Not far from the ocean, but safe from it, deep in the forest and up a red dirt road is a tsunami refugee camp of corrugated metal sheds.
The group I am with is here near what’s left of Khao Lak, Thailand to visit a temporary preschool that we soon will make permanent somewhere else. The refugee school is a rickety bamboo platform that tilts down hill and covered by a simple canvas roof. It’s not much, but it’s like every other preschool: chaotic – the attention span of a child turns out to be cross-cultural. We brought the children things to play with – paint and clay – and they took them and made pictures of islands and water and elephants. A boy tells me the word for elephant is “Chang,” and I don’t tell him I already know, since it is also a word for “beer.” Later they take us to a waterfall near the camp and pose for pictures by it.
Many of the camp’s residents seem happy to see us – an old lady offers to share her lunch. And on our way out a very friendly woman is selling trinkets made in the camp and more out of guilt than need I look them over before declining to buy. But what I really noticed was that she was wearing a t-shirt that had on it a picture of Osama Bin Laden.
One of the many misfortunes of the Tsunami was how it struck so many areas already in political turmoil. Just the other day in the area of Yala, south of Phuket along the border with Malaysia, bombs controlled by cell phones were going off – planted by Muslim separatists. There is a war on terrorism here too that is an ongoing thing and over a thousand have died. As you go farther south in Thailand it becomes less Buddhist and more Muslim and the Muslims areas have seen mostly neglect from the majority Buddhist government.
When the Tsunami struck Phuket it hit Muslim and Buddhist areas and killed lots of others two – on December 26 there were only survivors and victims but when a Muslim child was asked by a reporter why it happened he said it was to punish the Buddhists.
Refugee School in Kao Lak, May, 2005
It’s hard to say if some of the foot dragging on aid down here is a part of anti-Muslim anger or just the usual foot dragging graft and incompetence, but many of the projects I’ve worked on are to help the people least helped and they often turn out to be Muslims.
I’ve returned to Phi Phi Don again, spending several frustrating but rewarding days helping to build a school for the local Mosque. What’s left of the old school is floor tiles of jade green, even the palm trees near it were swept away. Who knows if my being here, working along with the Muslim Thai’s, is doing any good – and my masonry skills kinda suck so I just hope the walls stay up. But if this Tsunami has any bright side, it is that some Muslims will see us westerners as friends again and in some small part the war on terror can end.