KRABI, Thailand (AFP) – After the deadliest tsunami in history claimed her only daughter, Elisabeth Zana considered taking her own life — until a nearby Thai school reignited her sense of purpose.
Against the backdrop of a picture-perfect beach on Phi Phi island, the 79-year-old Frenchwoman thinks back to the “unforgettable chaos” she saw at the same spot in February 2005.
“There were mountains of rubble. We walked around thinking there might be dead bodies down there. And maybe my daughter,” she tells AFP.
On December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake under the Indian Ocean triggered a huge tsunami that killed more than 225,000 people in a dozen countries worldwide.
In Thailand, more than 5,000 people were killed by the Boxing Day disaster according to the official toll — around half of them foreign tourists vacationing on its southern beaches — and another 3,000 left missing.
Zana’s daughter Natacha, then 35, was on Koh Phi Phi when the 10-metre (33-foot) high wall of water struck the island.
The search for her body took nine months, during which Zana and her husband felt their lives had gone into “total disarray”.
“For us, who have no other children… Our lives were over. The temptation to commit suicide was very strong.”
A run-down memorial is all that remains today on the island, itself a symbol of mass tourism, where new concrete resorts conceal the tsunami’s urban scars.
Locals do not want to talk about the trauma the disaster inflicted, Zana says, and some families of missing foreigners avoid the place altogether.
To overcome her grief, Zana decided to stay and face it head on.
In 2005, she set up NAT Association to help children affected by the tsunami, donating equipment and financing infrastructure to help save Bankuankojan public school on Krabi province’s mainland, which was threatened with closure.
The former dance teacher, who speaks no Thai, also set up a sponsorship programme for the most disadvantaged of its 180 students, aged between three and 11.
Her beloved daughter’s legacy lives on through Bankuankojan’s alternative name, “Natacha School”, and the French flags and petanque courts in the playground.
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the tsunami, the students perform Thai music and “nora”, a traditional dance from the kingdom’s south.
Music classes are rare in Thailand’s public education system, where rural schools suffer most from inequality and a lack of resources.
“Many schools are jealous,” says Chanita Jitruk, 56, a teacher who has been involved with Zana’s work from the beginning.
When Chanita arrived in 2005, the school had only a quarter of the pupils it has now.
Today, half the school’s children benefit from a monthly grant of THB1,000 (USD30), which mainly covers compulsory uniforms, often a major expense for families.
“The scholarships are important to improve our education,” one of the beneficiaries, 10-year-old Korawi Kaesuk, tells AFP.
The little girl, nicknamed Pam, dreams of becoming a nurse to be able to “help people”.
As for Zana, the school has given her new lease of life.
“Little by little, a certain peace has settled in,” she says. “But it took a long time.”
