Thai village destroyed in tsunami rebuilt by NZ church

PHUKET, Thailand - A New Zealand community with close links to a Thai village battered by last year's tsunami was soon to suffer its own personal loss in the giant wave's wake.

While former missionary Stephen Pattemore was inspiring members of Auckland's Northcross Community Church to raise more than $26,000 in relief funds, the son and daughter-in-law of two churchgoers were lying in a Phuket morgue.

Andrew Welch, 42, from Auckland, and his Christchurch-born wife, Belinda, 26, died when their beach-front bungalow in Khao Lak, southern Thailand, was swamped.

During the past year, members of the congregation have travelled backwards and forwards to the region, helping a small indigenous tribe of fisherman -- the Urak Lawoi -- to rebuild boats, houses and restore their livelihoods.

David Pattemore, who works as a northern conversation officer for Forest and Bird, was raised by Christian missionary parents in the Urak Lawoi village of Rawai, in South Phuket, Thailand.

"We still enjoy a very close relationship with the people," his father, Dr Stephen Pattemore, told NZPA.

The Urak Lawoi are a Malay speaking tribal community who practice a form of animism -- a belief "everything is alive", "everything is conscious" or "everything has a soul".

They have been in Thailand for hundreds of years.

When the tsunami struck, Mr Pattemore and his father, who travels the world for United Bible societies as a translator, flew to Urak Lawoi villages of Koh Sireh and Rawai to scout out the damage.

"Fortunately, because Rawai is on the south-eastern side of Phuket, the wave hit it a passing blow. It only came into the village a bit, but completely wrecked all of their boats," Dr Pattemore told NZPA.

"All of their engines were also scrambled in the salt water so they had to be rebuilt."

Fortunately, when the 5m wave struck the community, the Rawai pastor was travelling to Koh Sireh and his daughter managed to alert him.

In the 10 minutes it took the wave to travel between villages, he evacuated the residents to higher ground.

However, 80 per cent of their homes and all of their boats were destroyed.

"Their whole means of living disappeared, and the Thai government was only offering something like 20 per cent of the cost of a boat so they were very dependent on NGO (non-government organisation) aid," Dr Pattemore said.

"We immediately set about working out ways we could raise money to help with boat and house building."

Initially, Dr Pattemore channelled some of the money they had collected to a local mission for house-building.

"We then sent out a 12-strong team from our church in Auckland," he said.

The New Zealand team who flew to Phuket were between 17 and 50 years old and spent two weeks in both villages helping to build boats and houses.

The funding -- which in March doubled to $52,000 with the aid of the New Zealand Government's dollar-for-dollar offer -- has also been used to other coastal fishing communities who live in areas close to the Urak Lawoi tribe.

On arriving back in Auckland, the Pattemores were greeted by more bad news -- two members of the 350-strong congregation had lost their son and stepdaughter to the Tsunami.

The Welches were on the final leg of a world back-packing tour when they arrived in Thailand.

Devout Baptists, they hoped to sponsor an orphanage in Thailand or complete volunteer work before returning to New Zealand in March.

Dr Pattemore returned to Phuket for three weeks in July to discover that even though all the housing had been fixed and most of the boats replaced, the villagers had other problems.

"Other powers", he said, were using the tsunami as an excuse to "push the little people out of the way".

The Phuket governor was still planning to displace both of the large villages from their present location, he said.

"Unless the new locations were equally suitable for their style of life and sea-going occupation this would probably result in the disappearance of an entire culture."

However, right now there was a more pressing problem, Dr Pattemore said.

"The boats are fixed, engines replaced ... houses rebuilt and the communities are starting to get on with their lives," he said.

"With so many hotels being destroyed (by the tsunami) and tourists staying away, there is just not the market for their fish any more."

- NZPA