Travel to Thailand, North-East Thailand, Ban Muang Samsip.

Friday, 11.15am. I sit staring at the blank screen which is my blog, distracting myself with the sound of the wind rattling the shutters and sending the door banging open. Smoke starts to fill the house so I close them. Around this time the farmers burn their dead crops to prepare them for the new.

Five minutes later and I am coughing from the thick haze of smoke now sitting in our living room. I go outside to check what has happened and in front of me, inches from Pi Noi’s house, a wall of fire is blowing out of control and towards our house. I run to the staff room, find Pi Noi and hand gesture her roof being on fire and the need to save as much as we can from her house (hard when you know only limited Thai, or sign language). We hurry back along with half the school who were converging on the scene. The flames had jumped onto the roof of her house and the strong winds fanned them across the dry grass towards our home. Students ripped down branches and used them to beat out the fire whilst others grabbed any container they could find; bottles, bins and buckets to put out the falling embers. I gave out everything big enough to hold water and joined the rest in dousing the flames. As the wind changed and the towering inferno surrounded the house to the right of Pi Noi’s, the voluntary fire service turned up. They quickly dealt with the roof and stopped its advance before it engulfed the house along or made a bonfire out of the wooden house nearby. By this time Ben had turned up, telling how the coffee shop was covered in ash blown across from the blaze that had spread across all the neighbouring fields.

We toiled away through smoke and teary eyes till the embers were nothing more than a smouldering heap. As I looked across to where the flames still blew I saw some of my M1 boys who had jumped the fence into the field and were try beating away the fires. Behind them you could see a line of smoke advancing towards where they stood. Ducking below the barbwire, I ran across the ashen landscape and told them to return back to school. As we half walked, half ran, I couldn’t help thinking how differently English students would have reacted to such an incident. I cannot imagine groups of Year 9’s risking their lives to save QEHS or teachers calmly watching as their students deal with a raging inferno.

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