Even before the tsunami washed away their homes and destroyed the boats that were their livelihood, Thailand’s sea gypsies lived in a culture struggling to adapt to the modern world.
One year later, many say they still feel adrift in a sea of change as they rebuild their lives.
For Chon Klatale (43), rebuilding means making longtail boats, the traditional wooden vessels that are key to the survival of his seafaring community that lost everything when the tsunami ripped through Phra Thong island off Thailand’s Andaman coast.
He is among nearly 200 people still living in temporary housing on the grounds of the Pa Samakee Dharm Buddhist temple in Khura Buri, in the hardest-hit southern province of Phang Nga.
As he smoothes the wooden planks on a nearly finished boat, Chon remembers hearing that the tsunami was coming from his son-in-law, who was working at a tourist bungalow on the beach on the morning of December 26.
He was able to alert the village to run to higher ground, and Chon says no one died, but the villagers lost most of their boats and fishing equipment.
His village of Moken, one of three groups of sea gypsies in Thailand, fled Phra Thong for the mainland, where they found shelter at the temple.
Traditionally, the Moken were nomads of the sea, moving among villages on the islands of the Andaman in Thai and Myanmar waters, travelling as they have for centuries with little regard for modern borders.
For those who choose to keep the old traditions, which have no custom of fixed addresses or property rights, they often find they are essentially squatters, living in national parks or on private property.
Chon’s village was built on private land, but he says the owner allowed them to stay. Many have already returned to the island, but with help from the Buddhist monks at the temple, dozens of Moken families are preparing to settle on the mainland by clearing land for a new village.
”The land on Phra Tong island belonged to somebody else, but they agreed to let us stay there without paying anything,” he explains. ”But the land here, we are safe from disasters, and it’s easier to live here. Here we have electricity and lights, it’s easier for our children to go to school and to buy food.”
The head monk in Khura Buri, Phra Kru Suwatthi Thammarat, says the temple has bought land for the Moken to build new homes on the mainland, and is leasing it to them for only 200 baht (about $5) a year.
That arrangement gives them property rights that they have never had.
About 32 families have already moved to the new site, but 45 others remain in temporary aluminum or plywood homes on the temple grounds while the land is cleared for their new homes, Suwatthi said.
The temple has also opened a boat workshop, where a volunteer from the town has come to show the Moken how to build their own longtail boats.
Suwatthi says the Moken have received help from local and international charities — noticeably in the donated temporary housing — but that the monks want to show them how to support their families over the long term.
”The most important thing is, you must stand for yourself,” he says. ”People came to help them, but they say, ‘We have a boat already, we have fishing equipment already, we don’t need new ones.”’
Many Moken and other sea gypsies settled decades ago into permanent villages in Phang Nga or the neighbouring resort isle of Phuket. But for those used to traditional ways, the idea of having one permanent address on the mainland is still unsettling.
Jut Klatale (65) says she hasn’t seen the new village yet.
”We’re all just waiting for the new village to be ready. The land there looks like a jungle, so they have to clear the land to make the new houses,” she says as she weaves new crab nets while on the porch of her plywood house at the temple.
”My life has to be near the sea, because I earn my living by fishing. I cannot stay far from the shore. I can’t do another job,” she says.
Jut’s neighbour is more sceptical, shouting from across the way: ”If the new village is no good, I’ll look for another island to live on.”
The deep-rooted ties to the old ways appear to have helped save the Moken during the tsunami.
Those living the most traditional lives suffered the least during the tsunami, says Derek Elias, who works with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation in Bangkok.
Typical Moken homes raised on stilts above the water’s edge provide an ideal lookout point for unusual movements of the sea.
And although last year’s tsunami was the first in living memory, the Moken have a word for the deadly waves, which feature in their folklore.
”They tell a story about the great wave, primarily a story to scare kids,” Elias says. ”It does teach you fear, it teaches you to be afraid when you see the water doing weird things.” — AFP
