The first people UCLA alum Gene Kim and his wife Faye Wachs
spoke to in Los Angeles after surviving the South Asian tsunami in
December were the reporters and camera crews who met them at the
baggage claim.
“There was a crush of media,” Kim said.
“CNN just pushed NBC out of the way,” Wachs
remembers thinking. “This is crazy.”
Since then, the two have told their story over and over to
networks, radio stations and newspapers. They’ve related
their experiences to those close to them, and stopped by UCLA last
Thursday at a public forum to talk about their trip.
They were scuba diving off the tiny Thai island of Ko Phi Phi
when the tsunami passed them overhead. When they returned to land,
they found bodies, buildings washed from their foundations and
injured people bleeding from deep gashes, with broken bones.
Kim, who earned his doctorate in urban planning at UCLA in 2000,
and Wachs said they decided to speak with the media in part to give
a voice to those they left behind. They wanted a way to show
support for the Thai villagers whose livelihoods, dependent on
tourism, were wiped to oblivion by the giant waves.
“We were just sort of hoping that by talking about the
level of devastation we witnessed, that it would help raise
awareness of making donations,” said Wachs, a Cal Poly Pomona
sociology professor who has taught summer session at UCLA.
“Not only now, but in the future.”
In the weeks following the tsunami, Wachs says she vacillates
between euphoria and despair.
She is haunted by the children’s toys that littered the
island after the waters receded, and by how few children remained.
But at home in Santa Monica, she looks around and sees the paved
roads and greenery.
“And it’s beautiful, and I have a great life,”
she said.
The recurring dream she’s had since she was young is of a
tsunami, and now she has real images to go with it, she said.
At UCLA last week, the couple recounted how, sitting on a boat
after their scuba diving trip, they became perplexed by an unusual
amount of debris in the water.
A soccer ball, packages of instant noodles and a plastic lawn
chair floated by, carried out to sea by azure waves on a clear day,
an eerie premonition of the utter devastation they would witness as
they pulled up to shore a few miles later.
The evening and following day were a tumultuous haze for the
couple. They carried the dead and placed the gravely wounded on
makeshift stretchers made from doors.
Kim told students and others that sharing his memories is
therapeutic.
“When I explain it to an audience like this … I want you
guys to understand,” he said. “I need so much to get
those feelings out of my system.”
He says there is a part of him that never left Thailand, and
that he hopes to one day see again the people whom he met on Ko Phi
Phi.
He remembers Oman from Vienna, whose left leg was pinned behind
him beneath pounds of debris. It took 11 hours for a group of
survivors to free him, using their bare hands, a small hammer and a
saw with blunted teeth.
There was a Canadian named Gail, who helped in the rescue effort
but couldn’t find her daughter.
There was the Thai woman who pleaded and screamed for help,
saying she knew where a dozen villagers were trapped.
There was Matts, the Belgian with the hideously disfigured left
leg, the cuts and the bruises. To help pacify the pain, Kim spoke
to Matts about the Belgian’s wife.
“And then he said, “˜She died. She
drowned,'” Kim said. “So you have these moments
when the horror just keeps hitting you.”
“It’s those types of things that keep popping into
my head, when you least expect it.”
Elizabeth Gong-Guy, a member of Student Psychological
Services’ clinical staff, said sharing traumatic stories is
healthy. She said it’s a way for survivors to cope, and to
integrate into their daily lives events that deviate from their
regular experiences.
“We’re all, as human beings, struggling to develop a
coherent narrative for ourselves,” she said. “And one
way to do that is talk.”
And if a person is comfortable speaking with reporters, a media
blitz may not be unhealthy, she added.
Matthew Brown, a fifth-year mathematics and applied science
student, was on a ferry off of Thailand with his aunt and brother
when the tsunami devastated the coast.
He said he was surprised when media outlets wanted to interview
him, since he walked away without a scratch.
The time that’s passed has given him a more philosophical
perspective on his situation, he said. He thought about why certain
people live when others die.
He thought about what it might have been like if he had been on
shore when the waters came ““ whether he would have stopped to
save his family members if they tripped and fell. And if he
didn’t, whether he would be able to live with himself
later.
Wachs says sharing her story has gotten easier with time, and
that she puts in energy to give it the fresh attention it deserves
with each telling.
With the hectic media attention in past weeks, Kim said
he’s only just begun to collect his thoughts.
Talking with a guest after last Thursday’s event, he said,
“We’re just now coming up for air.”
Names of international island visitors in the story may not
be spelled correctly.