Dormitory washed away by flash flood
One morning in May 2004, head teacher Deng of the primary school in Long Pe heard a strange rumble in the distance. As it came closer and closer, he did not understand what it could be. It was no thunderstorm, and big machines could not reach this part of the mountains. He started to worry and remained alert. The rumble swelled and suddenly it occurred to him that is was the sound of water and breaking trees. He realised he would only have half an hour or maybe less. The children were just having lunch. As fast as possible he gave the order for everybody to leave the school and he rushed the children to higher ground. It was not a minute too soon. A flash flood levelled the whole school, which was lifted by the water and deposited some fifty meters further on.
Fortunately there were no casualties in Long Pe, but there was a lot of damage. One of the buildings destroyed was a new dormitory, funded by Samsara and just finished. The teachers of Long Phe Wittaya School at first did not dare inform Samsara, because after all 100,000 baht had been spent and now everything was swept away. They had to start all over again.
More villages were destroyed and the news reached the papers and TV stations all over the country. The army was sent in to help with reconstruction. They acted swiftly, but the work was only limited to a few temporary structures of low quality. The school, for instance, was rebuilt using bamboo and teak leaves as construction material.
Once the news was out, it did not take long for Samsara to decide to support the rebuilding of the dormitory for an amount of 125,000 baht. It was expensive to build because prices of steel and cement had gone up quite a bit in Thailand’s building boom of 2004-2005. However, Samsara insisted that the school and the dormitory be built to a higher standard, so they would be better protected against floods. But, the foundation said also that it did not have enough money for reconstruction of the school building. Besides, Samsara has an arrangement with the Ministry of Education that it will never build complete schools as it considers this the main responsibility of the Government. The Ministry of Education was therefore asked to provide the funds for the school, which they agreed upon. Samsara also included more furniture than before.
Construction did not go as well as the teachers had hoped. The dormitory was constructed fast enough, but the main school building was only partially finished and the Government money had run out. They now faced a situation in which there was a dormitory adjacent to a school that was not finished. Annelie Hendriks, volunteer with Samsara, visited Long Pe in March 2005 with Robert Wiggers, director of Wild Geese Foundation from the Netherlands and Robert promised that his organisation would fund the finishing of the school (mainly its floor and paint for the whole building as well as all the desks and chairs for six classrooms) for a total of 300,000 baht.
Finally, there was a happy ending!