In wake of tsunami, fears of ghosts still haunt Thailand

by Griffin Shea, PHI PHI ISLAND, Thailand,

Few will actually admit to seeing a ghost themselves, but everyone has heard about them on this once idyllic island still rebuilding after the tsunami killed 700 people.

There was the woman who saw foreign tourists struggling to escape the sea almost a year after the tsunami, and the hotel worker who heard ghosts playing on the beach.

Guards at an oceanfront plaza on nearby Phuket's famed Patong beach said one of their men had quit after hearing a foreign woman cry "help me" all night long.

Similar stories abound of a female foreign ghost walking along the shoreline at night calling for her child.

Many Thais say they believe the souls of the nearly 5,395 people who were killed in the tsunami continued to haunt the Andaman coast long after the debris had been cleared away and reconstruction began.

It's not so much that the spirits are angry as confused. Many Thais of all faiths say that if people die in pain or by accident, their spirits remain lost until they understand what has happened and can move on.

For 26-year-old Lungyai Suriyaporn, her fear that ghosts were still wandering the beaches of Phi Phi was one of the reasons she stayed away from the island for nearly 10 months after the tsunami. Lungyai returned in October to reopen her backpacker lodge. Guests have been trickling to the modest two-story house, where she also runs a small convenience store off her porch.

She believes most of the lost souls from the tsunami have already moved on and no longer haunt the beaches, but says the memorial ceremonies planned for the first anniversary will help the ghosts that remain.

"This is good, to inform people about the tsunami, and to give ceremonies for the souls, for the ghosts that are still here. And we need to remember all of those who were here and lost their lives in the tsunami," she said.

Thailand will hold interdenominational ceremonies again on the first anniversary of the tsunami, with morning services on five beaches timed for the moment when the waves hit, and a larger candlelight vigil at dusk.

Fears of ghosts have kept Thais and many other Asians from returning to the tsunami-hit beaches, preferring instead to visit the Gulf of Thailand, where the deadly waves did not hit.

Sujitra Wichianirat, 35, an office worker in Bangkok, said she would not go to the Andaman coast even one year later.

"First, I'm scared of ghosts. Second, I'm scared of tsunamis because I'm worried it might happen again. If tsunamis happen, at least we know from the tsunami warning system and I can run away from it. But for ghosts, I don't know how to escape from them," she said.

Hundreds of bodies have yet to be identified - the Disaster Victim Identification unit says it has 805 bodies or body parts from unknown victims - which Sujitra said means the dead could be reappearing as ghosts to seek help.

From the moment the tsunami hit, Thai Buddhists have turned to monks to help soothe these lost souls.

When Thais along the Andaman coast began retrieving corpses, they carried them to temples, where hundreds of bodies were kept for months as the largest international forensics team ever assembled began the ongoing work of identifying them.

Temple grounds also became emergency shelters, where thousands of people sought refuge after losing their homes.

Just days after the tsunami hit, monks in their flowing orange robes began walking the beaches, sprinkling holy water, and visiting homes and businesses for cleansing ceremonies.

Muslim, Christian and Hindu religious leaders were also invited to join interdenominational prayer services and "merit-making" ceremonies, which Buddhists believe will help the souls of the dead find a better life as they become reincarnated.

Despite the fears of ghosts, Alan Oliver, an American researcher at the World Buddhist University in Bangkok, said that in general, the tsunami had not shaken Thai Buddhists' faith.

"In Buddhism, there is no 'God did this. Why did God do this?' They see it as a natural cause.

Buddhists view that life is imperfect. When a disaster like this happens, they just accept it as a natural way of things happening."(AFP)

Indonesia's children slowest to recover

JAKARTA, Indonesia's children are recovering slowest among those in countries worst hit by last year's calamitous tsunami, said a survey by the UN's children agency released Thursday.

More than 1,600 children from Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India, all of whom lost a home or relative in the disaster, were quizzed by UNICEF about their feelings on the catastrophe and their future.

"Among the four countries, Indonesia was the hardest hit by the tsunami and appears to be recovering more slowly," the survey report said.

"The children surveyed in Indonesia expressed a degree of pessimism in the shape of boredom, indifference, loneliness and sadness...They have the least optimistic view of the future and the highest proportion of children who feel their lives are worse now than immediately after the tsunami."

Some 168,000 Indonesians were killed out of an estimated 220,000 who died around Indian Ocean countries when the tsuanmi hit last December 26. Children were among those worst affected, with many orphaned and others suffering trauma that persists one year on.

One third of children surveyed in Indonesia believed that their lives would not improve, while in the other three countries 80 percent of children were positive about the future.

