Moken sea gypsy. Age: 17. Traditional name: Sky. Feels angry at the way the Moken are treated. Still lives with his family around the headland, but has been working in hotel maintenance (as a garbage collector and pool cleaner) for over a year. Has learned to speak Thai and English from his hotel receptionist friend, Rune.
Identity: “I’ve had a lifetime of being nobody and it is too long… I want to move to a place where they do not say Dirty Islander with spit running round their mouth- where people treat me like I’m human.”
“The world is changing- we need to change with it… I’ll fly away like the tourists. I want their electric world.”
“Free diving was all I wanted until I discovered how Moken are treated: until this woman turned into a viper and stung Mama. I’ve never forgotten and I never will.”
“I was born on the Kabang, it was all I’d ever known. When the sun rose, we would sail between islands and dive for fish. When the sun set and the moon pulled the tide back, we would sleep. I lived and breathed the ocean. I love her, yet I fear her. She is gentle, then she is fierce, snatching lives.”
“The ocean swirls around my mind. Freedom. No walls. I could be gliding through the reef, brushing my fingers through the swaying seaweed. Singing to the dance of the ocean.”
About the Moken people: “My people don’t do time- we work by the tides and the moon. But I’m learning not to judge everything by how far the sun has climbed in the sky.”
About revellers: “Alcohol turns people into different versions of themselves: some expand and others contract.”
About Krista: “Cases fill the pavement, but the girl stands on her own, hair flowing over her shoulders as she digs flip-flop toes in the dust, tracing a circle. I wonder what she is thinking and if I will see her again. But why would she pick a pebble when she could find a pearl?”
About the tsunami: “The waves have flooded over all of us: brown or white, Islander or Land lover. The wind kisses our cheeks whether we are born on a boat and have no possessions and no education; or a rich western girl with knowledge and beauty and golden hair that flies in the wind.”
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