Loss and redemption: tsunami survivors and the sea

Loss and redemption: tsunami survivors and the sea
By Montira RUNGJIRAJITTRANON
Phang Nga, Thailand (AFP) Dec 19, 2024

As an eight-year-old boy Pirun Kla-Talay was orphaned by the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. Now he makes his living from the waters that claimed his parents.

Each morning the fisherman sets out from Bang Wa district in his red and yellow boat, selling his catch at the local market in southern Thailand.

For tsunami survivors, the sea can represent both beauty and sorrow.

"The sea makes me sad and happy at the same time," said Pirun, now 28. "It reminds me of loss, but it also shaped who I am today."

On December 26, 2004, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake -- one of the strongest tremors ever recorded -- unleashed a devastating tsunami that ravaged coastal communities in Thailand, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives.

More than 225,000 people were killed, and entire neighbourhoods were wiped out. In Thailand there were more than 5,000 officially confirmed fatalities -- around half of them foreign tourists -- with another 3,000 left missing.

Pirun was birdwatching when when an eerie sound interrupted him.

"As an island boy, I knew the sound of waves," he said. "But that wasn't normal."

Pirun ran to alert his neighbours and climbed to higher ground, where he could only watch in horror as the monstrous wave swallowed everything in its path.

"I thought I wouldn't survive," he said.

His house was near the shore and both his parents were killed.

Once an enthusiast for the water, the loss left him terrified by the sea and he suffered from insomnia, being woken by the sounds of waves at night.

He was taken in by his aunt and the family left their home on Phra Thong island for neighbouring Bang Wa on the mainland, where he slowly began to rebuild his life.

- Fish dishes -

Between 1,000 and 2,000 children lost at least one parent to the tsunami in Thailand, according to a United Nations Relief Web humanitarian information service.

Watana Sittirachot, now 32, lost his uncle, who had cared for him since his parents' divorce.

Playing a computer game in an internet cafe in Ban Nam Khem, he saw the floodwaters approaching his village from the distance.

"Suddenly, people started running and yelling," Watana recalled, and he was taken to the village shelter.

Watana's uncle was reported missing, his body never found, leaving the 12-year-old devastated.

"My uncle was a great cook," Watana told AFP. "Every time I eat fish, I still think of him. He made the best fish dishes."

As he battled with depression, a teacher invited him to stay at Baan Than Nam Chai Foundation, an institution two Thai social workers founded for tsunami orphans.

Watana became one of its first 32 residents in 2006. Now he is the secretary-general of the foundation, which has adapted its focus to care for more than 90 children whose living parents cannot do so, including prisoners.

"We have to move forward," he said. "Nobody is going to stay with you forever."

Fisherman Pirun's wife Janjira Khampradit also looked to the future.

"Meeting him taught me to live each day as if anything could happen," she told AFP, "and to embrace life to the fullest".