Culprit or saviour?
The head coach of the Thai football team spent the morning of June 23 preparing his young assistant for an important task: Looking out for the boys by himself.
Nopparat Khanthavong, the 37-year-old head coach of the Moo Pa (Wild Boars) football team, had an appointment that morning. Ekapol Chanthawong, his assistant, was to take the younger boys to a football field nestled by the Doi Nang Non mountain range, a formation with numerous waterfalls and caves that straddles the Thai-Myanmar border.
"Make sure you ride your bicycle behind them when you are travelling around, so you can keep a lookout," he wrote in a Facebook message he shared with The Washington Post.
The hours that followed kicked off a chain of events that has riveted the world: A dramatic search and rescue that found the boys alive nine days later, huddled on a small, muddy patch surrounded by flood waters.
Attention has focused on the only adult, 25-year-old former monk Ekapol, and the role he has played in both their predicament and their survival.
As four of the boys are out now in a complex rescue operation, some have chided Ekapol for leading the team into the cave. A large warning sign at the cave's entrance raises the risk of entering so close to the monsoon season, they say, and he should have known better.
But for many in Thailand, Ekapol, who left his life in the monkhood three years ago and joined the Wild Boars as an assistant coach soon after, is an almost divine force, sent to protect the boys as they go through this ordeal. A widely shared cartoon drawing of Ekapol shows him sitting cross-legged, as a monk does in meditation, with 12 little wild boars in his arms.
According to rescue officials, he is among the weakest in the group, in part because he gave the boys his share of the limited food and water they had with them in the early days. He also taught the boys how to meditate and how to conserve as much energy as possible until they were found.
“He loves them more than himself," said Joy Khampai, a longtime friend of Ekapol's.
Ekapol on Saturday apolosiged to all the parents and promised to take care of the boys.
But the parents instead thanked him.
“If he didn't go with them, what would have happened to my child?" said the mother of Pornchai Khamluang, one of the boys in the cave, in an interview with a Thai television network. "When he comes out, we have to heal his heart. My dear Ek, I would never blame you."
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