• Struggling for survival
• 'Washed up' fishermen turn carpenter and build their own boats
• 'Tsunami village' rises from rubble
• Inspired by Church aid, sea gypsies turn to Christ
• Foreign aid crucial
• Body ID center looks future
• Shoddy housing doesn't make a home
• Outside volunteer carves new career in housing
• Counting the costs to the environment
• Underwater tourist trails
• Turtle hatchery at risk after waves
• Where the money went
• Covered for everything but the wave
• Corporations learn that caring counts
• Starting again from scratch
• Swedish survivor gains perspective after wave 'turned my life upside-down'
• Reasons to smile
• Justice will prevail, investor believes
• Courage and resilience ease personal pain
• Help wanted
• Second chance to get it right
• Tide turns on tourist demographics in Khao Lak
• Light on the horizon
• One day at a time
• Widows and orphans left out in the cold
• Art for the heart
ORPHANS
LIGHT ON THE HORIZON
No longer hiding in fear, Burmese families along the Thai Andaman coast are now receiving long-term assistance and greater understanding
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| Nuay with her children in their small room at a construction site. Although life is difficult for them, they are content with what they have. |
On Dec 26, 2004, 12-year-old Dao was selling souvenirs on Khuek-khuk beach in Phangnga province. She was lucky to escape the deadly waves that day.
''I ran and ran,'' she said as a few of her friends looked on. ''I also helped some of my relatives and [pointing at a nearby young girl] her when she fell down.''
But the other girl, Ming, denied that her friend had been a heroine. ''No ... no, it's not true, I was running by myself, and I only saw you when we were on the mountain,'' she said with determination in her eyes.
Dao lowered her eyes a bit and did not insist that she helped eight-year-old Ming. She is not a complicated girl, so it was easy to see that Dao was not telling the truth about the ''rescue''. It's understandable that the young girl would want to embellish a little on the events of that chaotic day, which have left such a deep imprint on all those who survived.
Today, Dao, the daughter of Burmese migrant workers, is no longer running around on the beach selling souvenirs, partly because there are not so many tourists after the tsunami. Nor is Ming working on a rubber plantation, another common occupation for Burmese in the area, both children and adults.
The two girls are now involved in a more normal pursuit for children their age. They are being educated at a learning centre provided by Grassroots Human Rights Education, with cooperation from the Foundation for Children. There are four such learning centres in Phangnga alone.
''I lost three relatives in the tidal waves, but I am lucky that my parents are still alive,'' said Dao in very clear Thai. Dao's parents are now working at a construction site in Bang Niang.
Ming was with her parents on a rubber plantation when the tidal waves hit Phangnga beaches last year. None of her relatives were killed, but they were living in fear for a while. ''We were afraid that the police would arrest us,'' said Ming, who was not sure if her parents were staying legally in Thailand. But she was aware of the apprehension felt by all Burmese families in the area.
Another girl who also spoke Thai fairly fluently said her family went back home after the tsunami but decided to come back to Phangnga. ''There were no jobs for my parents in Mohlameung [Burma],'' said 11-year-old On.
On feels that she is lucky to have a chance to study Thai, and thinks it will be a great help to her and her parents. ''I want to be able to communicate with the people in Thailand,'' she said.
Dao, Ming and On and 112 more young people are studying at the learning centre located on a rubber plantation in the Bang Niang area. They come to the centre every day, and obviously are happy to be there.
But when asked if they want to go back to Burma, they answer, practically simultaneously, ''Yes''. All three girls said they want to be doctors when they grow up, because they ''want to help other people''.
They study Thai three times a week for a total of nine hours. They also study English, Burmese and other subjects. Most of the teachers are Burmese who formerly worked on construction sites and rubber plantations.
Some of the teachers have degrees from universities in Burma, but took unskilled jobs in Thailand to escape the economic and political turmoil in Burma. They are now happy they have a chance to educate their young people and use their knowledge.
At Bang Niang Learning Centre there is also a nursery where 36 children aged from two to five years old play together. They sing along and dance to VCDs purchased in Burma.
LIFE ON THE JOB SITE
The destruction around the tsunami-hit areas is still very apparent, and Prakarang Cape even disappeared as a result of the tidal waves. Yet many new construction projects are mushrooming along the beaches of Phangnga and Phuket provinces. Most of these projects employ Burmese workers. Many of them come with their families, others get married in Thailand and start families here.
''Life isn't all bad, when we look at the brighter side,'' said a worker who was sitting in a dilapidated shed on a construction site near the former Prakarang Cape, chatting and drinking with friends. Many young children run around the site in the evening, some with Burmese powder, tanaca, on their faces.
Most of the workers stay in crude housing. For example, at the Bang Niang construction site, the place Nuay calls home is a room about four metres long and five metres wide, which the labourer shares with her other four family members. All four walls of the tiny room and the roof are made from sheets of corrugated iron. The room is like an oven in summer, said Nuay.
But this little place is well-equipped with a television set and a CD player pumping out karaoke music, the latest hits from Rangoon. Since they cannot go out easily, the Burmese karaoke tunes are their chief source of entertainment.
Nuay was back home when the tsunami hit. She heard about it over in Burma and learned that many Burmese had died in the disaster, but she decided to come back to Thailand anyway.
