Headed by movie star and opposition supporter Kyaw Thu, the association normally provides coffins so the poor can get a proper burial. But since the weekend storm, the charity's pickup trucks and volunteer workers have been one of the main lifelines in the disaster zone.
They delivered 4.4 pounds of rice each to many families Wednesday and promised to return in a few days with more.
Villagers said that they saw cartons of instant noodles unloaded at a government office and that officials kept them for themselves.
The only help the villagers received from the government was half a pound of rotting rice, they said, and the absurdity made them laugh.
Residents said they were used to the military, which has ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, since 1962. The generals who rule one of Asia's poorest countries also sell gems and timber through state-controlled companies.
The storm flattened the wood-frame home of Kyaw Kyaw, 38. Like most of the village, Kyaw Kyaw, his wife and their two small children had taken refuge across the road in a Buddhist monastery that remained standing despite losing its roof.
A bus conductor, Kyaw Kyaw earned $1.50 a day before the cyclone struck. The storm knocked out power to most areas in the south, so the plant that provides compressed natural gas for the buses is shut down.
Villagers are helping one another rebuild their homes with materials they can scrounge locally, but like Kyaw Kyaw, they need donated food to survive.
Thousands of homeless people across the devastated countryside in the south are living anywhere they can, in restaurants, Buddhist temples and ruined buildings, any place that offers a little shelter from the heavy rain that is expected over the coming days.
One family crouched like cave dwellers in the remains of their collapsed shop, where they had just enough space between the fallen roof and the floor to move around on their haunches. Others scavenged in the rubble of destroyed and abandoned homes for usable pieces of wood and corrugated roofing.
Already poor, the eyes of many of the villagers were bloodshot and yellowing in wan, weary faces.
One mother who needed a rest from carrying her infant put him on the fallen roof of a house and gave him a small piece of a shredded bamboo wall to play with, as casually as she once would have put him on a chair.
By late Friday, it remained unclear what the military regime might allow by way of assistance, including help from the United States and other Western countries.
