Tsunami Anniversary: Landed in Bangkok

Quick status post. Landed in Bangkok at nearly 1 a.m. last night and was graciously hosted by Canadian Graeme Bristol whom has lived in Thailand for eight years as the chairman of architecture program at a local university. He's also in charge of the Centre for Architecture and Human Rights.

We talked until the wee hours of the morning as he has tsunami relief stories galore. He is part of a UN delegation and he and his students are working with coastal communities like Trung Wa, a traditional Moken sea gypsy village (about three kilometers north of ravaged Khao Lak) to help them in planning their rebuilding efforts.

Dialogue about their goals and community engagement for the plan for seventy homes, a market and a Moken cultural center to celebrate the collective heritage of the sea gypsies is an essential part of the community rebuilding process.

Traditionally dialogue and facilitating community participation isn't what architects, engineers, and planners do best. Or do at all. Top-down is more the planning style. He's trying to change that starting with his students.

You probably have heard about the Mokens already. Up and down the Andaman coast they are the ones who were attentive to the signs. Few Moken died; yet their villages were leveled.

A Bangkok movie star and amateur photographer named Aun was here [on another Moken community on an island, not Trung Wa] on Dec. 26, 2004, taking pictures of Moken village life, when someone noticed the sea receding into the distance.

Aun's pictures showed the Moken on the beach crying. Did she have any idea why they were crying? "I feel like they know what bad will happen," says Aun.

Her pictures also show the Moken fleeing towards higher ground long before the first wave struck. Aun pointed out how high the water first came. And that was just the first wave. The worst was yet to come, and the Moken knew because of signs from the sea...

Off Thailand’s coast, divers noticed dozens of dolphins swimming for deeper water. And on these islands, the cicadas, which are usually so loud, suddenly went silent.
Saleh Kalathalay, a skilled spear-fisherman who was on a different part of the island, also noticed the silence. He ran around warning everyone. Did they believe him?

"The young people called me a liar. I said, 'We’ve told the story of the wave since the old times,' but none of the kids believed me," says Kalathalay. - "Sea Gypsies See Signs in the Waves," CBS News, March 20, 2005

I should make it to Trung Wa on about the second week of this trip. Right now, later this evening I'm off to Krabi. In a near-repeat of my itinerary this time last year I'm off to the coastal islands except I'm skipping the lovely island of Koh Lanta. Tommorow morning via ferry I'll be headed to my favorite island, Koh Jum.

p.s. Remind myself I need to get some sleep sometime too.

Comments

[donloomis]

Hi Evelyn, glad to hear you arrived in Bangkok. Coincidentally the cover of the IEEE Spectrum I received yesterday (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/dec05/inthisissue) is “Earthquake Predictor - Eerie lights in the sky, ultralow frequency radio waves, and magnetic field changes mean an earthquake is imminent. Finally we’re getting the message.” I like the last sentence. Journey on! --Don

[Nancy White]

I loved the bit about facilitation of dialog vs. top down. As people make their predictions for 2006, I hope to see more of this. In fact, think about the implications of web 2.0 hubub if it were applied to making the world a better place!

[MysticSaint]

Bless be your journey. thanks for coming to my blog and adding it to ur blog long time back. i just discovered it today.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Hi All, Thanks for the comments.

Don, I have caught up on sleep now and rise at 6:30 a.m. everyday however which isn't normal as you know for me.

Nancy, As far as dialog vs top-down, it's what Graeme seems to especially teach his archicture and urban planning students. The idea of people participating in their own community rather than having it be planned from an central authority on their behalf. He's an avid reader of blogs, but his influences come from much much earlier.

Facilitation isn't so easy. I have talked to the Koh Jum folks and their attempts at community meetings to decide what to do collectively with donations pouring in from European tourists ultimately failed. But more on that later.