have much nutrition but it is more important that our stomach feel full.

We had no choice other than to borrow rice on a very high interest e.g. we paid USD$50.00 for a 30kg rice bag which normally cost about USD$20.00 and we had until December 2008 to pay back double the agreed price. Now I owe nine bags of rice with no ability of for repayment as all my labor in this field has been destroyed by the rats again. I am getting deeper into debts. I am not sure what the debtor will do to me.

Even now, there is a several shortage of food in my village. We will cook the rice that you gave us with banana leaves. I hope the rice can last until “i Love Myanmar team” return to help us the next time.

These rats eat anything even the spicy chillis. No food was spare by these rats. We did catch some of these rats and cooked them for food but they are not tasty. They had too much fat.

There are Rakhaing, Khumi and Cho tribes people who live in our village. There are all together 30 houses. 23 of them are Anglican, 5 Roman Catholics and 2 Buddhist families.

I am a Roman Catholic church member. The Anglican church helped their own members twice recently (450 kyats which is equivalent to USD 0.45 and 170 Kyats which is equivalent to USD 0.17). I did not receive any help from the Anglican church because I do not belong to that church although we are Christians.

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U Shwe Oo Tan

The leader of Kyun Chaung Wa

Since 2007 Septermber, the rats entered our village in large numbers and then they destroyed our farms. This season has been the season of harvest for us. We must stop the rats from devouring these precious harvest but we are unable to stop these pests.

I have kept watch of my farm day and night. We even set a fire barriers surrounding our food storage but the rats still penetrate the fire barrier. Every night, two men have to be set on watch to keep the rats away. We hope the rats will be burned by fire, if not we hope to kill them.

There are different kind of rats. Small rats led the way and the bigger rats follow the smaller rats. The bigger rats are about eight inches in length. I shot the bigger rats with a hunting gun.

Everyone is attempting to guard their harvest by night and also by day. We have no additional strength to help one another. This is not just my experience, rather everyone in the village. The rats are not afraid of people, on the contrary people are afraid of rats. The rice storage I intended for next year was lost overnight. We could not kill enough rats to save our harvest and food storage.

U Shwe shared his sad experience with us in much tears.  

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U Shwe Oo Tan