Flattened by the giant waves of December 26 two years ago, Ban Talay Nok now has all it needs - tsunami warning tower, school and public health centre.
Unfortunately, all the things the small fishing community got are impractical.

"I don't know why they give us facilities that seem useless or defective," Rewut Harnjitr, the village headman, said last week.
The severe destruction wrought by the tsunami on the village attracted many aid agencies, both public and private, to provide support to the villagers.
The fishing village of some 240 residents lost 47 members, including eight schoolchildren, as well as a school and public-health centre located near the ocean, together with 20 homes, to the angry tide.

The white-capped breaker from the horizon left villagers psyched out by the sea. Rewut said they now spent time at the sea only when they were fishing, not the whole day as before. When they were told that a tsunami warning tower would be installed in their village, they felt their stress drain away.

Now the Bt10-million tower is standing in the village, but the villagers are still under pressure and stress since it doesn't work.

Rewut said the tower didn't do anything even during the test runs. After the malfunction was reported to the provincial authorities, the village was visited by the head of the National Disaster Warning Centre, Smith Thammasaroj.

"He came to encourage us to trust the efficiency of the warning system. He showed us how the tower would work by playing a CD of warning messages in many languages," Rewut said.

"Once it works, it will be like this," the villagers were reassured.

For the villagers it would be better if the sample messages came out of the tower. Villagers say the only thing they want for the second-year commemoration of the disaster is a working tsunami warning tower.

However, the tower now has an unexpected role: it's part of a children's playground. Running around the base of the tower, children say they know if the tower screams it's time to run: "A tsunami is coming," said a boy.

Since their school was completely destroyed, all the 42 surviving schoolchildren have had to study at a temporary facility built in Rewut's backyard. Their new school is under construction on a small hill far from the sea. Next year, the small community with 52 households will have a new school with three buildings, costing about Bt18 million.

Although the village has only 42 school-age children and four teachers, including the headmaster, the new school will have nine, eight-by-15-metre classrooms, capable of accommodating altogether 200 students.

"We designed it for the future, in case the village expands and the number of children is bigger," said Patcharaporn Singh, manager of the SOS Foundation of Thailand, the funding agency for the school's construction.

The foundation consulted with the Phang Nga education office before designing the school, she said. The foundation wanted to make the school conform to Education Ministry standards that require one classroom for each grade. Three classrooms are for pre-school and the other six for grade school.

"I don't think we want that big a school," said a villager calling herself Pheung.

While the school is still under construction, the village already has its public-health centre. Within a few months of the tsunami, the Public Health Ministry approved Bt5 million to build a new centre for the villagers. Unfortunately, the new one was built on the same spot as the old one - on the beachfront.

"I told them to wait and we would look for a new place, because the old place is too close to the sea and we don't want to go near it, but they said they couldn't wait due to the bureaucratic system," the village headman said.

A Public Health Ministry source said that if the centre had not been built during the fiscal year ending September 30, 2005, the budget would have been returned to the government.

Although the centre has been operating since early this year with two public-health officials stationed around the clock, no one goes there even when sick.

"Healthy people don't want to get close to the sea, not to mention sick ones," Rewut said. Sick villagers now go to a health centre in a nearby village.

After the tsunami, all the villagers moved their houses far inland. The nearest house is 800 metres from the sea, he said.

Even one of the public-health officials posted to Ban Talay Nok didn't want to be there.

"I admit I was in living in fear. One reason was the inoperative warning tower," Thaweep Chantrawas said.

Thaweep worked at the office on the beachfront for only 10 months and then transferred to a new health centre, built by a Japanese foundation, far from the sea.

The Bt5-million public-health centre, equipped with medical facilities, is now abandoned, standing quietly on the beach. Opposite stands a small building built by the Kampuan Tambon Administration Organisation. A nearby sign says the Bt400,00 building is a public multipurpose centre. Rewut said no one had used it because it was too close to the sea.

As the headman of a village that was laid waste by the tsunami, Rewut appreciates all the relief and assistance that has poured into his village. His only regret is that the kindness and generosity would be more useful to the villagers if aid agencies had just listened to them first.