Neung is a tsunami orphan. Sort of. It has taken a bit of time for us to piece the story together, and we may still not have all the details exactly right.* She is four and half years old (she will be five in October), and her father has not been around since she was very young. Her mother worked at a resort in Khao-Lak, and died on December 26.

Her mother, Somsri, had started working there about six months prior to the tsunami, and since that time Neung had only been seeing her every month or so (because Somsri lived as well as worked at the resort). Neung was being raised by her grandmother, Sanam, and Sanam's long-time partner, Panya. Panya also lost a son in the tsunami.

But at that time, all we knew is that we were in a camp full of people who had lost their homes, their possessions, their relatives, and their friends, and that someone pointed at Neung and said "no mama, no papa". So Jill picked her up. Wouldn't you?

We visited the camp on two successive days, and saw Neung both times, but by the second day one of the larger relief organizations was moving in, and we realized we could do more good further north.

What were we doing, anyway?

*This page has been revised several times since we first put together this website. Even though we have sometimes been lucky enough to have had access to some very good translators (thank you Mark, Kratik, and Jacky!), we have also had to rely from time to time on translators whose English was not so great, and it has been hard at times to get accurate information.