What a day ..I am not even sure where to start!
We all were up by 7, some of us at 6am, and had a great breakfast buffet of many items that I do not know the names of, but I think some are partly recycled from the night before( a la Cuba). My favourites are huge slices of papaya , watermelon juice and fresh french bread. Brian found some sticky rice and dried banana in a sweet sauce that was great and Nina and Maeve had noodles! The hotel is really quiet not many guests during the week just a family from Russia and a few Vietnamese American families.
We had a quick swim and walk on the beach before the girls donned their new dresses from the Ben Thanh Market and got a taxi to the orphanage. We had emailed the director Trang Dai Le from Canada asking for permission to visit, and she was going to meet us at 1030am. We arrived complete with our giant bags of donations but the director had been called away to some emergency meeting. A young woman who spoke English was quickly summoned , and she gave us a quick tour of the babies before we left ( to come back again tommorrow). The quick tour turned into most of the day as we got to stay and visit with the babies and nannies.
This building was not where Nina lived, but was the residence for the kids age 6 and up back in 2002. Both the centres have been upgraded and renovated a great deal since we where there and now the 0 -6 yr olds are here and the older kids are where Nina was. The hammocks are gone replaced by new, shiny, silver swinging cots that are at about knee level. They can hold 1 -4 babies and all were full of beautiful, round cheeked infants with incredible amounts of hair. The youngest was only 2 days old. Two of the nannies recognized Nina from 2001- 2002!
I found the whole experience really overwhelming! Nina seemed to take it in stride!
This centre/orphanage also has a group of kids that are HIV positive (about 15 to 20 it looked like and a range of ages )they all looked healthy and well - they are able to recieve all the right medicne( due to funding from a private sponsor ). In Vietnam kids with HIV cannot attend the regular school system so there is a classroom in the orphanage and teachers come in every day. This classroom has only been set up recently - up until then they had no schooling.
Our tour was continued by an energetic dynamo of a woman who had been one of the kids adopted in 1975 just after the fall of Saigon. This woman was raised in Australia but has returned to Vietnam and had lived here for the last 6 years. She has a 7 yr old son adopted from the centre we were at and works with sponsors in Australia and France to improve and expand the services for these kids.
It was all a bit confusing as it seems like the government is in charge of everything but doesn't contribute much. The children recieve about 7,000 dong per day for food . that is a little less that 50cents and doesn't cover the cost of a single bottle of milk. All of the improvements and upgrades come from private donations most spearheaded by adoptive families.
The computer is flashing low battery at me and everyone is asleep , I will finish this tommorrow.
'Night
No comments:
Post a Comment