Devastation unifies array of helping hands

By Rafael D. Frankel

PHUKET, Thailand—Nishan Padayachee and Gayle Beckwith do not have much in common.

Padayachee, 24, from Canada, was partying at the full moon festival with 20,000 other back packers and travelers on Koh Phangang, an unaffected island off Thailand’s gulf coast, the day after Christmas. Beckwith, 52, a missionary from Iowa who lives with her family in Bangkok, was enjoying a quiet dinner with family friends the same day.

But despite their differences, both of them said the decision to come down to Thailand’s Southwest coast to assist in the relief effort here was a given.

“My family prayed about it, and all of us knew we had to come. It wasn’t a hard decision,” said Beckwith, who made the all-night drive down here the night the disaster struck with her husband and two children, 23 and 16.

Though volunteers here from Thailand and around the world share widely varying faiths, languages, and ages, all of the thousands who have come to assist with the difficult relief efforts came for the same reasons, they said in interviews here on New Year’s Eve and Day.

“It was so hard to accept everything that was happening,” Padayachee said after spending Dec. 31 moving and bagging decomposing bodies at Watt Yan Yao 60 miles north of here. “I felt like the only thing I could do was to come down here and help.”

For many of the Thai volunteers, who have seen the devastation wrecked upon their own country, and who’s own people have not only died but lost their livelihoods, there was also the sense of providing everyone caught up in the tragedy with a sense that they were cared for.

They were also responding by a plea from revered Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej to show a united front of generosity. “We’re ready to help those in trouble, with dedication, mercy and sincerity, no matter whether they are Thais or foreigners,” he said in his New Year’s Eve address to the nation.

Over the last week, Somboon Petnuk, 57, a native of Phuket, has cooked meals at the disaster relief center, held hands in hospitals, and distributed free clothes. A fruit stand operator at a local school, Petnuk said she didn’t have any particular skills to offer, but she wanted to teach all the children at the school about helping people.

“Everyone is hurting right now. We have to make everyone feel like they are family so we can all care about each other and help each other,” she said on New Year’s Day at the disaster relief center at Phuket Town Hall.

As Buddhists with a different outlook on death, the Thais have in general taken a much different attitude about the disaster than their foreign counter parts. While local families are grieving just the same, the Thai volunteers’ less somber mind-set has at times baffled the foreign volunteers, said Marco Buch, 29 from Germany.

However they have also “made me smile when I needed it,” Buch said. “They are always trying to make us feel better.”

And if they were meaning to be an extended family during dark times, they had succeeded, said Swede Max Alder Ring, who’s country may have lost as many as 3,000 people here. “It’s amazing how nice people can be to each other,” Ring, 20, said. “I just wish it didn’t take something like this to bring it out.”

Many of the foreign volunteers were themselves caught up in the day-after-Christmas tsunami yet emerged mostly unscathed.

A feeling of being saved by fate, or “some higher power,” contributed to Carl Johnston’s decision to help out. The 32-year-old Canadian emergency medical technician also said there was also a feeling of guilt that he survived while others he was with on a beach in Krabi province were carried out to see in front of his eyes.

“Next New Year’s, when I look back on the year, I want to feel like I did everything I could,” he said, taking a break from helping an Australian forensics team identify bodies at Watt Yan Yao on Dec. 31. He and a friend who were volunteering there were sleeping on the floor of a local shop.

Back in Phuket, after days of grueling work in Patong, Takua Pa, and Khao Lak, Ring, Buch, and Padayachee shared a drink together at midnight of Jan. 1 to mark the new year.

Having seen things together none ever imagined possible, and helped those stricken with grief, the three, who would be going their own ways Jan. 3, said they would stay in touch in the future. “I don’t know if anyone else could really understand if I talked to them about this,” Ring said.

And when asked what they had taken away from the experience, Ring and Buch nodded in silent agreement at Padayachee’s answer: “Life is short.”

© 2005 Rafael D. Frankel and The Chicago Tribune