Dear Friends,

Please forgive us for our long silence and for the lack of updates on the website. It is not that we have no news. But our time has been very limited - there are simply not enough hours in the day.
The last four weeks I (Klaus) have been alone in the office and have been visiting our protégées. Prob and Dao have been here to assist me with our Thai related work. But, unfortunately, they can't write in English, German or Spanish.
Simone went to Fiji to secure her future there. She came at the beginning of January for a few weeks just to say farewell to her lost friends. Seeing the real situation here, she dropped everything to help the Tsunami victims. But she had many things to deal with whilst away and is back with a bag full of good news and in need of a break. Especially from Rivermount College in Australia which she visited (a very prestigious school). This will benefit the school in Ban Bang Muang a lot.
Detlev, who was supposed to do his Dive Instructor Course in January, postponed it in the favour of Tsunami Relief work until April. So he had to leave us for a while too. He has, in the meantime, passed his Instructor Exam with an excellent result and also completed a compressor maintenance course. But now he is back with the team. Michael has been in Germany since March and will be back at the end of this month. We look forward to seeing him again to pester him with our little technical problems.
Dao is relatively well. But, she will have to go to hospital to get a new eardrum. During her unexpected dive when the Tsunami hit, her right eardrum was perforated and is not healing properly, so she will need a new eardrum.
Prob and I spent a very scary week when we discovered a tumour in her breast. That night, we did not sleep very much. The next day, we visited the hospital and at noon the surgeon extracted the lump. But we had to wait one anxious week for the biopsy report which, thankfully, showed that it was not malignant. Since then, we have all slept a lot better.
Obviously, I have neglected my shoulder a bit since 26th December. As a consequence, the shoulder is now very stiff and I will have to be stricter with my exercises and physiotherapy to help it heal. A German physiotherapist who was here on holiday pulled my ears because of my lack of awareness and started with the treatment again.
On 9th of June, Prob and I will go for a week to Germany, then two weeks to Spain for a tv-documentary, then ten days on a research vessel and then back to Germany to operate one of my eyes and around 24th of July, we will return to Thailand.
I hope that Simone and Detlev will not miss me too much. Not because of my good looks, but as they will have to take on extra duties!

Now for news of our ongoing projects:

During the first week of May, we had to declare to the tax office all the donations and expenses for our Tsunami relief work. For those of you who know me personally and how much I "love" paperwork, this was very special accountancy work! As neither Simone nor Detlev were around to help (good timing guys!), I had many long nights swearing and sweating. In fact, the showdown at the tax office was very positive. Obviously, the Revenue Office has no plan to complicate the life of the Tsunami Relief Groups. They were very happy with our documentation and also gave us a few tips. And, something that has never happened to me before in a tax office - when I was leaving them, the Department Head thanked us for all the help that we have provided to their people!

At the beginning of May, we bought and delivered the last boats for King Carl Gustav XVI of Sweden and made the last additions to their database. Detlev has also prepared a CD-rom for them with all the data, photos and a nice little movie from the boat ceremony. And when we have scanned all documentation, we will hand over the whole case to the Swedish General Consul Mr. Christer Asp and close the case. All our hard disks suffered from containing so much data. But now, we have got a new one to provide relief for our server. We will get assistance from friends of the Swedish King in the parliament for another one hundred boats. A large workload again, but also a great help for the affected provinces. This will be more problematic than the first boats as we will have to approach areas where we don’t have such a good network of information than at the other places. Apart from this, second hand boats are becoming rare now and we will have to buy more new boats.
The library building at Ban Bang Muang School is more than halfway there. The Friends of Ban Bang Muang are already looking for furniture, books and computers. This is great news.

Meanwhile, we photographed the bank account books of the orphans (the ones we could get hold of) and will print the names in English into the pictures and send them to the respective sponsors.
With the Bank, we are still negotiating. They have waived all the charges for incoming international transfers for the orphans. But, as domestic transfers were not mentioned in the application, they now want to charge for money that is transferred internally from a Thai account! No problem, we will try and solve it. It is just a question of wasted time.

We are still buying fishing gear and tools for the fishermen, according to how we receive funds. Apart from that, we try to help them with marketing/selling of their catches as a cooperative. If they get a contract with some restaurants or hotels in Phuket, they could get much better results for their catches instead of selling them to the local Chinese fish dealers.

Since April, we are also very active in repairing damaged houses or building new ones. The first new house for Sea Gypsies at Sarasin Bridge was finished about four weeks ago. The second house being built there is nearly finished.
In a very small village south of Tap Lamu, we have two more houses that are now half-built and a third one will start soon. And, in Baan nam Kem, we have also started construction two houses.
Wherever we build houses for the Morgans (Sea Gypsies), we try to teach them some basic lessons on hygiene, keeping their toilets clean, dispose human or animal excrements, keeping garbage in proper containers, etc. As they realise that we are trying to help them, they are listening to us and we are also trying to sponsor some of their children to go to school or to bring people with more knowledge to help improve their life without damaging their culture and traditions.
If we can raise this money, we would like to start an education programme for them where one foreigner and one Thai visit them every week and help them with advice, material and simple lessons to improve their lives.

We hope that all of you are well and will try to inform you of our news on a more regular basis.

Best regards to you all,

Klaus, Prob, Detlev, Simone, Dao, Sai, Michael and Chune