As much as we make light of things that happen in Hoi An & Vietnam on this blog, it is a way of protecting others, and ourselves at times, from the reality that is sometimes very confronting. It is also difficult to describe the emotion of some of the things we see, and sure, we can laugh at them and not understand the logic behind some of them, but the reality is that most things here happen or come to be from the necessity to survive and the lack of resources. One thing we have learnt is that our western thinking is not applicable to a developing country like Vietnam and to be judgemental of its people and its circumstance is western arrogance.
This blog, is on a much more serious note - so be warned.
We both have days where we see things that shock us and the images and stories are hard to forget. They play on your mind and have you wondering where it all starts and where it all ends - if there is an end at all. The longer we are here, the more things we see and when we think we have seen some things that are distressing, we something even more distressing the next day. To us westerners who are protected from the realities of life most of the time, they are only distressing to us. For the people here they are an everyday occurrence and are accepted mostly as a way of life - their lot in life, the way things are - and they learn to cope by making the best of what they have. This is often very little. The one thing that never ceases to amaze us is that although to us, the people here have a poor and sad existence, they are happy - and we wonder how happy we are with all our material possessions and the want for more. What do we need these things for?? - to make us happy? are we happy?
The poor are rich in the thought that they are alive and have food and a roof over their heads. It doesn't matter that the meals are small and basic nor that their accommodation may be dilapidated (only by our standards) or shared by 3 or 4 generations..........
There are times when we found some of these things a little depressing and wondered what we are doing here - the problems are far too complicated and far too big for us to solve- can one person really make a difference??? Then we met Jacqui from the Kianh Foundation, a support agency for the Hoi An Orphanage, at drinks on Friday night with her Vietnamese son Wah who is 9 years old. Wah was profoundly disabled and was surrendered to the orphanage about 2 1/2 yeas ago. After a year, Wah's father wanted to take him back home. Until Wah had been surrendered to the orphanage, his parents had kept him tied to a bed every day! We were horrified but then saw that his parents probably had no choice if they were to work at al to support the family - it was probably also to protect Wah from injury, we reasoned. Jacqui couldn't bring herself to let it happen and so applied for legal Guardianship of Wah. He now lives with her and in the last 12 months has learnt to walk and talk - be it unsteadily and sometimes incomprehensibly- but he can do it all the same. This was our inspiration and motivation.. This gave us hope that we could do good here and make a difference to a life.
Wah was an inspiration and so I went to visit the his orphanage yesterday thinking that it would be better than the orphanage at Dai Loc. Dai Loc is in a village out of Hoi An so is much more isolated and doesn't have the tourist income that Hoi An does. As much as I was somewhat shocked by the conditions at Dai Loc, I was not prepared for Hoi An orphanage. I guess I came here expecting the worst and thought I had seen most of it - but also know deep down that we had been protected to a point because we were westerners and would probably not see most of it.
I met Colin, a volunteer from Australia who is working with the Kianh Foundation and Alec, a young man from England who has taken 12 months leave from the European Central Bank in Germany to travel. First impressions on entering the orphanage is that it is rather ramshackle but not too bad. We were taken upstairs to a room where a Physio and an assistant were working with a group of both mentally and physically disabled children ranging in ages from around 6 - 19 years. Their aids and resources were limited but the basics were there. I was surprised to see children's car seats being used to seat the children up, but it seemed like a very practical solution.
Next we go into a classroom where we see about 9 children attending lessons. They all turn to us and say "hello", smiles on their faces as they wave. We wave back. All have some level of disability. We are told that although the orphanage provides these services to the children, the government can decide at any time to move them to an adult institution and they often do - without warning and without logic for selection. Here they no longer have access to any physio or other services and those that cannot mobilise are left bedridden - undoing all the work from the care provided at the orphanage. The Kianh Foundation employs a local cyclo driver to bring a few of the young adults who have been relocated back to the orphanage each day for physio and lessons. We meet Khanh, whom the Kianh Foundation was named after. He is now 19 years old and his days at the orphanage are numbered. The children all say "Goodbye" and wave as we leave.
