Vietnam - Week 1

Well, I'm finally getting around to reporting on my adventures in Vietnam! I've been back for 2 weeks now and it's been crazy catching up. So I went there with an organization called COPI - Children of Peace International. It was founded a by a Vietnamese woman whose family fled to the US right after the war. She ended up in Colorado and became a Lutheran. Then when she unexpectedly went back 12 or so years later to find a lost sibling, she realized what a need there was there. There were so many orphaned children from the war, and so many others not receivng adequate medical care, etc. under the new government. So her Lutheran church began donating money and she founded her organization. Then a pastor at the church there who is now a pastor at Good Shepherd Lutheran church in Sandy enlisted people here to help. One of the nursing instructors at my school goes to church there and began taking nursing students there with COPI on study abroad trips a few years ago.

My first week there was really only half a week, and half of that was spent flying. It was my first trip crossing the International Date Line, and it was a weird experience! We left on Wednesday evening, March 5 and got there Friday morning, March 7 - but Thursday the 6th got lost somehow...it is a strange feeling missing an entire day. The way back was even more strange...like living the same day twice. Have you ever seen that movie Groundhog Day? :)

Anyway, we flew into Hanoi, which is in northern Vietnam, and stayed our first few days in a city called Viet Tri. It was not my favorite place. It was a smaller city, not too touristy, so I don't think that the people were too used to seeing Americans. We got stared at a lot, me in particular...I don't think they have seen red curly hair too often. Our first full day there happened to be International Women's Day, so we all got roses! That was something I've never heard of in the US...



That's my hotel room in the background...

Anyway, after unpacking and sorting all our supplies that day, we went to a place called "The Temple of the Seven Kings". It had all of these different shrines to this former king, and they were all built further and further up on this hill so that you had to climb a ton of stairs to get to each one. The scenery there was like nothing I have seen before, so it was pretty cool. Like I said though, it wasn't my favorite city. It was pretty polluted, and the city itself wasn't really that pretty (which is why I don't have any pictures of the actual city). Here are some pictures of King's Temple...






The next day we had our first clinic. We set it up at a little school in a village outside of Viet Tri, called Thanh Ba (pronounced tang-ba). All of the people get so excited that we are there to provide medical care...for some of them it is the only time they ever get to see a doctor or a dentist. They line up before we even get there and wait for hours in line for us to see them. We mostly saw kids at the first clinic, and they were super cute.



Some of the kids being entertained by our clown while waiting in line


One of the nursing students doing an assessment on a child

There was also an orphanage at Thanh Ba. I spent a little time in there after our clinic was over. I had never been to an orphanage before that. I've hear a lot of horror stories about foreign orphanages and the terrible conditions and everything. This wasn't nearly as bad as some of the ones I've heard about in Romania or the Ukraine or something, but it was still pretty sad. A lot of parents in Vietnam will abandon their baby if they think something is wrong with it, or if they get pregnant without being married, because of the stigma in their culture. And when a child is an orphan there, they are a complete outcast in society. No doctors will touch them, they are not usually allowed in school, and they will probably never get married since they have no social standing. It was really sad to see those tiny babies lying alone in metal cribs or on hard wooden "beds" and know that they won't really have a chance in life. Also, that particular orphanage recently closed adoptions to the US. Hopefully there are some people in Europe or Australia that want to adopt some cute little Vietnamese children!