Flood victims cope with
hardship

Bang-orn Sirichote and her son sleep inside a mosquito net at a makeshift shelter on Lop Buri Road in Lop Buri’s Tha Wung district. Mrs Bang-orn’s family moved to the road after their house was flooded. THITI WANNAMONTHA

By Terry Fredrickson

Abandoning your home to live next to a highway is not an easy life, but Lop Buri flood victims are learning to cope.

Grappling with life on the street

Families washed out of their homes
come to terms with hardship
Apinya Wipatayotin

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It was 7pm when a granny and her young grandson came to rest on a bamboo bench with mosquitoes swarming around them.

Lamduan Thongkam, 64, the grandmother and her 11-year-old grandson, Nong Beer, looked exhausted after spending a whole day on Wednesday taking care of the pigs and other belongings moved from their flooded house on Lop Buri-Sing Buri road in Muang district.

It should be a happy day for the Thongkam family as one of their pigs is going to deliver babies soon. But since the family and their livestock are now living in the hot and cramped street shelter, everything has become much harder.

Mrs Lamduan's family is among about 50 who abandoned their homes for temporary road shelters after floods ravaged their community on Sunday night.

The family live inside a tent set up on the road for 50 flood-hit villagers. The tent was located near shophouses whose owners are kind enough to let them use toilets or take a rest inside the building.

The tent is packed with clothes, electrical equipment and other belongings they managed to grab before the flood arrived.

"We lost most of our belongings since the water came very fast. But luckily, we were able to save our pigs," said Mrs Lamduan.

Mrs Lamduan's grandson, Nong Beer, said there was no sign of flooding on Sunday, but at 8pm water began to rise and submerged the first floor of his two-storey house within a few hours.

"I tried to help my grandmother to evacuate the pigs. But they are too heavy. I could only carry pig feed and some shoes," he said.

"I saw people clinging on to a tree. One man said he couldn't move because he had cramp," he said.

Nong Beer said he was afraid the flood disaster would be more severe next year.

"I think this year's flooding is just the beginning of the worst. Is it true that our world will become a water world?" he asked.

Nong Beer called his teacher after the flooding, saying he could not go to school as his uniform and text books had been washed away and he had to live on the street now.

The teacher told him to relax and that the school was closed because of the flooding.

Life on the road is not so hard for the boy, who enjoys playing in the flood water with friends and eating free food distributed to flood-hit villagers. On a good day, he eats grilled fish caught from a nearby canal.

"However, the food is scarce now. Maybe we might have phad krapao noo na [field rats fried with basil leaves] for dinner today," he said.

Asked what he wants the government to do for him and the other villagers, the boy said he needed clean water for a bath.

The Thongkam family have been living on the road for three nights and officials have told them that in the worst case, they might have to stay there for a month until the flood recedes.

You can read previous article at www.bangkokpost.com/learning/all-article.