● It was Christmas night in the United States a year ago that a giant wave of Tsunami hit South Aisa. It swept away at least 200,000 Indonesians, Sri Lankans, Thais and tourists from around the world on their Christmas vacations. But there’s one group who live precisely where the tsunami hit hardest who suffered no casualties at all. They are the sea gypsies of the Andaman Sea, or as they call themselves, the Moken.
They’ve lived for hundreds of years on the islands off the coast of Thailand and Burma. As reported last March, they are, of all the peoples of the world, among the least touched by modern civilization. And miraculously they survived the tsunami because they knew it was coming.
It"s their intimacy with the sea that saved them. They’re born on the sea, live on the sea, die on the sea. They know its moods and motions better than any marine biologist. They"re nomads, constantly moving from island to island, living more than six months a year on their boats.
At low tide, they collect sea cucumbers and catch eels. At high tide, they dive for shellfish. And they"ve been living this way for so many generations that they"ve become virtually amphibious. Kids learn to swim before they can walk. Underwater, they can see twice as clearly as the rest of us, and by lowering their heart rate, can stay underwater twice as long. They are truly sea urchins.
This old man decided he wanted to fish for breakfast. It was a pufferfish. If it"s not cut properly, it can kill you. The Moken cut it properly.
● We found this Moken village on an island two hours by speedboat from the coast of Thailand. It had become something of an exotic tourist Mecca before the tsunami. A Bangkok movie star and amateur photographer named Aun was here on December 26, taking pictures of Moken village life, when someone noticed the sea receding into the distance.
Correspondent: “How far?”
Aun: “Like...you see the blue one?”
Correspondent:“Yes.”
Aun: “Can you see the blue water? You didn’t see any water.”
Correspondent: “No kidding. You could walk all the way out there?”
Aun: “Yeah.”
Aun continued taking pictures. They showed the Moken on the beach crying.
Correspondent: “Did you have any idea why they were crying?”
Aun: “I feel like they know what bad will happen, but I don’t know how much bad.”
And Aun’s pictures showed the Moken fleeing towards higher ground long before the first wave struck.
Aun: “The first water, just come like..., over here.”
Correspondent: “The water got that high?”
Aun: “Yeah...”
And that was just the first wave. The worst was yet to come, as the Moken knew because of signs from the sea.
It wasn’t only the sea that was acting strangely. It was the animals, too. On the mainland, elephants started stampeding toward higher ground. Off Thailand’s coast, divers noticed dozens of dolphins swimming for deeper water, And on these islands, the cicadas, which are usually so loud, suddenly went silent.
● And the silence was heard by Saleh Kalathalay, that skilled spear-fisherman who was on a different part of the island. He ran around warning everyone.
Correspondent: “When you told people in the village, you said something was wrong, did they believe you?”
Kalathalay: “The young people called me a liar. I said, ‘we’ve told the story of the wave since the old times,’ but none of the kids believed me. I grabbed my daughter by the hand and said, ‘Child, get out of here, or you’ll die!’ She said, ‘You’re a liar, father, you’re drunk.’ I hadn’t had a drop to drink.”
Saleh brought the skeptics to the water’s edge, where they, too, saw the signs. Eventually, everyone, the Moken and the tourists, climbed to higher ground and were saved. But the village itself? There’s nothing left.
Correspondent: “Why do you think the tsunami happened?”
Kalathalay: “The wave is created by the spirit of the sea. The Big Wave had not eaten anyone for a long time, and it wanted to taste them again.”
Correspondent: “Do you think that they consider themselves very unlucky because their village was destroyed or lucky because they survived?”
Hinshiranan: “I think they just take it as a matter of fact.”
Dr Narumon Hinshiranan is an anthropologist, one of the very few who speaks the Moken language.
Correspondent: “Tell me what is it in you mind that permitted the Moken to know that the tsunami was coming?”
Hinshiranan: “The water receded very fast and one wave, one small wave, came so they recognized that is not ordinary. And then they have this kind of legend that passed from generations to generations about seven waves.”
It’s a legend recited around campfires, bearing an astonishing resemblance to what actually happened on December 26. They call it the Laboon—the wave that eats people and it’s brought on by the angry spirits of the ancestors. Before it comes, the sea recedes. Then the waters flood the earth, destroy it, and make it clean again.