In India, Sri Lanka and Thailand, children said that during free time they feel cheerful and content, but in Indonesia, feelings of loneliness and boredom occurred more often.

Nearly a quarter of Indonesian children also said they often felt hungry and 19 percent said they were not eating as regularly since the tsunami.

UNICEF said that "the situation in Indonesia is the most challenging, with one quarter saying that their lives are worse now compared to one to five days after the disaster."

In all countries, the trauma still manifests itself in a fear of beach-related activities for one third to one half of the affected children, the survey found.

Virtually all children felt that additional aid was needed, most often support to stay in school, although more than nine out of 10 said they were back in classrooms.

The survey was commissioned to better understand how surviving the tragedy had affected children and to improve programs that meet the needs of the tsunami generation, UNICEF said in a statement.

(AFP)
 

First post-tsunami birth of baby

by TN Gopalan,

A tsunami survivor in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu has given birth to a child after undergoing surgery to reverse a tubectomy.

Officials say it is the first such birth since women who lost children in the disaster were given the chance to reverse the procedure free of charge.

Agnes Raj, 26, who had a baby girl on Sunday, lost all four of her children.

The tsunami killed more than 2,500 children in Tamil Nadu, India's worst hit state where nearly 10,000 died.

Baby 'fine'

Agnes Raj is married to a fisherman in Kottilpadu, a village in Kanniyakumari district, about 700km (435 miles) from the state capital, Madras (Chennai).

She had an operation to rejoin her Fallopian tubes at a private clinic in February and became pregnant the following month, her doctor, Indira Surendran, saido.

The baby was delivered in the same clinic in Nagercoil. Both mother and child are fine, Dr Surendran said.

Six other women who underwent the surgery at the same clinic have also conceived, she added. Senior district official Sunil Paliwal told the BBC that many women in Tamil Nadu had had surgery to reverse tubectomies following the tsunami.

But he said Agnes Raj was the first of the women to give birth. The district has received money to pay for eight more such operations, he added.

Hope

Operations to reverse vasectomies and tubectomies are available free of charge in Tamil Nadu at all state-run facilities.

Women who want the operation done privately are given 25,000 rupees (about $555) to pay for the operation to reverse their tubectomy.

The state government announced in March that it would foot the bill to pay for those whose children died in the tsunami to have the chance to conceive again.

The news brought hope to poor parents who had had birth control operations but could not pay for them to be reversed.

Tsunami toll remains elusive

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, Bustari Mansyur shrugs wearily when asked how many bodies his workers retrieved from the mangled wreckage of last December's tsunami. The question seems irrelevant.

"There were so many bodies, we could not count," concedes the chairman of the Aceh chapter of the Indonesian Red Cross, which took on an unofficial role as body-counter in the days after the disaster. "On the first, second, third day - there were a lot of bodies. We don't know how many - the government, until now, does not know."

The December 26 tsunami slammed mercilessly into coastlines around the Indian Ocean, resulting in devastation so complete that skeletons are still being retrieved as the grim cleanup labours on a year afterwards.

The most widely accepted estimates of the final toll add up to around 220,000. But significantly different figures are still being offered: the Roman Catholic charity Caritas Internationalis suggested Wednesday that closer to 400,000 lives were claimed.

Entire villages were obliterated - leaving no one to report deaths - while buses and cars were sucked out to sea. Bodies were buried rapidly without identification amid fears that a second wave of disease would hit survivors.

Records from many wiped out areas, already mired in poverty and stricken by deadly conflicts, were frequently patchy at best.

In Indonesia, the Jakarta-based spokesman for the Red Cross told AFP that it planned to release a report later this month on its work in Aceh, which would include a toll. Finalising one, however, is no longer a priority.

"We are continuing our tracing and mailing program consistently but our focus is now to rebuild Aceh and move beyond body count," Hadi Kuswoyo said.

In a June report, the Red Cross said 131,029 were killed and 37,066 missing. Satkorlak, the government agency tasked with coordinating responses to disasters, puts the number of dead at 130,013, but has the same missing figure.

A post-tsunami census carried out in devastated Aceh province, meanwhile, found that 4,031,589 people were now living in Indonesia's westernmost province, down by 238,411 on the figure compiled before national elections in October 2004, though officials drew no conclusions.

In Sri Lanka, estimates of the dead range from 21,000 to 41,000 people and officials admit that double-counting and confusion immediately after the disaster may have distorted figures.

Police records show that 20,936 people were killed and police maintain that only 421 people are still reported missing. Aid agencies however cite a figure of 31,000, based on a report from the social services ministry.

