Speech on Donating to Tsunami Relief Efforts
I have a friend who currently lives in France. Her and her husband were visiting Thailand weeks before the tsunami hit - although luckily, they had already gone home when it did hit. My friend, Carmen, has written and given a speech to one of her group meetings in France. She forwarded it on to me and I found it to be a great speech on the people of Thailand, how they live and how they need international relief aid. Please take the time to read this if you get a chance.
Thailand Red Cross Southeast Asia Effort
In trying to think how I can tell you in 5 minutes why it's so important to me that people donate to the Red Cross Southeast Asian Relief Effort, I can only think about the Thai people and how it transformed me to be around them. You instantly notice their kind, gentle hospitable nature as soon as you step off the plane. This fact was pleasantly unfolding for me but really started to sink in the longer I stayed.
Our first two nights in Bangkok we took slowly and spent working through the logistics of the beach parts and the mainland parts of our trip. After discovering beach accommodations skyrocket starting Dec. 21, we decided the beach part must be done first... Since it's also supposed to be part of the experience of going to Thailand to get fitted by the Thai tailors for outstandingly priced suits, we did that before parting to the beach, so they would have time to complete them when we got back to Bangkok. Once on the plane to the beach I saw an advertisement in the a magazine showing that we could have gotten twice the volume of product for what we paid and was chewing my husband's ear about it all the way until we got off the plane and started heading toward our beach resort. As we traveled through the rain forest, we started noticing the very modest, poor-looking bungalows of the locals, many which looked half-finished and somewhat "makeshift" in construction. The doors and undressed windows were all wide open. As it was heavily dusk by that time, you could see into many of the homes -- as a tourist I am somewhat of a voyeur. You could see 3, 4 or 5 people milling around in small living areas with very little furniture, some sleeping fully clothed straight on bare concrete floors -- chickens on the porch, and a few mangy looking dogs and cats lying about. I turned to my husband and exclaimed, "My GOD I have GOT to get a grip on what's important in life.” The overpriced tailor no longer seemed so villainous. This feeling did not change the entire time we were there. From the makeshift food stands along side the roads, to the tiny rental business spaces selling goods and services to tourists, to the massage huts along the beach to the longtail boat drivers that fairy you from beach to beach -- these people seem somehow deprived by western standards, but just about every one of them are very enterprising, hard-working, dignified, polite and seemingly happy people.
The people working in the hotels bend over backwards to be polite and accommodating, providing little thoughtful details that I have not experienced in any other country. But who I think about more are the everyday people doing what they can to survive off the tourists: the ladies working the makeshift food stands attach a cage-like mechanism to their mopeds, complete with a flip-out grill attachment, flip-out countertop and attachable awning. They set up small fruit and beverage cases. They grill chicken quarters and corn-on-the-cob, and have little plastic chairs and tables set up behind their rows of food stands where they can serve you your food complete with silverware and sauces, mostly under a Euro. They bring in buckets of water for cleaning, and while the whole operation appears filthy by western standards, we ate at these stands half the time we were there and never got sick once. The longtail boat drivers who taxi you around the beaches, at first annoyed me because of the noise and fuel pollution, but you get used to it after a while and start to block it out. Plus, they are more than willing to find you a nice beach which isn't so crowded if you go at the right times. And, you can't get to many beaches without them.
One person really sticks in my mind the most and that was little NA. She was so adorable walking around selling her beverages and peeled pineapples on the beach to sunbathers with her little black bobbed hair and skin the color of the outside of a coconut. She couldn't have weighed more than 20 kilos, hauling around her giant sac of beers and sodas. Our first encounter she wanted to double charge me for a peeled pineapple. She wanted 50 baht and I knew they were typically 20 to 30 baht -- mind you, 50 baht is still less than a Euro. We haggled: "20 baht!" "40 baht!" "30 baht!" "40 baht!" By gosh, she was so darned cute she was going to get that 40 baht from me. When she came back by, planted herself firmly in front of me and exclaimed "40 baht,” I had the money ready, handed it to her and my husband and I enjoyed our deliciously peeled pineapple and beer lunch.