''Back home, I have no land and no job. That means no money, so I came back to the same place where I used to work before,'' said 37-year-old Nuay, a mother of three.
When Nuay returned to Phangnga she found out that many of her friends were gone forever. No one really knows how many Burmese were killed that day.
Nuay's neighbour Aou, like many others, escaped the tidal waves on the tragic day by running up the mountain far behind the construction site.
''We were afraid of the waves, so we started running to the mountain,'' he said, pointing it out. Aou said many Burmese workers were already there when he made it to the higher ground. ''Later,'' he said, ''So many groups joined us. They were afraid of the police roundup.'' He was talking about the widespread arrests of Burmese workers in the early days after the tsunami, because of allegations that they were looting the properties of Thai people.
Aou would not say that all Burmese are innocent, ''But I can tell you that most of us would have nothing to do with looting,'' he said, very serious.
Aou said that in the four years he and his family have been staying in Thailand, he has met both kind and unkind Thai people. After the tsunami hit he and seven other Burmese followed a Thai broker to Surat Thani province.
''We thought he was helping us because we were in trouble, but we found out later that he just wanted to use our labour, so we ran away from him.
''But then we met another Thai who was so kind. He gave us a ride back here to Phangnga province,'' said Aou.
After the tragic incident, Aou continued, most Burmese workers were living in distress and fear. He described those days: ''No work, no money, no assistance and the police were rounding us up.''
A few weeks later, the migrants began to receive help from some non-governmental organisations.
''We found staff from MAP [Migrant Assistance Programmes] and they helped us to take care of our emergency needs. Later, we organised a labour exchange programme [for workers to share information and ideas] and held some meetings. Here, we found out that we were not alone in the world,'' Aou said.
MAP is one of many Enos that are lending a helping hand to these Burmese workers. The organisations have banded together to form the Tsunami Action Group (TAG).
Many NGO staff speak Burmese, although they are mostly Thai. Apart from emergency relief and legal services, they also help the workers to communicate with the outside world, and especially with Thai citizens.
Aou is a leader at the Bang Niang construction site. He organises the meetings for labourers to share their knowledge and help each other. The labour exchange is one of many activities initiated by the.
''We want Thai people to understand us. We don't want Thais to think of all Burmese workers as bad and as looters,'' said Aou.
BUSINESS AS USUAL
In the months after the tsunami, the developers began to resume construction projects, and the workers were back on the job.
Most male Burmese workers earn from 180 to 200 baht a day, with female workers earning slightly less.
Aou said many workers are made to pay a special ''fee'' to police, even though they may be legally registered with the authorities.
''Our employers told us that we need to pay the police the fee, which is about 600-700 baht a month. -But we cannot wander around, that covers us only within the construction site. If we want to go out there is no guarantee that we will be free from arrest,'' another worker said. The allegation about the ''fee'' was immediately denied by all surrounding police stations.
Many Thais look at the Burmese workers as being very different from them, but in fact most of them are Buddhists, as are most Thais. They like to put up small Buddhist statues on shelves in their small rooms, and many Burmese workers in Bang Niang go to Bang Muang temple to worship.
''The abbot at the temple is so kind, he does not think of us as Burmese or Thai. We are all Buddhists,'' said Aou.
''The abbot makes sure that we will not be arrested in the temple, but he cannot guarantee that we will be safe outside the temple premises,'' he added.
Dah, a mother of three, talked about life on the construction site. She said many Burmese workers grow vegetables for their consumption at the sites: ''We can save some expense by growing vegetables, but not all of us like to do so.''
She said that more Burmese have been coming to work in Phangnga recently, and certainly, some of them do not register to work. ''We want them to be registered so that they can live in peace.
''If we had work at home we couldn't have to come here,'' she added.
Both Aou and Dah are from a small island in Burma. It takes more than a day and a night to travel from the island to Victoria Point, the nearest major town in Burma. Aou has never been to school because there was none on the island. He cannot even read and write Burmese.
He has two sons and a daughter. His youngest son, Win, is now attending the learning centre in Bang Niang and learning Thai. But 15-year-old Win has to work at the construction site with his father.
Win was a little bit shy and lowered his eyes when asked if he also wanted to study. As if to console his oldest son, Aou said, ''I've learned that many people who finish a college degree don't even have a proper job. Many become construction workers here - they are underemployed.''
Aou was a small-scale fisherman on the island, but later he had to go to work on a big commercial fishing trawler.
''We needed money. We caught some fish on our island, but it wasn't enough to make ends meet,'' said Aou. He decided to come to Thailand after he learned there were job opportunities here.
''Thai people don't take advantage of me,'' he insisted. ''I only feel inferior when I cannot speak Thai and communicate with people around me. I want to be able to communicate in Thai so that we can understand each other better.''
Living in a foreign land without full rights, it's understandable that Aou has some feelings of fear and uncertainty. However, he does not blame anyone or ask for anything beyond basic consideration as a human being.
''We only want to meet more good Thai people. We want all employers to pay our wages when we have already worked hard. Employers should also give us registration cards so we will be free from arrest and we can see the doctor or get some medicine when we are sick.''
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