I remember the December 26, 2004 tsunami well. In fact, nobody who was in any of the eleven affected countries will ever forget the shock and the suffering of those who were in the areas where the tidal wave caused so much destruction and despair. On that fatidic day I was with my wife at an amusement park in Bangkok. We found out about what had happened in the provinces at the Andaman Sea in the south of Thailand from the radio news in a taxi on our way home. Later on, we learned that it was the greatest natural disaster of the century, triggered by the second largest earthquake, and the deadliest tsunami in recorded history.
For days and months I followed the aftermath of the “big wave”, reporting any updates to newspapers back in my home country, Romania. The plight of the most unfortunate foreign tourists and locals who not only lost their houses and means of earning a living, but also lost family, friends and acquaintances, was everywhere in the news.
I have never met any survivor, nor had I known any of the victims of the 2004 tsunami. That changed during the first meeting in 2009 of the Bangkok Writers Guild, where a new member, Aaron Le Boutillier, gave me the second reprint of his book, And Then One Morning – A Personal Odyssey. It was published by Big Wave Publications from Singapore in 2008. It is a book that has between its covers the author’s story of what had happened, his story of lost friends, his story of the search and rescue missions that followed the big wave.
In short, poignant chapters, the reader is briefly introduced to the writer’s background and the circumstances that brought him to Koh Phi Phi, an island in southern Thailand. It was here where he would dramatically lose to the 2004 tsunami his best friend, Heinz Oswald and Heinz’s two daughters. And Then One Morning is a heartfelt journey of self-discovery that Le Boutillier undertakes not only to come to terms with his loss, but also to share with the rest of the world the ordeal of the most unfortunate Thai and foreign tourists who had found their reaper on the island of Phi Phi.
The book is dedicated to Heinz’s only surviving son, Dino Oswald, who was only four years old when his father and two sisters were taken away from him by Mother Nature. Although the book recalls the horrific events that took place in the morning of December 26, 2004 on a paradisiacal tropical island in southern Thailand, by dedicating the book to the living, the author eventually celebrates life and the hope of a better future. His efforts to restore Heinz’s business, the Moskito Diving Center from Phi Phi island, is also another proof that, even only a few days after the tsunami, Aaron believed that life must go on and that he must do all that was humanly possible to ensure the future of Heinz’s surviving wife and son.
And Then One Morning is a nostalgic account of the author’s love with Phi Phi ever since he set foot on the island in June 1993 and until the day when his friend’s decaying body was finally given a proper Buddhist burial. At times, the book can be a difficult read due to the vivid description of the horrors that Aaron had to go through during and after the tsunami had hit the small island of Phi Phi, where he was celebrating, with his friends, the Christmas holiday.
In the Preface of the book, the author briefly writes about life and how it “has a funny way of throwing you off course,” concluding that the only thing that we’re left with in the end is “just darkness”. Aaron’s words can only take us to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the horrors Marllow sees on the banks of the river as he goes deep into the jungles of Congo to bring Kurtz back to civilization.
Chapter 45, entitled The first of many Krabi temple visits, recounts, in Conrad-like prose, the difficulty in having to deal with death at first hand: “It’s hard to explain what six hundred decaying bodies lying in the tropical heat smell like but it’s not pleasant. […] There must have been ten rows of bodies with a short gap in between them for walking down… All of these were from Phi Phi: babies, toddlers, children, adolescents and adults. They were lined up naked, semi naked, bloated, and ravaged already by maggots and by the heat. […] From this mass of dead and decaying corpses some kind of oily, waxy human soup was oozing from each body and converging into a layer of gunk that covered the whole area where we had to walk.” No one should ever have to go through such an ordeal. Especially if you are looking for friends and family members.
The greatest difference between Aaron’s and Conrad’s books is the tone the books end with. While Marllow recalls Kurtz’s last words, he doesn’t have the heart to tell Kurtz’s fiancée what the man she was mourning for said and, instead, lies, telling her that his last words were her name. Actually, “He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision – he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath – ‘The horror! The horror!’”
Not the same is the case with the last sentences of And Then One Morning. The author comes “to terms with the loss of loved ones and friends” and sees a happier future ahead. “He [Dino] has fond memories of both his sisters and of his father. Importantly, almost four years on, he seems to have weathered the tragedy well. He wears both shoes now.”
I will leave it to the readers to find out by themselves why Dino refused to wear both shoes after the 2004 tragic tsunami. I will leave it to the reader to quietly contemplate the physical and emotional efforts the survivors from Phi Phi had to face starting the morning of December 26, 2004. It took Aaron Le Boutillier four years to find the emotional strength to put down on paper, in his autobiographical odyssey And Then One Morning, the happy and sad memories he had shared with his friend and his family. His book is a reminder to all of us that life can be full of unexpected events, but what really matters in the end are the people who stick together and help each other.
I strongly recommend Aaron’s book to anyone who, in late 2004 and many months after that, found themselves glued to news channels, staring in shock and horror at a disaster that claimed over 230.000 lives.
The Phuket release of And Then One Morning – A Personal Odyssey by Aaron Le Boutillier, was held on October 24, 2008 at Satree Phuket High School in the presence of the Thai Tourist Police, family and friends. Here’s the NBT Phuket cover of the book launch:
By purchasing this book, you can also do your part in helping the survivors of the 2004 tsunami. All author royalties will be personally distributed by the writer to the people he knows need the help.
Initially published in in “Bangkok Trader” (Vol. 4, No. 1, December 2009)
and in “Bangkok Time Saver” (December 2010)
