Sammy Samuels, 27, a native of Burma - the name he prefers over Myanmar - turned on his phone to find more than 20 messages.
" 'How's your family? How's the synagogue?' " Samuels, who now lives in New York, recalled his friends asking. "I had no idea what they were talking about."
Firing up his computer and clicking on a television, the news of the terror wreaked by Cyclone Nargis threw his world upside down. It would be three grueling days before he knew his parents and two sisters were alive and physically, if not emotionally, unharmed.
"In his 60 years, my father said he never had an experience like that. . . . The sound, the wind, the rain. All the power lines went out. They were all sitting in the dark. All the trees were [down] on the street," Samuels said in a telephone interview earlier this week. "And we live in a big apartment building [in downtown Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, formerly known as Rangoon]. My father said he can't even imagine what would happen in the small outlying villages."
Remaining in New York, where he moved for college and now works, became untenable for Samuels, who intends to move back to Myanmar when the time is right. Today's government reports indicated that about 130,000 were dead or missing. At least one international organization placed that number at more than 215,000.
"I know my family is fine," Samuels said. "But I just can't stay here during this difficult time."
So he boarded a plane Wednesday morning to head home for two weeks, to be there for his family, for his community, for the estimated 2.5 million Burmese people who need help most. He carried with him suitcases of supplies, including water purification pills to make 2,000 gallons of potable water, which came to him thanks to Scott Klepper of Cottonwood Heights, who left one of the many messages on Samuels' phone.
The 47-year-old business consultant, an avid traveler who has seen most of southeast Asia, made a first-time visit to Myanmar in March. His photographs, taken over 13 days, depict a land of breathtaking beauty and a people of unmistakable warmth.
Still high from his travels, Klepper shuddered to think of the nightmare unfolding in the cyclone's aftermath.
"I couldn't not do something," Klepper said. "I couldn't not try."
Klepper knew of Samuels because he had sought out Myanmar's one synagogue in a country that's nearly 90 percent Buddhist, which is cared for by Samuels' father, Moses. He certainly didn't expect to find a Jewish community in this southeast Asian country, but when he saw Yangon's Meshmeah Yeshua Synagogue listed in his guidebook, Klepper, who is Jewish, and his girlfriend had to check it out.
There, in the middle of Yangon's Muslim neighborhood, Klepper met Moses and learned about the community's history. The synagogue, established in the mid-1800s, was once about 3,000-people strong. Today Myanmar, population 48 million, has 20 Jews, or eight Jewish families.
The Samuels, who like many other Burmese Jews came from Baghdad, have decided to stay because of their commitment to the synagogue and their love of the Burmese people, Sammy said. For 35 years, Moses has been the caretaker for the synagogue, which is supported and often looked out for by its Muslim neighbors.
As of two weeks ago, the synagogue lost its roof. The windows were blown out, and the premises water-damaged. Still, the grounds, which include a small covered space, are sheltering some of the homeless which include a Jew, a Muslim and a Buddhist, Sammy said.
Klepper called Sammy wanting to know what the community, the people (not just Jews) needed. Drinking water, a generator to help boil more water and restoration of the synagogue (which could shelter many people) were the three objectives he and Sammy came up with.
Klepper e-mailed family and friends, looking for donations. He contacted Wisconsin Pharmacal, maker of water-purification pills, and secured, at cost, 6,000 pills to purify 2,000 gallons of water. DHL offered to ship overnight, for free, the supplies to Sammy. Klepper raised, in less than three days, about $2,500. Some excess money was used to buy anti-diahrrheal pills, Sammy said; the rest will go toward the generator and supplies while he is in the country.
A Monday night event for Sammy in New York raised another $3,500, giving him the means to buy medicine, bug repellent, more water filtering systems, food and whatever relief is needed, said Sam Krentzman, the special projects coordinator at the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at New York University which helped organize the gathering.
In a disaster zone where international aid efforts are being thwarted, Sammy - a Burmese citizen - can do what many others can't. He said he does not plan to stay in Yangon but wants to travel to the hardest-hit delta region. Will Recant, who oversees disaster relief and humanitarian efforts for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which partnered with Klepper, and has workers on the ground, knows Sammy and is impressed by his mission, which he said will easily impact hundreds of lives.
"He's a smart guy, he's seen stories, read reports and he's spoken to our people," Recant said by phone. "But it will be a shock when he gets there."
As he prepared to fly out to Myanmar this week, Sammy wouldn't say he was nervous about what awaited him.
"Maybe a little bit," he said. "But it's more exciting that I can do something."
