This afternoon we visited an orphanage and school run by one of the most famous nuns in Hue, Co Minh Tu, who since during wartime has dedicated her life to loving and caring for abandoned and orphaned children as well as children with special needs. Lidia Tutarovina is doing her internship with the orphanage, writing a fundraising pamphlet about the orphanage's activities in English and teaching an English class to advanced students and nuns two afternoons per week. Unlike most institutions in Vietnam, Duc Son Orphanage does not require extensive permissions to work with foreigners and Minh Tu has received numerous awards even from the state. Why? Because all she does is care for children that nobody else wants. For any group that comes with cares for helping the children, they are welcomed with open arms. On this occassion, Lidia, Jonathan Chang and Vicky Nguyen as well as several partner students from the College of Foreign Languages and my colleague Huy as well as Co Hong Anh and Scuppy visited. Right after Minh Tu explained that she preferred not to receive large donations of candy because it rotted the kids teeth, we presented her with a big bag of candy. She laughed and said she appreciated the spirit of our generosity and I promised next year I'd come with toothbrushes and toothpaste. We presented her with pencils from UC Riverside - perhaps some graduate from Duc Son will attend UCR in the future? And we presented her with a 500.000 VND donation which she will sue to purchase formula for the infants that she cares for.
Duc Son is not an adoption agency and does not advocate putting children up for international adoption because of the unwanted attention and "market-influence" that brings into the community. Instead, Minh Tu explained that the purpose of her orphanage is to fill the kids with love and attention so they may grow up to be "complete" individuals even though they lack parents and family that is so important in Vietnamese culture. She likened the children to houses that if not kept up and filled with good atmosphere would have their windows closed, fall into disrepair. The Orphanage readily accepts children who have been abandoned...there are the usual stories: babies left on the steps of the orphanage, side of the road, born with severe deformities... as well as kids whose parents suffer mental illness, other severe disabilities, were simply too poor or who died in the flood of 1999. Pictured above is a guest member of our course, Dr. Floyd Killough, who also visited the orphanage. He has been volunteering his time working with some famous doctors at Hue Medical College who are doing research on rehabilitating kids born with genetic disorders--many associated with exposure to dioxin left as a residue of Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant sprayed in the hills about 50 km west of Hue on the "Ho Chi Minh Trail".
At the orphanage, Floyd introduced me to Le Dang Kiet, a 2-yr-old born a few months before Scuppy whose parents were deficient in Vitamin A. Vitamin deficiency is especially common in the highlands among some very impoverished communities, and it often affects the eyes. One couple living near the orphanage actually tried to adopt Kiet, but they themselves were too poor to look after him safely, to keep him from falling or bumping into things, and so they brought him back. Women living near the orphanage routinely donate hours of time to care for such kids. Floyd explained to me that while he was blind right now, one of his eyes could be restored to vision if he receives a transplant, and such an operation in Hue would cost only $3000.
Floyd is here with one of many American aid groups called Vets with a Mission where American veterans of the war in Vietnam come back and provide expert medical and professional support. Floyd is working in particular to bring much-needed laboratory and research equipment to the local hospital. On his first trip here, outside Quang Tri in January 1968, the pilot told passengers that below them in the city of Hue, the VC flag had been raised over the city. The NLF controlled Hue for ten days during the Tet Offensive.
We are nearing the end of the summer course and the lecture class has reached the 15-odd years that American advisors then troops worked in Vietnam, building up an unbelievable infrastructure of bases, air hangers, jet landing strips in the jungle, and basically a whole lot of pavement. At a major highway junction just south of the former demilitarized zone (DMZ), there was once a relatively large marine air base at Dong Ha. Now all that remains of it are a few of these very heavy duty airplane hangers built out of corrugated aluminum filled with concrete on the outside. This particular hangar survived whereas most have since been scrapped because after 1975 it was used as a theater for performances.
When it came time to dismantle this one, the town Department of Cultural Affairs had already claimed it as city property and since then they have abandoned using it for performances (they have a brand spanking new theater) but maintain it as a historical ruin of the American occupation. Makes for a very striking ruin especially on such a sunny day.
On our way through Dong Ha we stopped at a cafe favored by one of many NGO's that operate in the DMZ doing rehabilitation work: clearing landmines, giving people with legs and arms blown off prosthetics, digging out unexploded bombs etc. Fortunately, the majority of unexploded ordnance has been dug up now in the area--this snapshot shows a picture of work going on about eight or nine years ago. However, there is still a lot of material left in the hills and even more across the border in Laos on what used to be the "HCM Trail."