We are next shown the Physio room upstairs with a small collection of very basic physio aids, the boys dorm where children sleep 3 and 4 to a bed, the dining room, the open kitchen, the boys bathroom which is in a state of disrepair (although Colin told us it had been renovated a few years ago so the girls could have a separate bathroom). Colin tells us they built a trough a few years ago so the children didn't have to clean their teeth and wash their hands on the floor where there was no drain for the waste. We move to another bathroom come laundry where a stainless steel bed with steel slats sits near a cold water trough on a tiled floor. The smell is terrible, even worse than the boys shower / toilet block. We are told that the children are lined up together on the bed and washed down with cold water - even in the winter. The bed looked no different than those the children are sleeping on. The toilet is taped up as it is blocked and can't be used. Above us is hanging stiff cloth squares of material that we are told are nappies......and apparently there were no nappies until a few years ago. The nappies are hosed off onto the floor and then the faeces are hosed outside onto the central courtyard. Standing alone and abandoned on the other side of the room is a dilapidated shower chair that is stained and looks like it had never been cleaned.
We are then led through a door to another room. The sight here is heartbreaking. To the right of me are 2 children sitting on a steel slatted bed being fed pureed rice by a house mother. We are told both are in their late teens but I would have guessed at an age of about 10. Both have cerebral palsy and one was born with no eyes. To the left are three small undernourished children (we are told they are all girls) on one bed. All are in their early teens -I never would have guessed their ages either. Two lay side by side, one constantly stroking the pillow her head lay on - she is severely disabled and her body is contorted and the foetal position. Lying next to her on her back is the other girl, right leg plastered from toe to waist, a disposable nappy taped to the plaster. The plaster is wet from urine. She had fallen out of bed and broken her leg a few weeks ago. At the other end of the bed in a corner is another small girl with a tiny body and enlarged head - hydrocephalus (water on the brain). She is biting at a woven blanket she holds in her hand. When I reached out to touch her, she leaned forward and it was all I could not to gasp - she is tied by the ankle with a piece of torn up cloth about four inches long to the end of the bed. I couldn't stop the tears and struggled to take in what I was seeing. Through the shock I understand the need to restrain this little girl to prevent injury from falling out of bed, and the lack of resources to replace this seems a somewhat archaic method but it still seems so unnecessary and I struggle to deal with the reality of it. What choice is there? There are no bed rails, no cots, nothing and at the other end of the bed I could see the consequences......
Through tears we move to the next bed where another girl with hydrocephalus lay. I reached out to touch her and she flinches, as they all do when we touch them.... they are not used to physical contact except for feeding, bathing and changing. Another severely disabled boy sits in a car seat. He has cerebral palsy and is the twin of a normal brother; he was surrendered to the orphanage by his father when his mother died. Some time ago, he suffered a high fever in the night but was never taken to hospital and is now severely brain damaged. I notice a blender on the floor where food is being blended for the children - at least they have a blender. By this time I am fighting back tears and trying to maintain some self control..... Of the 63 children housed at the orphanage 19-22 are disabled. Apart from this room, I am never shown a separate dorm for disabled children and am sure this room can not have slept 19+ children. Suddenly there is so much in my life that didn't make sense or seem logical or even important, for that matter..... I was not allowed to take pictures in this room.......but I knew the pictures would be so clear in my mind forever.
We are then shown the girls dorm and told that there is a bathroom at the back of it but Colin isn't sure if it was useable at the moment and we aren't allowed to go and look. There are no mattresses on any of the beds, just a cane mat on steel slats. The Vietnamese do not use mattresses because the weather is so hot but I wonder how cold the winter months must be??? The temperatures can get down to 10 degrees at night when it is really cold.
On leaving the orphanage, we meet the man who is hired to bring the kids from the adult centre to the orphanage for physio and classes to save them from a bed ridden existence. We are told that he had two disabled children whom he brought to the orphanage some years ago. He lived here with them for a while until both died within a year of each other. He has a happy smile and is anxious to shake hands with us and say hello. Colin tells us he carries the children to his cyclo and up the stairs to the Physio each day - the children are not all small and he is not a big man but has a BIG heart!! You can see it in his eyes and his smile says it all.....
I leave the orphanage in a rather despondent mood, fighting back tears and struggling with the reality of what I have just seen. Alec is just as quiet as we walk back with Colin to Kianh - just a block away. I try to make sense of the empty rooms in the orphanage when there are so many children in one bed and the dorms are full, the building works that are going on with no real purpose or planning, the two meeting rooms with huge tables that are bigger than the dining room that only has a few small tables, the are parked under a shelter that is blocked in by piles of building materials that could be used to bring the children from the adult centre to the orphanage, the leaking rooves ....... none of it makes sense
No comments:
Post a Comment