Official records in India say the final death toll is 10,749, with 5,640 still missing, mostly on the Andaman islands but figures from different agencies there have also been conflicting.

Thailand has an official toll of 5,395 dead and 2,817 missing, but these figures have yet to be reconciled with the work of a Disaster Victim Identification unit, which has been steadily scratching names off a list of missing and returning remains to families.

The DVI says it has 673 names left on its list of the missing, but it has 805 bodies or parts of bodies that still need identification.

Colonel Khemarin Hassiri, the police official heading the forensics effort, said the tsunami probably killed many who were in the country illegally - such as workers from Myanmar - who were never reported missing.

Thailand's sea gypsies still adrift after tsunami

by Griffin Shea, KHURA BURI, Thailand

Even before the tsunami washed away their homes and destroyed the boats that were their livelihood, Thailand's sea gypsies lived in a culture struggling to adapt to the modern world.

One year later, many say they still feel adrift in a sea of change as they rebuild their lives.

For Chon Klatale, 43, rebuilding means making longtail boats, the traditional wooden vessels that are key to the survival of his seafaring community that lost everything when the tsunami ripped through Phra Thong island off Thailand's Andaman coast.

He is among nearly 200 people still living in temporary housing on the grounds of the Pa Samakee Dharm Buddhist temple in Khura Buri, in the hardest-hit southern province of Phang Nga.

As he smoothes the wooden planks on a nearly finished boat, Chon remembers hearing that the tsunami was coming from his son-in-law, who was working at a tourist bungalow on the beach on the morning of December 26.

He was able to alert the village to run to higher ground, and Chon says no one died, but the villagers lost most of their boats and fishing equipment.

His village of Moken, one of three groups of sea gypsies in Thailand, fled Phra Thong for the mainland, where they found shelter at the temple.

Traditionally, the Moken were nomads of the sea, moving among villages on the islands of the Andaman in Thai and Myanmar waters, travelling as they have for centuries with little regard for modern borders.

For those who choose to keep the old traditions, which have no custom of fixed addresses or property rights, they often find they are essentially squatters, living in national parks or on private property.

Chon's village was built on private land, but he says the owner allowed them to stay. Many have already returned to the island, but with help from the Buddhist monks at the temple, dozens of Moken families are preparing to settle on the mainland by clearing land for a new village.

"The land on Phra Tong island belonged to somebody else, but they agreed to let us stay there without paying anything," he explains.

"But the land here, we are safe from disasters, and it's easier to live here. Here we have electricity and lights, it's easier for our children to go to school and to buy food."

The head monk in Khura Buri, Phra Kru Suwatthi Thammarat, says the temple has bought land for the Moken to build new homes on the mainland, and is leasing it to them for only 200 baht (about five dollars) a year.

That arrangement gives them property rights that they have never had.

Some 32 families have already moved to the new site, but 45 others remain in temporary aluminum or plywood homes on the temple grounds while the land is cleared for their new homes, Suwatthi said. The temple has also opened a boat workshop, where a volunteer from the town has come to show the Moken how to build their own longtail boats.

Suwatthi says the Moken have received help from local and international charities - noticeably in the donated temporary housing - but that the monks want to show them how to support their families over the long term.

"The most important thing is, you must stand for yourself," he says.

"People came to help them, but they say, 'we have a boat already, we have fishing equipment already, we don't need new ones'."

Many Moken and other sea gypsies settled decades ago into permanent villages in Phang Nga or the neighboring resort isle of Phuket. But for those used to traditional ways, the idea of having one permanent address on the mainland is still unsettling.

Jut Klatale, 65, says she hasn't seen the new village yet.

"We're all just waiting for the new village to be ready. The land there looks like a jungle, so they have to clear the land to make the new houses," she says as she weaves new crab nets while on the porch of her plywood house at the temple.

"My life has to be near the sea, because I earn my living by fishing. I cannot stay far from the shore. I can't do another job," she says.

Jut's neighbor is more skeptical, shouting from across the way: "If the new village is no good, I'll look for another island to live on."

The deep-rooted ties to the old ways appear to have helped save the Moken during the tsunami. Those living the most traditional lives suffered the least during the tsunami, says Derek Elias, who works with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Bangkok.

Typical Moken homes raised on stilts above the water's edge provide an ideal lookout point for unusual movements of the sea.

And although last year's tsunami was the first in living memory, the Moken have a word for the deadly waves, which feature in their folklore.

"They tell a story about the great wave, primarily a story to scare kids," Elias says.

"It does teach you fear, it teaches you to be afraid when you see the water doing weird things."