Nicole helps in flooded villages around Bangkok
The fierce stir in Thailand is over, but the water is still high. Nicole Salverda left her home in Bangkok at the end of October and returned a month ago. With an aid organization she now brings mosquito nets and food to the victims.
Nicole's house is not flooded, but she realizes that there is still a lot to do before people move in Thailand to resume daily life. Nearly 4000 villages in ten provinces are still under water.
Nicole Salverda recently went to a flooded area outside Bangkok to help: the village of Ayutthaya. A lot of water was already visible on the main road. Not all cars could pass. There was also a lot of cattle parked on the roads. At the site itself, people were in 3,5 meters of water for two months.
Agricultural fields blank
The houses are on stilts, but the water had come in anyway, so they lived mainly on the upper floor. The food was brought in by boat. Now there is two meters of water and daily life is still disrupted, because people live from agriculture.
"What you see are whole groups of people who are very happy that some food is coming and who are just waiting for the water to go down so that they have a source of income again." And where the water has already gone, chaos reigns. 'The garbage could not be removed during the floods. You can see in the trees where it got stuck.'
At least 750 dead
The death toll is also still rising. 750 people would have died, but according to Salverda there could be quite a lot more. Not everyone wanted to leave their house for fear of looting. 'You can imagine that in some of those areas people died in silence. They haven't been counted yet.'
The government hardly cares about the victims. Only the residents of Bangkok receive support from the government, which is mainly busy getting tourism back up to standard. During the floods, the government already tried to mitigate the consequences of the floods. Fearing that no tourists would come and that foreign investors would withdraw.
In good spirits
Nicole has a lot of admiration for the inhabitants of the flooded villages, because despite all the misery they keep their spirits up. 'They have a lot of perseverance and accept the situation as it is. The atmosphere is good with still a smile here and there and a lot of care for each other.'
Source: Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Now I am not a professional journalist, but I dare to say that this is a very lousy piece of prose from the Wereldomroep, badly edited, half-truths, pertinent errors, etc..
Postings of “own” people on this blog are, without exception, of a (much) higher level, aren't they?.
Haha, I'm going to nominate this article for a Pulitzer Prize. Has a good chance 😉
every year agricultural areas are flooded in thailand you never hear anything about that
every year my house is flooded you never hear me complain about that i take it as part of the rain time one time more the other time less, also being in the netherlands
there are sometimes big problems, too bad then live with it, I never got one from the government
received compensation from Thailand, I do not want to find out myself
apipanjo.