The next day we went to the same beach. We had chosen to kayak there this time and were nursing our sore arms by the time she came over to sell us a much-desired beer. She asked me probably one of the few English things she knew how to say: "How old are you?" I told her I was thirty-five and asked how old she was as she looked about 6. "Eight years old," she exclaimed. I said, well “in the country where I come from, you are what we call a business woman, and a very young one at that." She seemed to have no idea what I was talking about, and went off to sell more canned beverages to tourists, but this time she was joined by a very small child who seemed to be her little brother. He would probably be doing her job in another couple of years, as soon as he was grown enough to carry a big sacs of beverages. He was in nothing but a diaper and still had that very fluffy, spiky hair that babies have. He squatted and watched as she transacted. Since I was totally infatuated with her by this time, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Dad (or maybe Uncle), was walking around selling his sac of beverages about 100 meters in the other direction, probably with the 2 children in the corner of his eye the whole time. The 3 of them would periodically join together back at the tree-line, I imagine so he could give some sort of instructions. I would have taken Na home with me THAT day if the legal opportunity had presented itself.
The Thai massage ladies were lovely goddess saviors after a long afternoon of kayaking. The fabulous sunsets were healing, and the whole experience enchanting. Even though their simple life style by western standards appears "makeshift, less than organized and somewhat unsanitary" it is simply different from ours, and for them it works. OF COURSE they want a more comfortable life and better life for themselves and their children. And believe me, they are working on it in the way they know how. But this terrible disaster has caused some of them an unimaginable setback. No one, not any of us could have stood up to this. But you know what their are doing? They are trying to clean up and go back to work and they need some help to do it. I believe it is in as much the rest of the world's interest for them to be able to do this as it is in their own. We need them to go on DOING what they DO, LIVING the way they LIVE, and BEING the way they ARE. It helps us to understand who we are. It teaches us that life can be different from how it is for us, but at the same time wonderful… but not against these types of forces.
I just think about Na and her little brother and pray they were not there when the tsunami came around 10:30 that morning. On that particular beach, Laile, there would have been no where to escape. It was barricaded on each side by sheer rock-faced cliffs, and the forest behind the beach was about 300 maybe 400 meters deep, on the other side of which was another beach. That small area of forest was being completely filled up with bungalows, and the water would have rushed straight through all of it to the beach on the other side.
With that said, I am extremely fortunate to have enough money to be able to give the Red Cross 200 euros. As I have mentioned to some of you, other than tourism, Thailand relies on its agricultural resources. A majority of Thai people make and live on about 200 baht per day, which is about 4 euros... PER DAY! They need as much help as people have the means to give.
Thailand Red Cross Southeast Asia Effort
In trying to think how I can tell you in 5 minutes why it's so important to me that people donate to the Red Cross Southeast Asian Relief Effort, I can only think about the Thai people and how it transformed me to be around them. You instantly notice their kind, gentle hospitable nature as soon as you step off the plane. This fact was pleasantly unfolding for me but really started to sink in the longer I stayed.
Our first two nights in Bangkok we took slowly and spent working through the logistics of the beach parts and the mainland parts of our trip. After discovering beach accommodations skyrocket starting Dec. 21, we decided the beach part must be done first... Since it's also supposed to be part of the experience of going to Thailand to get fitted by the Thai tailors for outstandingly priced suits, we did that before parting to the beach, so they would have time to complete them when we got back to Bangkok. Once on the plane to the beach I saw an advertisement in the a magazine showing that we could have gotten twice the volume of product for what we paid and was chewing my husband's ear about it all the way until we got off the plane and started heading toward our beach resort. As we traveled through the rain forest, we started noticing the very modest, poor-looking bungalows of the locals, many which looked half-finished and somewhat "makeshift" in construction. The doors and undressed windows were all wide open. As it was heavily dusk by that time, you could see into many of the homes -- as a tourist I am somewhat of a voyeur. You could see 3, 4 or 5 people milling around in small living areas with very little furniture, some sleeping fully clothed straight on bare concrete floors -- chickens on the porch, and a few mangy looking dogs and cats lying about. I turned to my husband and exclaimed, "My GOD I have GOT to get a grip on what's important in life.” The overpriced tailor no longer seemed so villainous. This feeling did not change the entire time we were there. From the makeshift food stands along side the roads, to the tiny rental business spaces selling goods and services to tourists, to the massage huts along the beach to the longtail boat drivers that fairy you from beach to beach -- these people seem somehow deprived by western standards, but just about every one of them are very enterprising, hard-working, dignified, polite and seemingly happy people.
