Village life before and after the Myanmar crisis: Hard to harder

For the past year, Rambamithleng has a fixed routine. He stirs out of bed- a soiled sheet stretched over planks of rotting wood-even before the slightest streak of red has bloodied the eastern sky, finishes his morning chores, and then shuffles towards the far side of the makeshift tents perched precariously on the hillside that he now calls home.

- Prawesh Lama

There, the 40-year-old and his family of five have cut two small squares out of the mossy sheet of tarpaulin. He looks out at the verdant mountainscape stretching out before him, the gurgling waters of the Tiao river gushing many hundreds of metres down a steep slope. As the first rays of the Sun hit the mountain in the distance, they also illuminate the embers of what used to be his family home before they were gutted by the junta in an escalation of the simmering conflict that has ravaged the region.

"It wasn't always like this. I had a decent house because I worked with the government. Our homes were bombed by the military because they said our village had rebels," Rambamithleng said.

Since last November, when he fled the clashes between Myanmar's ruling junta and armed rebel militias, Rambamithleng has called the remote Mizoram town of Zohkawathar-that shares the porous frontier with the restive neighbour his home. Around them are another 6,000 people orphaned by the sudden conflagration, now living in a maze of tents sitting in the middle of a muddy clearing - a jumble of green and blue tarpaulin kept up with bamboo poles struggling to hold together the shattered remains of their once-normal lives.