A Friend Of Mine Who Is My Adorable Hero..

[Thai_dye]

I just got some emails from my friend who has been helping out the tsunami victims at Wat Yanyao. I am not living in Thailand and did not realize how worse it was and is. By reading his emails, I almost bursted into tears. My heart goes out for him and the others who have helping out as well as those who are affected. I just thought this story should be shared to the word. Here is what he wrote to me.

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Day eight for me out here at the frontline, and while all my volunteer mates are out to help, I'm tied here at the Khao Lak nature resort because of an heavy diarhea. Don't dare to leave the vicinity of my toilet. But I wish I could join them, there are such great people, flown in from all over this world Like Bjorn from Sweden, Paul from Australia, Michael from Carlifornia or Manu from Belgium just with one intention "to help"..

In the aftermath of this disaster, the volunteers are catching the worst part of the impact, working everything, everywhere, everytime! It's the 17 years old girls who are among those carrieng the bodies, wiping the sweat from our faces and pooring water in our mouth with their sterilized gloves just before we are going back into the contaminated zone to help the forensics from Interpol to get the bodies of all those missing people out of the cooling container and out of their old bodybags into new ones. Now I know what it means that the body consists to 80% of water! At Wat Yan Yao in Takua Pa the scene is just surreal and beyond what humans mind can imagine. We are thrown into the largest forensic operation the world has ever witnessed. 14 forensic teams from all over this planet are involved, to identify the thousands of bodies of western tourists as well as Asians, which are decomposing in the open air. In the mean time I have to mention that the majority of it has been put into big cooling containers.

On my first day here we were flown in with an armyhelicopter but they've send us back as an order from the local authorities in order to prevent even more problems due an increasing rate of traumatised volunteers who are in need for professional consultation. This was the first shocking news we've encountered but easy to imagine as the village of Takua Pa is full of international rescueteams, army, coffins, people with masks on pic up trucks, dust and the smell of death. But the lack of psychologists has been finally not seen as the crucial problem as the lack of volunteers, which are needed to deal with the incredible mass of corpses and the time is playing against us. So in a second attempt to go up there to help we finally "succeeded".

They send us in into the now notorious wat yan yao temple, no assignment to a specific team, just in, 50m straight on, than on the morgue left, task: carrying bodies. I can imagine how the Germans felt when they entered the deliberated concentration camps 60 years ago. Though the background is different the secene plays in the same league. It unfolds towards me in a merciless none manicured reality that it let me forget that I was in search of a team, where ever one looks death was in ones view, in it's uglies form. Hundrets of bodies, subjected to the sun and the heat, woman, teenager, babies, children, in Bikinis or red bull shirt and you don't wanna know how they look like. Pictures of all those missing persons going through my mind, hard to imagine that these are the bodies of those from the pictures. I don't wanna get too deep in it.... so walk on... many people in white protection overalls and gasmasks, like in a bad X-file movie, noone takes recognition of you, I walk over to a group of people from the moon, who are standing there, sweating, taking notes. I stay with them, need a menthal time out, have to get use to this little by little. I recognise my friend Paul, his eyes saying more than a 1000 words. I don't feel like to get on my work right away as you would tear down wallpaper during a renovation.A truck is arriving, people running towards the doors of the container went open the smell released makes you feeling it kills you. Dripping, dirty bodybags piling up, another load this day. Noone talks, just grap it and carry it to the respective section, everybody functions like a machine, in long lines between the morgue and the lorry...

if there weren't those great guys in my team I couldn't bear it, civilians doing the dirtiest job in the worlds biggest catastrophe in peace times. In the evening you're having a couple of beers untill you are drunk doing the rebriefing, exchanging ones impressions, makes you go on with the work. Not to forget to keep ones humor! So the last to say for this day is to thank everyone for the work and help they have done carrying each other through this times and all those friends abroad for their nice and strenthening words, enabling us to go to the limits,

Thank you all.

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I am so proud of you ..you are my hero...Micky

[Tornado]

Your friend is a true hero!

[LaoPo]

I am speachless..but with great respect to all those 'working' there...it must be HORROR doing this for the families who are still waiting for news about their loved ones.

SO MUCH RESPECT!

LaoPo

[mr_lob]

Jesus - hats off to this guy - i managed 2 days at the same temple and it just got too much - he really must be made of strong stuff! Well done for you excellent efforts!

[The_Moog]

Makes me wonder what would have happened if the volunteers hadn't stepped up to the plate. Who would have done all the work?

Police here in Bangkok are too busy levying irrelevant fines from motorists to actually do anything that serves the public interest.

Army perhaps? (Perhaps the ones in Southern Thailand who have some related experience in this field).

I haven't seen any substantive recognition or gratitude. Yes, there is on Thaivisa.com - but elsewhere its like "Oh yeah, the Volunteers." (I realise the Volunteers aren't seeking it, but still.....)