Pornchai Moontri: Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand
Photo by Megan Coughlin (CC BY-ND 2.0)
When Fr Gordon MacRae wrote about a tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, he interviewed me for that post. I never imagined we would one day face the same tragedy in Thailand.
October 26, 2022 by Pornchai Maximilian Moontri
Sawasdee Kup, my friends. I greet you from the central Thailand city of Pak Chong. If you are wondering where Father G has been, nothing has changed. He is still right in the prison cell where we both lived for many years. As you know, there is a lot going on in his life at the moment. He has hard decisions to pray about and a lot of writing to do. I expect he will resume writing to you here next week.
I am most fortunate to be able to speak with Father Gordon daily. He calls me from his cell (it used to be our cell) at 0800 each morning which for me is 7:00 PM. I have been following very closely the posts by Ryan MacDonald, Harvey Silverglate, David F. Pierre, Jr., and Catholic League President Dr. Bill Donohue in the last few weeks. I laughed when I read Ryan’s comment about a local reporter refusing to see any of Ryan’s news about Father G saying, “My mind is made up.” I know Father Gordon better and longer than anyone. My mind is made up too.
In our daily call, Father G has told me about all that has been happening, but he has just never been at the center of his own focus on life. In recent weeks he has spoken with me every day about a tragedy that happened to some of the people of my home Province of Nong Bua Lamphu in Thailand. Like many people here, I have been shaken by this, but Father Gordon brings it up with a broken heart every time we speak now. He told me that the whole world was in mourning.
If you missed that news, it is an awful account. The small Thai village of Uthai Sawan in the north east of Thailand is near Phu Viang, the village where I was born. It is a part of Nong Bua Lamphu Province where Father John Le and his Order, the Society of the Divine Word, have their Thailand headquarters and a treatment center for Thai children with HIV. We are all deeply sad over what happened in Nong Bua Lamphu on October 6.
People in Thailand do not generally own guns. It is extremely rare that there is a murder here that involves a gun. The only people with guns are police officers. On October 6, 2022, a recently fired police officer named Panya Kamrab brought a 9mm handgun and a knife into a preschool daycare center in Uthai Sawan where he murdered 24 children ages two to five. Then he killed several adults and his own wife and child before turning his gun on himself. On that day, 36 people died at his hands.
Mr. Kamrab was 34 years old and a former police officer in that same community. He had lost his position due to his possession and use of methamphetamine drugs, but in the autopsy after his rampage there were no drugs found within him. The mayor of Uthai Sawan said that methamphetamine abuse is rampant. “The drugs are cheap and everywhere in society,” he said.
Uthai Sawan is a small rural farming community in the far Northeast of Thailand near and very similar to the place where I lived as a small child. Like my ancestral family, the people there are mostly farmers raising rice and sugar cane for market. The innocence of that community is now torn, and recovery will take a very long time.
It Takes a Village
In Thailand, the Monarch, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, is the Head of State while Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha is the head of government. The Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and other senior members of the government all traveled to Uthai Sawan where the tragedy took place and promised compensation for the mourning families. The King told the families that their deceased children will receive Royal patronage and the King would pay for their funeral expenses. The Thai government has responded as well as possible, but there is no Ministry to Mend Broken Hearts.
In many rural Thai families, it is common for children to be raised by grandparents and extended family while parents travel in search of better paying jobs to support them. That is what happened in my family as well. But the world is different now. There are other influences. The people of Uthai Sawan blame drugs as the cause of this madness. They say that cheap narcotics have overwhelmed many adolescents and young adults holding more of an influence over them than their families can.
Drug abuse is a scourge on the world. Though no drugs were found in Panya Kamrab after the killings, he was known to struggle with methamphetamine. He had been scheduled to appear in a local court on drug charges set for three days after his rampage.
This tragedy is almost a mirror image of the senseless killings in Uvalde, Texas that Father Gordon wrote about in June this year in “Tragedy at Uvalde: When God and Men were Missing.” When he asked me back then what might have driven 18-year-old Salvatore Ramos to his rampage in Uvalde, I told Father G:
“I did not care about anyone either; and then someone cared about me. If I did not find God, and you, and acceptance, and Divine Mercy, I might have stayed on a road to destruction. It was all I knew or expected. Hatred left me when something came along to replace it. Do you remember your Elephants post? It makes total sense. The one thing missing from my life and the lives of those two kids in America was a father. Without one, a decent one, a kid is at the mercy of dark forces and his mind just breaks.”
