Witness to disaster

Facing demons and laying ghosts - these are essential components in self-healing. But could you go back to a place which was a scene of utter devastation and where you and your family nearly died? Shaun Shackleton met a local woman who felt compelled to visit post-tsunami Thailand SITTING at a table in her restaurant, Oatlands Courtyard Brasserie, Val Scowen looks every inch the successful businesswoman, wife and mother.

What she doesn't look like is someone who, along with her husband, James, and son, Jacques, survived the horror of one of the 21st century's worst natural disasters: the Asian tsunami.

When she returned to Guernsey following the shocking sights she and her family had witnessed, Val struggled.

'I'd just left a place of devastation with bodies everywhere and there was nothing I could do. But when we came back, we had a business to run. We had to get on with it.'

All year the images haunted her. As 2005 neared its end, Val knew what she had to do. She had to go back.

'It was time,' she said. 'I told James that I needed to do it and that if I wanted to put a baby on my knee or talk to a family, he was going to have to let me. I needed to see every place that I saw devastated and how it looks now.'

A collection box set up in the restaurant just two days before they set off on their Christmas break gathered a staggering #700, which they converted into Thai currency.

With suitcases full of donated clothes - some of them Jacques' old Manchester United football shirts - the Scowens set off for the island of Phuket on 20 December.

And on the very first night, during a Thai boxing match, Val spotted the couple who had taken them in and helped them after they fled their hotel.

The couple were amazed when Val went over to speak to them, almost exactly a year later. But this was all part of the healing experience of revisiting Thailand.

Val took some time alone to look around Patong Beach, the area she had watched being destroyed. She wanted to see for herself the rebuilding and how people had coped and also to visit the places which she'd been to the year before.

Many of those whose homes and businesses were destroyed didn't have insurance.

'One man who had owned a restaurant was now cooking on a stove under three umbrellas. There were just the foundations of his restaurant left, but people were still going to him as his food was the best around.'

The Scowens couldn't face staying at the SeaPearl Hotel, from where they had witnessed first-hand the tsunami rolling in. But Val visited the completely rebuilt and refurbished building, renamed The Absolute SeaPearl, and, amazingly, still structurally sound following the tsunami hit.

Last time she had seen it, the interior was flooded to second-floor level, debris and even cars floating in the murky water.

She made her way to the hotel's roof. It was here that the Scowens and other guests took refuge for three hours while below, the flood-ravaged streets carried uprooted trees, rubbish that had once been people's homes, buses and - most shockingly of all - hundreds of dead bodies.

It was an eerie experience. 'Going over everything that happened, the same places, looking at the sea and up and down the hotel steps ... I can't explain it.'

On Boxing Day, Val, James and Jacques attended the first tsunami memorial service on the beach.All along the shore they had dug out tiny holes,' Val said. 'In each there was placed a lit candle, each one representing a person who had died in the tsunami. It was very eerie being in the same places a year on. Very emotional.'

On 15 January the Scowens met up with Guernsey taxi driver Rex Towers, who has helped tsunami survivors since last February.

Rex had hired a pickup and together they visited a Tesco Lotus supermarket, where they bought food and toiletries as well as footballs, fishing rods, dolls, books and games for children and some Singa beer.

'I really wanted to go to Ban Nam Khem village to visit some of the survivors, especially the children,' said Val. 'Without Rex, we'd have never found the place.'

To get to the area, Rex drove over the Sarasin Bridge, which leads to mainland Thailand, and up through Khao Lak.

On the way, they saw many reminders of the power of the tsunami, including rows of decapitated palm trees along the shore - a deadly precise shearing at 30ft from ground level.

There were boats which had been tossed like toys and dry-docked near houses situated far inland. One of them, a naval patrol craft, had been beached one-and-a-half miles from the sea. It is now a tourist attraction.

