I spend an inordinate time at the press center organized by PhiPhi26community.com today uploading photos. From this vantage point at the Phi Phi Inn, which was also generously converted into a temporary medical center earlier this year until the official clinic was up to speed, I peer above the booth set up for The Children of Phi Phi.
"Do you work with Children of Phi Phi?" I ask the farung volunteer. He volunteered when he arrived on Phi Phi recently. But he didn't want to just mill around the beach on holiday he implies. He was fortunate enough to be in Europe when the tsunami hit, but his girlfriend actually was on Phi Phi (unscathed) and witnessed the devastation first-hand.
"Little hands" says Guy, the owner of Maprao, are what made the difference in Phi Phi, "not the government, not NGOs." I listen to Dew, a Thai and Phi Phi Inn employee, as she show me photos of the three-foot and higher rubble being cleared by volunteers heaving shovels and ancient wheelbarrows:
"We had no machines."
Ralph at HiPhiPhi via email tells me that over 3500 foreign volunteers paid their own way and individually pitched in with local community.
In the heat of the day, I walk by an area piled with a "day's worth" of debris. It's purposefully set aside, and bamboo picket sign reads (with CAPS intact below):
This area has been HAND cleared many times by local community members and international volunteers. We leave this here today as a reminder of what a few helping hands can do in one day. This is the way the entire Island has been cleaned, by all the helping hands working together.
We're reminded this evening as families gather around scooped out sand laying candles in the burrowed beach from the volunteer behind on stage that the day's ceremony was hosted by the local community, "not the government." And she asks for volunteers to help with clean-up tomorrow at 11 a.m.
The two children look up. A face-painted clown twists a green balloon into a dog and places it by dozen or so family members seated around one of the blazing memorials in the sand.
At the press center computer during dusk, I'm interrupted by the squeals. Kids with balloons. Many of them orange (I overhear: "besides condoms, these were the only kind I could find").
In the midst of it, I spot the same European volunteer I bought the t-shirt from. He carries a giddy Thai girl around the umbrella stand laden with hanging T-shirts.
By piggyback.
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