The “Elephants post” I mentioned was one Father G wrote for Fathers Day in 2012. It opened my eyes and the eyes of many others and it began a serious conversation about the crisis of manhood and fatherhood in our time. That now famous post was “In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men.”
Father G says it has been showing up a lot since the tragedy at Uvalde. It is not a surprise to me that some people in the U.S. are just now discovering that wonderful story. I was there when Father G wrote it in our cell on his typewriter for three hours on a Saturday afternoon. I was amazed at what came out of his mind on paper. He used to often give me his finished post to read, and I admit that sometimes I had to force my eyes to stay open, but not for that post. I thought it was fascinating.
Of Elephants and Men
I think we can learn some things about manhood from elephants. In Thailand, they are considered sacred. Their family units never succumb to outside pressures because elephant parents - and especially fathers — do not walk away from their instinct to protect, guide and teach their young. Elephants have long been revered and honored, and in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, they play a significant role in traditional religion.
I was taken away from Thailand as a Buddhist child and 36 years later I returned as a committed Catholic. I think you already know that a lot of suffering and loss were surrendered to Divine Mercy in that conversion. In Thailand, the small minority of Catholics and the large majority of Buddhists live and work side by side in harmony and mutual respect. Both have impacted our culture. All my ancestors were Buddhist as are 97 percent of the people of Thailand. In Buddhist traditional stories, the white elephants of Thailand were heralded as manifestations of God.
What does this have to do with the tragedies at Uvalde, Texas and Uthai Sawan, Thailand? Father G told me this wonderful true story in our phone call today:
“South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony was known as ‘The Elephant Whisperer.’ He spent his life working to save endangered species and became known for his ability to communicate with and rescue traumatized and injured elephants. He managed the 5,000 acre Thula Thula Reserve in Kwazulu Natal, South Africa.
“On March 2, 2012, [just three months before Father G wrote his post on Elephants and Men] Lawrence Anthony had a fatal heart attack. Then something extraordinary happened. The two elephant herds in Thula Thula walked from different directions for 12 hours to the house where Mr. Anthony died. They stood vigil at the compound for two days, apparently in ritual mourning. Then they disappeared again into the wild.
“No one can explain how the elephants knew of Mr. Anthony’s death. Then, for each of the two consecutive years following his death, elephants returned on that same date and time to mourn him.”
This is what has happened in recent weeks in Uthai Sawan in far Northeast Thailand. From the King of Thailand down to the youngest, smallest citizen, the Thai community has come to mourn from near and far the tragic loss of its beloved children.
In the years I lived in America, I thought that we gave up our dead too quickly, and returned too quickly to the day to day drama of our own lives. The Buddhists of Thailand believe that the souls of their dead linger for a time in the place where they lived. The time of mourning is a faith experience that is shared with them. As a Catholic, I too have been touched by death and those I loved in this life have lingered in my heart for the passing of many moons.
Father G taught me that no one can pass through life alone. The human village is essential, and faith is essential to the human village. No one should be lost. No child should be left behind. No one should go it alone now in this world of madness and distraction. We must all hear and heed the Word of God to Cain in the Book of Genesis: “Listen to the sound of your brother’s blood crying out to me from the Earth.” (Genesis 4:10)
Please pray for the parents of Uthai Sawan and for Thailand.
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Note from Pornchai Moontri: Thank you for reading and sharing this post, for supporting my best friend, Father G, and for making me part of our family of believers. You may also like these related posts:
In the Absence of Fathers: A Story of Elephants and Men
No Child Left Behind — Except in Afghanistan
The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead
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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: I thank Pornchai Moontri for stepping in for me with this moving post. While Pornchai was writing this, I was invited to write an article for the project, False Allegations Watch. My article, which was just published is “Did police misconduct turn a false allegation into a wrongful conviction? — Fr Gordon J. MacRae.” Visiting and sharing this article with others lets the project Editor know that this is an important story.
Please also visit our SPECIAL EVENTS PAGE to consider a new Corporal Work of Mercy from Beyond These Stone Walls for a cause that is dear to my heart. I will be back here next week!
“Stay sober and alert for your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him steadfast in your faith for you know that your brethren throughout the world are undergoing the same trials.”
— 1 Peter 5:8-9
