Wat Yan Yao
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Three months on, there is renewal amid the signs of destruction
Sydney Morning Herald (subscription), Australia - 21 minutes ago
By Connie Levett. Wat Yan Yao, Thailand's main temple storehouse for the
tsunami dead, officially closed on Thursday. The disaster ...
By Connie Levett
March 25, 2005
Wat Yan Yao, Thailand's main temple storehouse for the tsunami dead,
officially closed on Thursday. The disaster victim identification
specialists, morgue volunteers and grieving families are gone.
Three months after the tsunami, the monks hope to return the temple
compound in Phang Nga province to its former life, as a roadside Buddhist
sanctuary.
Along Thailand's damaged Andaman coast are signs of the wave's destruction
and of human renewal. In the fishing village of Nam Khem, which was swept
away, a long-tailed boat still lies beside the road a kilometre from the
beach. Nearby soldiers hammer away, building a new community of small
homes.
In Khao Lak, the hardest-hit of the resort beaches, where thousands of
tourists died, the Seaview restaurant has become an unlikely attraction,
thanks to striking video images that record the disaster as it unfolded.
Visitors go to see where the footage was shot - the DVD sells for 300 baht
($10) in Phuket. At the badly damaged Khao Lak Princess resort there is new
cement rendering on walls.
In the wooded hills south of Khao Lak is the volunteer centre, where, on
average, 120 Thais and foreigners are based, building houses, making
furniture, teaching English in schools. At one village they built 14 houses
in two weeks.
"We aim to get people housed, to look at how we can support people back
into work, and bring tourists back so people can get an income," said
Sophie Konnaris, the 33-year-old Englishwoman who co-ordinates the centre's
non-Thai volunteers. She expects the centre to operate for at least another
year.
The centre provides tools and materials and teaches villagers the skills so
they can make furniture in small businesses.
The landscape of Khao Lak is as raw as an open-cut mine. Away from the main
beach, 24 resorts have reopened, and a group of bungalow owners plan to be
back in business by November 1, the start of the high season.
"The highest priority is to regreen Khao Lak," said Richard Doring, who ran
a small bungalow resort. The problem is that while the authorities have
done a remarkable job of clearing away the debris, there is little money
for landscaping. Mr Doring, a German travel writer, has asked the German
embassy to fund a large replanting project. Swedes and Germans were the
biggest foreign casualties in Khao Lak.
Beyond the red dirt landscape, the psychological scars in Khao Lak run even
deeper. The Government defined everyone as healthy on February 14 and
ceased funding psychological counselling there, Mr Doring said.
Clearly everyone is not healthy. The signs - insomnia, diarrhoea, thinking
about the tsunami all the time, bouts of uncontrollable crying, inability
to leave the house - are prevalent.
"There is one man, an engineer, who can still only say 'Yes, yes, yes'. If
someone parks their car towards the sea, he will turn it around, so they
can get away quickly if another wave comes," Mr Doring said.
One local initiative to bring traumatised Thais out of their homes has been
to run cooking classes for women on the beach, to break down fear of the
water and the ghosts, people whose bodies were never cremated, who some
Thais believe are still out there searching for food, warmth and shelter.
"The main purpose is to have a beach barbecue for women. And the next time,
for them to bring their kids," Mr Doring said.
Khao Lak will never be what it was on Christmas Day, 2004. Wat Yan Yao may
never lose the stench of death. But everywhere people are trying to rebuild
their lives.
cheers
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