Thursday, August 24, 2006
Wiang Under Water
The main road in Wiang Sa, on the right is where I usually get my Lemon Drjuee in a bag!
That's a phone booth and a billboard on the right and a house on the left. DEEP!
Well the past week has been interesting. Nan Province has been hit by the worst flooding in 25 years. And the city of Nan (25km away) and my village of Wiang Sa have been some of the hardest hit. Wiang Sa is situated in a valley between the Nan river and the Sa river, good for when you're growing rice, bad for when the river rises 10 meters above its banks. On Sunday it started to rain pretty hard, but I didn't really notice it that much since it was more like Vancouver-constant-grey-sky rain rather than Thailand-intense-but-short-black-cloud rain. It continued all night and by Monday everything was flooded. It wasn't so bad in Wiang sa at that time, so we all showed up for school, even though there were no students! Although in Nan, our friends Nick and Joss had to canoe to their school which was 8ft underwater. Of course all day Monday it kept raining and the rivers around Wiang Sa just kept rising. Miranda and I were out of drinking water, and all the water pipes were shut off for who knows how long, so the we tried to make the trek to Tescos in Nan that night.
The river, that usually you couldnt even see from the highway, was right up against the edges, and pouring over in some sections. Every house along the road was flooded up to the first floor and people were everywhere trying to move their possessions to higher ground. We made it to Tescos, but of course so had everyone else so there was little water and basic rations left. We stocked up on what we could and then tried to make it farter into Nan to check to see if our teacher Noot's uncle was ok. We got stopped at an army checkpoint where the water was about 4ft deep over the highway. We took one attempt in Mel's truck to go through it, but had to abandon that 1/2 way and carry the provisions through river/highway to his house. The TV stations had all their sattelites and flood lights set up, and couldn't resist the shot of a farang wadding through the muddy waters with TESCO water bottles balanced on her head. So, i'm apparently a star on iTV now! We made it home barely, and it kept raining through the night...so school has been cancelled indefenitly now. Tuesday and Wednesday I tried to keep busy by going down to the part of Wiang Sa that has been hardest hit and help out. It's hard though without being able to speak Thai. Plus the government and army seem to have things under pretty good control with lots of rescue shelters set up in the Wats for people to go to. I did spend a few hours handing out food to some of the people who have chosen to stay in their houses on the second or third stories. But there isn't much to do until the water starts to receed. Today the weather is a little more sunny and warm so the water has receeded in some areas, and there is layers and layers of mud left behind. Its going to be a messy clean up. We haven't had running water in our house for 4 days now either, so the lack of showers and clean clothes are starting to show!!!
There have been quite a few casualties, mostly due to the fact that people can't get to the clinic or hospital because of the flooding. Some are really hitting home too....It's actually pretty sad becasue the director of my school lost his Mom on Monday, and then one of my students in Pratom 1 died on Tuesday, she was one of the smartest little kids in the class and its so sad to see her family (her sister is in Pratom 6 at our school too). But the whole neighborhood is really helping them out.
Anyways, hopefully everything will start to get sorted soon with the worst of the weather over with. Miranda and I are meeting up with all the other GAP volunteers this weekend in Chaing Mai for one last party before we all go our seperate ways. Should be fun. Then next week who knows if i'll be teaching or cleaning?