Rex stopped at the Wall of Remembrance at the nearby Mai Khao Cemetery: nothing more than an alleyway of white-painted sheets of plywood with the names of various countries painted in blue. But pinned to them were photographs of those who had perished and alongside, wreaths and cuddly toys, candles, religious icons and handwritten messages.

'There were even messages attached to photographs asking if anyone knew of these people's whereabouts,' said Val. 'But after a year, you just know they're not going to be found alive.'

Not a religious person, it was here that Val felt compelled to say a few prayers: 'To count myself lucky,' she said.

The cemetery and memorial wall are also the site of the forensic and victim-identification centre.

Here are rows of refrigerated shipping containers similar to those you might see at the White Rock. The difference is that even a year on, some were full of unidentified bodies.

From this heart-rending scene, Rex took the family to the village and to the relief camp near Bang Muang.

Here they were greeted by 30 or so children in yellow T-shirts - all tsunami orphans

or from broken homes and all kept

together because they had grown up in

this tight-knit community.

The Scowens were each offered a tray bearing a cup of coffee, a cup of water and an ice-cold towel for their face. Following this simple, dignified welcome, they gave out all the gifts: the T-shirts and toys for the children and the beers for the old men.

The organisers asked the children to line up so they could receive their gifts personally, which meant more than getting them anonymously.

An organiser made out receipts for every item, as donations have to be accounted for.

'To hand a child a T-shirt, a sweet or a toy and to see that child smile is unbelievable. A smile for a smile, that's the way I describe it,' said Val.

Afterwards children performed dances for the guests in their activity centre/school room, which was little more than a marquee with a wooden floor.

Val bought three pictures painted by the children on cotton sheets in order to raise funds for the school and village - a touching display of raw human emotion which she plans to frame and display at the brasserie.

One shows an elephant rescuing children, another the long fishing boats indigenous to the region. And one depicts a school bus upside down. All have been or about to be engulfed by the tsunami.

But memories notwithstanding, people are rebuilding their lives.

'There seems like a gradual getting back to normal,' said Val. 'People were being rehoused, there were women making handbags out of cane and many were using ancient sewing machines.'

Towards the end of their visit to the relief camp, Val noticed a woman crying inside her shelter. She realised that she had given her nothing and there was nothing left to give.

She approached the woman, took off her watch and put it on her wrist. The woman hugged her and said 'friends'. She had lost her husband and had four children to bring up alone.

'I promised her that she would be the first person I came to see next year,' said Val.

That is what she and her family plan to do again in December. And this year they will stay at the Absolute SeaPearl.

'I prefer going over myself and not getting involved with charities,' said Val. 'I can't believe, with all the money that has been donated worldwide, that there is still so much to do. I don't think all the money is actually getting there.'

Despite the painful memories, she would love to live in the area. 'It's so easy to make friends,' she said.

Val has learned a lot from the disaster and the people who were caught up in it.

'It makes me appreciate and be grateful for what I've got,' she said. 'It has opened my eyes. I like to think I was caring before but now I hope I'm even more so.'

She truly believes that if she could have her time again, she would like to go to poor countries and help.

'I've learned to live life one day at a time. You never know when you will lose it.'

Strong reminders of 26 December 2004, apart from the memories etched in her mind, are Val's photo albums. These will be available for customers to view at the Oatlands brasserie.

Inside each are vastly contrasting views of suffering and courage, joy and despair, destruction and rebuilding. They show a family which has lived through a terrible ordeal - Val's family - and they show orphans, widows and widowers whose families haven't.

They show how thousands of lives were ripped apart and the mending and healing which have been done in the tsunami's wake.

The photos were developed at the Friend Color Lab. Co. Ltd in Patong, Phuket. On the cover of the pack there's an orchid and on the back, rather poignantly, a printed poem. It reads:

'The sea of our friendship

Is very unfathomable.

It is full of floating love from good friends.

So the sea will never fall asleep

And friends will never forget me.'

u Val Scowen would like to thank Nigel at Milton Produce, Tim and Jackie at French Accents, Rex Towers and everyone who gave her money to take to Thailand.