The people working in the hotels bend over backwards to be polite and accommodating, providing little thoughtful details that I have not experienced in any other country. But who I think about more are the everyday people doing what they can to survive off the tourists: the ladies working the makeshift food stands attach a cage-like mechanism to their mopeds, complete with a flip-out grill attachment, flip-out countertop and attachable awning. They set up small fruit and beverage cases. They grill chicken quarters and corn-on-the-cob, and have little plastic chairs and tables set up behind their rows of food stands where they can serve you your food complete with silverware and sauces, mostly under a Euro. They bring in buckets of water for cleaning, and while the whole operation appears filthy by western standards, we ate at these stands half the time we were there and never got sick once. The longtail boat drivers who taxi you around the beaches, at first annoyed me because of the noise and fuel pollution, but you get used to it after a while and start to block it out. Plus, they are more than willing to find you a nice beach which isn't so crowded if you go at the right times. And, you can't get to many beaches without them.
One person really sticks in my mind the most and that was little NA. She was so adorable walking around selling her beverages and peeled pineapples on the beach to sunbathers with her little black bobbed hair and skin the color of the outside of a coconut. She couldn't have weighed more than 20 kilos, hauling around her giant sac of beers and sodas. Our first encounter she wanted to double charge me for a peeled pineapple. She wanted 50 baht and I knew they were typically 20 to 30 baht -- mind you, 50 baht is still less than a Euro. We haggled: "20 baht!" "40 baht!" "30 baht!" "40 baht!" By gosh, she was so darned cute she was going to get that 40 baht from me. When she came back by, planted herself firmly in front of me and exclaimed "40 baht,” I had the money ready, handed it to her and my husband and I enjoyed our deliciously peeled pineapple and beer lunch.
The next day we went to the same beach. We had chosen to kayak there this time and were nursing our sore arms by the time she came over to sell us a much-desired beer. She asked me probably one of the few English things she knew how to say: "How old are you?" I told her I was thirty-five and asked how old she was as she looked about 6. "Eight years old," she exclaimed. I said, well “in the country where I come from, you are what we call a business woman, and a very young one at that." She seemed to have no idea what I was talking about, and went off to sell more canned beverages to tourists, but this time she was joined by a very small child who seemed to be her little brother. He would probably be doing her job in another couple of years, as soon as he was grown enough to carry a big sacs of beverages. He was in nothing but a diaper and still had that very fluffy, spiky hair that babies have. He squatted and watched as she transacted. Since I was totally infatuated with her by this time, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Dad (or maybe Uncle), was walking around selling his sac of beverages about 100 meters in the other direction, probably with the 2 children in the corner of his eye the whole time. The 3 of them would periodically join together back at the tree-line, I imagine so he could give some sort of instructions. I would have taken Na home with me THAT day if the legal opportunity had presented itself.
The Thai massage ladies were lovely goddess saviors after a long afternoon of kayaking. The fabulous sunsets were healing, and the whole experience enchanting. Even though their simple life style by western standards appears "makeshift, less than organized and somewhat unsanitary" it is simply different from ours, and for them it works. OF COURSE they want a more comfortable life and better life for themselves and their children. And believe me, they are working on it in the way they know how. But this terrible disaster has caused some of them an unimaginable setback. No one, not any of us could have stood up to this. But you know what their are doing? They are trying to clean up and go back to work and they need some help to do it. I believe it is in as much the rest of the world's interest for them to be able to do this as it is in their own. We need them to go on DOING what they DO, LIVING the way they LIVE, and BEING the way they ARE. It helps us to understand who we are. It teaches us that life can be different from how it is for us, but at the same time wonderful… but not against these types of forces.
I just think about Na and her little brother and pray they were not there when the tsunami came around 10:30 that morning. On that particular beach, Laile, there would have been no where to escape. It was barricaded on each side by sheer rock-faced cliffs, and the forest behind the beach was about 300 maybe 400 meters deep, on the other side of which was another beach. That small area of forest was being completely filled up with bungalows, and the water would have rushed straight through all of it to the beach on the other side.
With that said, I am extremely fortunate to have enough money to be able to give the Red Cross 200 euros. As I have mentioned to some of you, other than tourism, Thailand relies on its agricultural resources. A majority of Thai people make and live on about 200 baht per day, which is about 4 euros... PER DAY! They need as much help as people have the means to give.
posted by The Armstrongs at
1/24/2005
