Gaysorn Nu-Thong looked across the wasteland that used to be Ban Nam Khem village and screamed for her daughter. The two-year-old girl was nowhere to be found.
Gaysorn gave no thought to her own injury, the blood from a deep cut on her foot mixing with the saltwater and sand the ocean had left behind. After being washed away from the wooden home where she had left her daughter sleeping, all that mattered was seeing her again.
"Mig, Mig," she shouted her daughter's nickname, but the only answer was silence.
Gaysorn was alone. Her husband, 36-year-old fishmonger Aviroot Intarasawat, had left home for the pier as usual that morning. Gaysorn prepared for her husband's return. He always came home on the weekends with a big supply of fish, and it was her job to have buckets ready and help sort and clean them. She had thought nothing of letting little Mig, Sunisa Intarasawat, enjoy her sleep.
Now they were gone. Her husband would be miles away, if he were alive at all. Her daughter was so small and defenceless against the power of the wave. Gaysorn, too, was at a loss, struggling to even recognise where the family home once stood.
"It felt like war, like after an explosion," she said.
Gaysorn kept screaming, and kept limping. She tried to enlist a neighbour in the search for Mig, paying little attention to the other woman's injuries. The neighbour gave what reassurance she could, saying Mig might have been rescued. Looking at Gaysorn's bleeding foot, she said it was hard to search for survivors with an injury that bad.
The pain from her wound became unbearable. Reluctant as she was to make the decision, Gaysorn boarded a pickup bound for Takua Pa Hospital. The journey was short, yet every rattling metre took her further from the search for her family.
The district hospital was overwhelmed. Patients, families and even makeshift medical facilities had spilled out into the grounds. "It was crazy," Gaysorn said. "There were thousands of people. They were either crying or shouting out people's names, just like me."
Gaysorn had her wound cleaned, stitched and bandaged, allowing her to move more freely from room to room seeking news about her family. In one room she found a familiar face. Pen, her husband's aunt, was more seriously injured and was confined to a bed waiting for an operation. Auntie Pen had no information about Mig or Aviroot, but promised she would pass on anything she heard.
For two days, Gaysorn stayed in and around the hospital hoping for a glimpse of her daughter and husband through the crowd. In quieter moments, she remembered the waves and thought, "Why me?"
- The Fisherman
- The Survivor
- The Rescue Pilot
- The Photographer
- The Searcher
- The Nurse
- The Body Collector
- The Animal Lovers
- The Returned
- The Benefactor
With no bed and no luck, Gaysorn decided she could not sit still any longer. Her foot had improved enough, and she wanted to be actively looking for her family. She caught a lift along the main road, but the pickup would only take her as far as the Ban Nam Khem turn-off. She walked the last five painful kilometres in the hope her husband and daughter would be waiting.
Seeing what had become of the village filled her with a grim fear.
"All I saw was the village was filled with pieces of wood from the broken houses, trees, cars and dead bodies. I started to cry and almost fainted," Gaysorn said.
None of the neighbours who had stayed behind had seen either Mig or Aviroot. Convinced her daughter and husband had died, Gaysorn decided to return to the Takua Pa Hospital and the rescue centre set up outside the district office next door.
She found Auntie Pen in a recovery room, the surgery having been successful, and explained what she saw at Ban Nam Khem. The two women had never been especially close, but at that moment Gaysorn thought Auntie Pen was all that remained of her family. They broke down crying.
Time passed with no sign of hope. Five days after the wave, Gaysorn was sitting in the shade of a tree at the rescue centre when she heard a familiar voice. "Ple, Ple!" a neighbour yelled out her nickname. Gaysorn turned around, happy to talk to someone she knew.
"I found your daughter."
Tears came again, only this time they were joyous. When told Mig was in Khura Buri, 60km away, Gaysorn rushed to the street in search of anyone who would take her there.
Her heart raced as she sat in the back of yet another pickup. The trip was less than an hour, but seemed to take forever. When they arrived in Khura Buri, she went straight to the address she was given.
"Mummy." Gaysorn said Mig's voice "was like the sound of the angels". She cried and held her daughter tight. "At that moment I promised myself I would never let her go again," she said.
Mig had been lucky. She floated on the water and no harm had come to her. The family from Khura Buri had seen her walking through the rubble alone and taken pity on her.
Gaysorn was relieved at how well the family had cared for Mig. They were strangers, but they were welcoming and invited them both to stay for as long as they needed. Grateful as she was, after six days she summoned the courage to return to Takua Pa. Having heard nothing, she was convinced all that was left to search for was her husband's body.
Eleven days after the wave, the chaos of trying to piece lives and families back together had begun to become more organised. Gaysorn was required to fill in paperwork at the Takua Pa rescue centre, and just as she was writing down her husband's details her daughter cried out.
"Mummy, mummy. Daddy! Daddy!"
Gaysorn looked down at Mig and saw the man she was pointing at. There stood the husband she never expected to see alive again.
"Aviroot!" she shouted and ran into his arms.
In that first emotional hour reunited as a family, they shared stories about their ordeals. Like his daughter, Aviroot survived the waves without a scratch on his body. He immediately set about searching for Gaysorn and Mig, starting at the ruins of their home in Ban Nam Khem. By the time he arrived, his wife and daughter had gone.
Aviroot made his way to Takua Pa Hospital, and was reunited with Auntie Pen just a day after Gaysorn had tearfully poured out her worst fears. He learned Gaysorn was at the nearby rescue centre and ran from the hospital. He found the same neighbour, who told him Mig was safely in Khura Buri and that Gaysorn had left only five minutes earlier.
He decided to stop and wait. Aviroot did not know six days would pass before his family would return, but he knew they were alive. n
Today
Since the tsunami, Gaysorn has refused to live in Ban Nam Khem. She has spurned offers from the military to build a home for free. “I am trying to stay as far as possible away from the wave,” she said. “The wave took away everything in my life. Even though I did not lose any of my loved ones, it did leave me with a big scar and I refuse to live in fear by the ocean again.”
In 2006, Aviroot found a job in their home town, Nakhon Si Thammarat, and Mig was also sent there to live with Gaysorn’s relatives. Gaysorn stayed in Phangnga, at the Home and Life Foundation. The couple grew apart and later divorced.
Aviroot sees Mig often since they live in the same province, and Gaysorn spends every school holiday she can with her. Gaysorn is living at the Home and Life Foundation full-time, finding comfort in being located on higher ground and surrounded by mountains.
She said it gave her a new life. She has a new husband and they have two beautiful children together: a boy, Thi, 6, and a girl, Nam Thip, 4, pictured left.
Her relationship with Aviroot can never go back to what it was, but they both still share the same mission: to ensure Mig has a wonderful life and bright future. n