Unit 1 The Sea Gypsies
● It was Christmas night in the United States a year ago that a giant wave of Tsunami hit South Aisa. It swept away at least 200,000 Indonesians, Sri Lankans, Thais and tourists from around the world on their Christmas vacations. But there’s one group who live precisely where the tsunami hit hardest who suffered no casualties at all. They are the sea gypsies of the Andaman Sea, or as they call themselves, the Moken.
They’ve lived for hundreds of years on the islands off the coast of Thailand and Burma. As reported last March, they are, of all the peoples of the world, among the least touched by modern civilization. And miraculously they survived the tsunami because they knew it was coming.
It"s their intimacy with the sea that saved them. They’re born on the sea, live on the sea, die on the sea. They know its moods and motions better than any marine biologist. They"re nomads, constantly moving from island to island, living more than six months a year on their boats.
At low tide, they collect sea cucumbers and catch eels. At high tide, they dive for shellfish. And they"ve been living this way for so many generations that they"ve become virtually amphibious. Kids learn to swim before they can walk. Underwater, they can see twice as clearly as the rest of us, and by lowering their heart rate, can stay underwater twice as long. They are truly sea urchins.
This old man decided he wanted to fish for breakfast. It was a pufferfish. If it"s not cut properly, it can kill you. The Moken cut it properly.
● We found this Moken village on an island two hours by speedboat from the coast of Thailand. It had become something of an exotic tourist Mecca before the tsunami. A Bangkok movie star and amateur photographer named Aun was here on December 26, taking pictures of Moken village life, when someone noticed the sea receding into the distance.
Correspondent: “How far?”
Aun: “Like...you see the blue one?”
Correspondent:“Yes.”
Aun: “Can you see the blue water? You didn’t see any water.”
Correspondent: “No kidding. You could walk all the way out there?”
Aun: “Yeah.”
Aun continued taking pictures. They showed the Moken on the beach crying.
Correspondent: “Did you have any idea why they were crying?”
Aun: “I feel like they know what bad will happen, but I don’t know how much bad.”
And Aun’s pictures showed the Moken fleeing towards higher ground long before the first wave struck.
Aun: “The first water, just come like..., over here.”
Correspondent: “The water got that high?”
Aun: “Yeah...”
And that was just the first wave. The worst was yet to come, as the Moken knew because of signs from the sea.
It wasn’t only the sea that was acting strangely. It was the animals, too. On the mainland, elephants started stampeding toward higher ground. Off Thailand’s coast, divers noticed dozens of dolphins swimming for deeper water, And on these islands, the cicadas, which are usually so loud, suddenly went silent.
● And the silence was heard by Saleh Kalathalay, that skilled spear-fisherman who was on a different part of the island. He ran around warning everyone.
Correspondent: “When you told people in the village, you said something was wrong, did they believe you?”
Kalathalay: “The young people called me a liar. I said, ‘we’ve told the story of the wave since the old times,’ but none of the kids believed me. I grabbed my daughter by the hand and said, ‘Child, get out of here, or you’ll die!’ She said, ‘You’re a liar, father, you’re drunk.’ I hadn’t had a drop to drink.”
Saleh brought the skeptics to the water’s edge, where they, too, saw the signs. Eventually, everyone, the Moken and the tourists, climbed to higher ground and were saved. But the village itself? There’s nothing left.
Correspondent: “Why do you think the tsunami happened?”
Kalathalay: “The wave is created by the spirit of the sea. The Big Wave had not eaten anyone for a long time, and it wanted to taste them again.”
Correspondent: “Do you think that they consider themselves very unlucky because their village was destroyed or lucky because they survived?”
Hinshiranan: “I think they just take it as a matter of fact.”
Dr Narumon Hinshiranan is an anthropologist, one of the very few who speaks the Moken language.
Correspondent: “Tell me what is it in you mind that permitted the Moken to know that the tsunami was coming?”
Hinshiranan: “The water receded very fast and one wave, one small wave, came so they recognized that is not ordinary. And then they have this kind of legend that passed from generations to generations about seven waves.”
It’s a legend recited around campfires, bearing an astonishing resemblance to what actually happened on December 26. They call it the Laboon—the wave that eats people and it’s brought on by the angry spirits of the ancestors. Before it comes, the sea recedes. Then the waters flood the earth, destroy it, and make it clean again.