IT director lends a hand in Thailand

Hurricane Katrina's devastation this week has brought home the power of Mother Nature to many in the U.S. Earlier this summer, Senior IT Director K.C. Tomsheck got a first-hand look at Mother Nature's force abroad.
 
He and eight colleagues from technology product and services company CDW headed to Thailand to build houses for victims of the tsunami that hit southeast Asia last December.

The CDW employees, who work in IT, sales and other departments, were randomly chosen for the assignment from those who donated to a company-matched tsunami relief fund.

Tomsheck, the team leader on the trip, says it took about 21 hours to get from Chicago (via Tokyo) to the once-bustling tourist city of Khao Lak. There were 72 resorts there before the tsunami; now only six are even partially open.

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Hurricane Katrina's devastation this week has brought home the power of Mother Nature to many in the U.S. Earlier this summer, Senior IT Director K.C. Tomsheck got a first-hand look at Mother Nature's force abroad.
 
He and eight colleagues from technology product and services company CDW headed to Thailand to build houses for victims of the tsunami that hit southeast Asia last December.

The CDW employees, who work in IT, sales and other departments, were randomly chosen for the assignment from those who donated to a company-matched tsunami relief fund.

Tomsheck, the team leader on the trip, says it took about 21 hours to get from Chicago (via Tokyo) to the once-bustling tourist city of Khao Lak. There were 72 resorts there before the tsunami; now only six are even partially open.

Thomsheck tells of boats that were carried inland to crush buildings and hotels that were leveled. Many people live in temporary row houses, tiny buildings made from plywood.

Tomsheck's team spent two weeks working with Habitat for Humanity building houses for people who were left homeless (To read more about the group's experiences, see Tomsheck's partial diary ). The CDW employees "got along amazingly well" despite never having met one another beforehand, he says.

Other workers on the site included an English- and Thai-speaking supervisor, as well as refugees from Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), who were paid about $6 per day to work on the house and spoke no English or Thai. Nobody else in the group spoke Burmese.

Also working there was a Thai woman named Khwan, for whom the house was being built. (Tomsheck explains that in order to buy an inexpensive house from Habitat for Humanity, prospective owners must put in 500 hours of "sweat equity" to build it). Workers communicated through the supervisor and by hand gestures and managed to work together.

Tomsheck also spent some time helping to work on the simple network that Habitat had set up.  He explains that landline phone and Internet service are rare in Khao Lak; most people use prepaid cell phones, and one shop managed to get satellite Internet access. Starting with a small workgroup network that shared a single 56K bit/sec modem, he set up file sharing and some simple security measures. He taught people how to use the technology, speaking through a translator and using a version of Windows XP that switched between English and Thai and keyboards that did the same.

By the end of the two weeks, the team had laid a foundation and begun building walls, in addition to spending some time working on four other houses. Besides their material accomplishments, Tomsheck says that the team earned the gratitude of Khwan. The Thai people "just went overboard on the hospitality," he says.

Before the workers left, Khwan presented them with braided bracelets that she had made for them as a token of her appreciation.  Says Tomsheck: "I'm wearing this thing until it wears out and falls off my wrist."