Tsunami orphan draws international attention

By Rafael D. Frankel

PHUKET, Thailand—“Please take care of this child. I cannot feed him. The parents died from the sea in Patong. If you cannot take care of him please send him to an orphanage.”

With that note written neatly in Thai laying next to him the day after the tsunami hit this island, hospital workers found what they guessed was a ten-day-old baby lying in the grass of Suan Luan Public Park after being alerted to his presence by local residents.

Named Luke Kluen, “Baby Wave” in English, by the nurses at Vachaira Public Hospital where he is being cared for, he was awake and hungry on Tuesday as On-A-Nong Chumrak, 30, fed him a bottle.

Little more than a foot tall, Baby Wave has a full head of spiky black hair that stands high on his head. His eyes slowly took in the surroundings of the nursing quarters which he has alone to himself among all the babies in the nursery here.

His is a special case, and Baby Wave has not been a burden to anyone here, Chumrak, a nurse at Vachaira hospital for ten years said, smiling. Taking his head entirely into her cupped hand, she sit him up for a burping. “Everyone is so happy he is here.”

As word of his survival and circumstance has spread around Phuket, Baby Wave has begun receiving gifts from local residents. Baby powder and food, diapers, lotions, stuffed animals, a mobile, and even an orchid were sent to the hospital for him.

The hospital staff thinks it was local villagers who found him, though they are not sure. They assume it was someone who was too poor to care for him, Chumrak said.

As a society still based very much on close family ties, children in orphanages are not as common in Thailand as in many countries around the world. Children who lose their parents here are invariably cared for by members of the extended family.

Accordingly, the hospital will keep Baby Wave for at least a month in the hopes that a family member who hears the story comes to claim him.

However with the tsunami destroying entire families in Phuket, they are not sure if anyone will come. If that is the case, it appears Baby Wave will not be going to an orphanage like dozens of other Thai children here—the government has no firm count—who lost entire families the day after Christmas.

“Many people want to adopt him,” Chumrak said. “Already we have about 20 families asking to take him. Even one from Canada.”

© 2005 Rafael D. Frankel