by Luci Yamamoto, Lonely Planet author.
Last spring Kevin and Mary Beth O'Donovan ended a three-year, round-the-world backpacking trip with a stop in Khao Lak, the worst-hit area on Thailand's Andaman Coast. For a month, they joined the Tsunami Volunteer Center, a grassroots group that welcomes all comers, skilled or not.
A boat stranded far from the sea.
From day one, when a Bangkok travel agent insisted that "Khao Lak gone, Khao Lak no more," they discovered a place clearly in distress.
Kevin joined a group building houses at a small village camp, 20km north of Khao Lak, called Thap Tawan, where inhabitants had lost all but their lives. Under the guidance of local foremen, the group planned to build 80 houses for the sea-gypsy community.
Kevin shoveling and sweating atop the remains of a foundation.
"It was a ragtag crew," Kevin says, "from 19 to 50, men and women, Japanese to French-Canadian." They dug trenches for foundations, mixed mortar and cement by hand, wheelbarrowed sand and gravel, and lugged and laid cinder-block bricks, which was "the more-relaxing work, believe it or not."
"The houses are certainly an improvement from the refugee camps or the nearby jungle," Kevin says, "but make no mistake, [even] by Western standards, it is an upgrade from having nothing or living in squalor."
Row of A-frame houses built for those who lost everything but their lives.
Kevin often relied on the advice of Lung Tien, the elderly mentor at the camp. While all the houses built were the same, Lung Tien designed an intricate, unique moulding theme for the railing of each unit. Though neither spoke the other's language, they managed to communicate through pictures in the sand.
"It never mattered how busy that guy was. He always had time to stop and help this confused farang [foreigner] understand why the hell a wall was going up wonky or why some plum line wasn't plum."
Mary Beth with one of her brilliant woodworking creations.
At the volunteer centre, Mary Beth eventually used her woodworking skills at the on-site carpentry shop, which builds basic furniture for schools and villages.
"New lumber was in short supply," Kevin says, "so we used leftover wood from the makeshift coffins used to temporarily hold bodies in the initial days of the cleanup." It might sound rather morbid, but Kevin adds, "A new beginning for this wood came with very loving, colourful paint jobs. The carpentry shop can really put a smile on your face after a hard day on another site." Each day brought new challenges that to the Western eye might be unexpected and rather counterproductive. For example the centre tried to encourage locals–who were often apathetic, fearful or depressed–to work alongside volunteers in hopes that they'd eventually take the ball and run with it.
"But the locals were afraid to work too close to the water," Kevin says. "Thailand is rooted in folklore, myth and Buddhist tradition. A rumour might start about another tsunami and everyone heads to the hills–so the last place you'd find locals was on the beach picking up rubble even if it was offered as a paid job."
Mary Beth is exhausted after hours of clearing rubble.
Everyone in Khao Lak has a story of serendipity–why they are still alive. Kevin heard countless harrowing stories that "resonate in your thoughts the entire time you work in the 30-degree-plus [Celsius] heat, oozing sweat from pores you didn't know you had, slathered in SPF 45."
"The tsunami affected all classes, whether the poor, the middle class and the wealthy," Kevin says. "In most cases there's no cash-cow nest egg or insurance policy to fall back on. Our volunteer coordinator, Sang, lived in the same government camps as the rest of the community."
Infrastructure was returning daily, but based on the number of foreigners and locals who arrived. "As more people showed up," he says, "more businesses reopened, more stock appeared on the shelves, and more locals could return to work.
"If the local economy can get rolling again through tourism, the relief effort can become self sustained rather than dependent on foreign aid."
"Let's face it," Kevin says, "you can't export the beach and the sand. It is an industry that exists only when people come to Thailand."
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