Napavalleyregister.com, December 18, 2006
KHAO LAK, Thailand — Martin Bleck is still spooked by water. He vividly remembers the wave that swept him and his mother away, and the field of corpses through which he waded to safety. He chooses to live on high ground, away from the shore.
He has tsunami waves tattooed down his right arm.
But this amiable 20-year-old, a professional guitarist from Lisbon, Portugal, has chosen to return to the beaches where the tsunami struck Thailand two years ago, and to pour his heart into helping survivors like himself by teaching them English and guitar. It’s his way of coping with the nightmare and repaying a debt.
“There was something inside me that wanted to come back to help the people who helped me when I was in the worst situation in my life,” he says. “Some of the Thais had lost as many as eight children and still they looked after me. It was the least I could do.”
Within moments two years ago, the tsunami turned this tropical paradise into a graveyard for more than 5,000 Thais and foreign vacationers like Bleck. Around the Indian Ocean rim, some 230,000 people in a dozen countries were left dead or missing when an undersea earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra unleashed the giant wave of Dec. 26, 2004.
