Soon after the tsunami devastated the beaches of Thailand, the islands were hit again, this time by a wave of volunteers.
On December 26, 2004, Mickey Howley was online, about to book a month-long tour of Europe, when the first reports of the Southeast Asian tsunami flashed across his computer screen. As the death toll grew, so did a distressing feeling inside Howley.
“I felt I couldn’t justify going on a pleasure trip when I could go help out with the disaster, with everyone that had to be suffering over there and me with all my valuable skills,” says Howley, a self-employed fine-finish carpenter from Bellingham, Washington, whose trade has enabled him to live all over America.
That unrest led to a dramatic turn of events for Howley: He changed his travel plans and booked a flight for southern Thailand’s Phang Nga province, a place he’d never been. “I couldn’t even find it on a map,” he says. But despite his uncertainty, Howley was compelled to be there. He would soon find that he wasn’t the only one.
Immediate Aftermath
Volunteers, many of them students and backpackers, were already pouring into Thailand when Howley arrived. Many were traveling around Asia with nothing more serious on their minds than relaxation. Tirian Mink, a 29-year-old from Portland, Oregon, was on the beach at Koh Phangan, a southern Thai island, when he first heard the news. He had just finished a stint teaching English in Hat Yai, and he immediately scrapped his plans to head to Nepal—he and his friends began raising money for disaster relief. But, like Howley, he felt there was more to be done.
“The waiting and uncertainty of whether we’d be able to perform the tasks without throwing up, fainting, or becoming too disturbed to continue wore heavy on us… It was the smell that you noticed right away,” Mink would later write. “But as we looked around and saw the dozens of others working away, we knew we had to bear it.”
Most volunteers made the journey in spite of embassy warnings against travel to the tsunami areas, and arrived to scenes of overwhelming destruction. Howley’s first moments in Khao Lak were spent grappling with the scope of the devastation all around him.
“My first thoughts were, So this is what war looks like when Nature decides to join in,” he says. “It was all so immediate. One minute I was sitting on a bus where people were chatting, and then there was silence as we rounded the bend. It was actually the silence that caught my attention.”
The images are forever etched on his mind: hotels toppled, luggage tangled up in trees, a stray shoe dangling from a piece of twisted rebar 20 feet in the air. In a world of splintered wood and collapsed roofs, he knew his carpentry skills would come in handy. Over 6,000 people in Khao Lak and the surrounding areas were living in temporary camps. Even with undamaged materials scarce, it was important to start the rebuilding process.
But Howley sensed that, in the chaotic aftermath, with communications unstable and bodies piling up in nearby Buddhist temples, something more was required.
He went immediately to the Khao Lak Nature Resort, an eco-lodge adjacent to Khao Lak Laem Ru National Park that had been spared in the devastation. Thanks in large part to the efforts of lodge director Sombat Boonngananong, the resort had been transformed from hotel to triage outpost, and ultimately into the Tsunami Volunteer Center. As more and more people kept showing up, Howley began work where he was most needed: the center’s organizational efforts.
Rebuilding Khao Lak
Soon a routine developed. Following breakfast and a dawn meeting, each day’s volunteers were organized into different teams, based on their skills and experience. Those with construction experience of any kind were put on rebuilding projects, while certified divers were sent to comb the sea immediately off the beach for debris and salvageable materials.
Well-defined roles were tough to peg down, though, as the volunteer work constantly changed with the day’s needs. The day’s workload would consist of everything from tarping a roof until it could be permanently repaired and unloading supply trucks to greeting and giving mini-orientations to new volunteers and media. Those volunteers out in the field around lunchtime were encouraged to help the local economy by eating at nearby restaurants. In the evenings, exhausted volunteers were treated to guest speakers, musicians, and traditional Thai dance.
Inspired in part by this evening atmosphere, Howley took it upon himself to spearhead what became known as the 100 Days Festival.
“The 100th day after death is significant in Thai culture as the day on which the grieving for the lost souls is to cease, as that soul is liberated from its former life to pass on to the next,” Howley said of the festival’s origins. “This is the day of closure for those who lost family or friends in the tragedy.”
The 100 Days Festival was a rare bright spot in the first few raw months after the tragedy. Spanning over 20 miles of recovered beachfront, the event featured musical performances, dancing, workshops, art exhibitions, and parades. Above all, it was also a time of reflection and remembrance for everyone affected.
Built in part with whatever spare materials were available, the festival embodied the spirit of resourcefulness that has characterized the post-tsunami efforts in Khao Lak. With resources so scarce, nothing has been wasted. Spare coffins, the sad result of recovering fewer corpses than had been hoped, were recast as shelves and wood for new roofs. Extra donated clothing was used to make tsunami-related art and handicrafts, which were then sold to raise funds. And the primary resource—the volunteers themselves—has been maximized.
More than any other group, college students and backpackers formed the heart of the volunteer center. Thailand has for decades been a mecca for young travelers, and the tragedy has affected them in a profound way. Many did not have Howley’s carpentry experience or other practical skills, but Howley did not want to turn them away.
So the center’s philosophy became simple: Anyone who showed up to help would be put to work. For many, that meant cleaning up the beaches (over five months later, they are still strewn with debris) and working with local children. A generation of sudden orphans in Khao Lak means that the needs of children have taken center stage.
Camaraderie, and the Task Ahead
There’s still a reasonable stream of volunteers passing through the center, thanks partly to Khao Lak’s proximity to the backpacker nexus. A global village of twentysomething volunteers has developed around the center, represented by the various national flags flying on its flagpole.
During his days at Khao Lak, Tirian Mink has spent his time with the education team, working on everything from summer camp programs to teaching English classes to Thai volunteers at the center. It’s a far cry from his arrival at the devastated area, when the disaster was fresh and nausea, brought on by the smell of dead bodies in the tropical sun, was a constant threat. But it didn’t take long for the spirit of the place to inspire him.
“My mission in life right now is to volunteer and learn as much as possible,” Mink says. “I am fully into it. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe in the mission of this place.”
Mink echoes the sentiment of most of the center’s volunteers. Many of them endured painful and disturbing events immediately after the tsunami, but they stick around—and continue to arrive—because they make a difference. The feeling that they matter, that what they do is directly and vitally important to the people of Khao Lak, is something they can’t necessarily find back home at work or in grad school. And above and beyond the deeper meaning of helping their fellow man, the volunteers also manage to actually enjoy their time at the center.
A certain kind of normalcy has settled in Khao Lak, and there’s an expected camaraderie among those who have sweated through the slog of reconstruction. Beside the wall chart listing the center’s various reconstruction projects—Cape Pakarang Boat Building Shed, Nam Kem Village Construction—are fliers reading, “Fancy a game of footie?” and “Movie Night: Happy Snapper 8:30” and “Need a ride to Krabi?”
It’s the most fulfilling work of a lifetime, but Howley emphasizes that, in the tropical sun, away from the media attention, the work is very hard. And the center’s mission is far from complete.
“(It’s) always a challenge,” he says, especially “as the tsunami becomes more of an historical event than a current one, or the next big worldwide disaster takes center stage.”
For more information about the Tsunami Volunteer Center and Khao Lak, visit tsunamivolunteer.net.
Volunteer Abroad