Newtown Siblings A Part Of  Worldwide Relief Effort

By Nancy K. Crevier

A whole bungalow submerged, the door still locked, perched upon a reef. Pieces of roofs. Stereos. Windows, lumber, and chunks of metal. Teddy bears and children’s clothing tangled in the ridged, underwater cliffs.

When Andrew Zimmerman, a 2004 graduate of Newtown High School, became a certified scuba diver last year in Australia, these were not the treasures he expected he would be bringing to the surface as he practiced his new skills. The tsunami that would bring unimaginable destruction to Southeast Asia was still sleeping under the ocean when Andrew and his sister, Kate, began a five-month backpacking expedition to Australia, New Zealand, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand last November.

Andrew had made plans to attend college the fall of 2004, but when his older sister, newly discharged from the Air Force, invited him to accompany her and a friend backpacking through The Land Down Under and Asia, he decided to take a year off. They landed in Australia in November and spent two months there, and in New Zealand. Because he has always loved swimming and was interested in the coral reefs off of the two countries, he seized upon the opportunity to become a certified scuba diver, not knowing that his newfound skill would soon benefit people he had never met, in a country he had yet to visit.

The tsunami struck Southeast Asia on December 26, with the force of 10,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs. Andrew and Kate were still on the island of Tasmania off of Australia, making plans to continue on to that very part of the world.

“We weren’t sure we could keep going,” says Kate. Rumors of mosquito-borne illnesses and a lack of potable drinking water caused them to hesitate about journeying to Thailand.

“We didn’t know what part of our plans would be affected,” continues Kate. “But we did research and read articles. The warnings didn’t really make sense. We were headed for northern Thailand and Bangkok, and relief workers were being sent in [to the affected areas.]”

They agreed to travel to Southeast Asia as planned and despite the disaster, what they found was that life in unaffected parts of Thailand was going on as usual. Kate and Andrew arrived in Bangkok, Thailand, in January and found a calm and relaxed nation of people there. Both had expected to be surrounded by relief efforts when they flew in to Bangkok, but the only evidence they saw of the horrendous episode unfolding in the southern part of Thailand were a few pictures of missing people.

“It’s considered embarrassing [for Asians] to show emotion in public,” says Andrew, offering an explanation for the seeming lack of outward concern toward the tsunami victims by their fellow countrymen.

From Thailand, the Zimmerman siblings trekked to the hill tribes of Laos, where they stayed with local families in bamboo huts built on stilts.

The people of this area subsist off of the land, with no visible form of income.

“Families,” says Andrew, “share everything. They don’t have much, so they don’t worry. They’re so much happier [than Americans]. Family is most important.”

Living with the hill families took some getting used to, but gave the Zimmermans a better perspective on their own lives, and how much is taken for granted in our country.

Andrew says, “I had to get used to not having clean clothes, showers, what kind of housing was available.”

All of the water they drank had to be treated, and a two-day bout with food poisoning shortly after their arrival in Thailand colored Andrew’s feelings negatively toward the native cuisine for the rest of the trip. A soft bed, cars, television, safety, freedom, and even the availability of pure, clean tap water are valued more highly now.

The natives of the hill countries, says Kate, are just concerned with the here and now of survival. She observed no concern about the tsunami, but adds, “I never saw a television. I did see radios, but the natives may not even have known about the tsunami.”

However, the tsunami and the growing death count from it were always on Andrew’s mind once they left Australia. Knowing he was so close to one of the world’s worst natural disasters made it a very real experience for him.

After visiting the site of Angkor Wat, a series of 12th Century Buddhist temples considered architectural wonders of the world, in Cambodia, and Laos, Kate and Andrew split up so that Kate and her companion, Mark Anderson, could spend time rock-climbing in Krabi, Thailand, while Andrew scuba dived.

It was in Phuket, where they went their separate ways, that the Zimmermans first encountered big-scale destruction from the tsunami.

“The whole street lining the beach, the restaurants and shops,” says Kate, “were just remains of rubble.” It was at this point that the brother and sister became fairly certain they would become involved in some way with tsunami relief.

It was not easy to do so, though.

Kate says, “It seemed clear what we should do, but it was actually hard to find a place that wanted our help. Most foreign aid organizations only wanted people experienced in disaster relief.” Some operations actually wanted the volunteers to pay for the privilege of helping.

Returning by ferry from the Similan Islands to rendezvous with his sister, Andrew got his first sight of Koh Phi Phi, where they would eventually find the opportunity to assist in the relief effort.

A tiny dumbbell-shaped island in the Andaman Sea far south of Bangkok, Koh Phi Phi had been decimated by the tsunami. Some 1,500 lives were lost and more than 100 children were left orphans. Bungalows that had once lined the beach strip had disappeared completely, and all of the grassy areas were buried beneath sand heaved from the ocean’s bottom. Only one restaurant on the popular resort island was open, and a relief operation ran out of it.

Surprisingly, says Andrew, the people that he met seemed happy. “They united and came together despite their losses.”

With the reef off of Koh Phi Phi cluttered with debris from the tsunami, the village’s main industry, fishing, was threatened. It was critical that the reef be cleared, allowing fish to flourish in a safe, clean habitat. Andrew and Kate decided to offer their services to the relief operation on Koh Phi Phi the final two weeks of their trip, before heading back to America.

Kate spent her time making tables and painting furniture for the new orphanage on the island. There were very few women and children on the island at the time, she noticed, as most had been taken off of the island to assuage their fears of another tsunami, and because the native women feared being haunted by ghosts. The children would return to the village when the orphanage was completed.

Andrew was recruited for diving down to the coral reef and clearing away rubbish. Large pieces of debris were attached to buoys with a rope and the divers floated them in to land, where they were taken to a barge for disposal.

“If you found IDs or bones, you were supposed to tell the dive master, and the area would be searched,” remembers Andrew of the instructions the divers received before going down. It was a spooky prospect that, fortunately, he never encountered. But finding personal effects from the homes and the lives of those who had vanished in the wave touched him deeply.

“Finding these things,” he says, “made me think deeper and deeper about the effects that the tsunami had on the entire world.”

Back in the safety and comfort of their American lives, Andrew and Kate carry with them the impression of the Thai people able to get on with their lives and find happiness in what they had left.

“It was a positive thing,” says Kate, “to see all of the nations working together, and how much people were able to accomplish.”