March 18 - Hue Street Children's Lunch & Orphanage

Each year TOP sponsors a lunch for street children. The word is put out and they show up in droves. This year they had 150 children show up. A local restaurant fixes the food (rice, meat and a bottle of pop) and we serve it up.

What an experience that was. Little kids so dirty and hungry shovelling in the food and sharing with each other. They had been given generous portions so many took the leftovers with them in a plastic bag. Gary noted there was one little girl making the rounds with her pop bottle pouring into it any leftovers out of other bottles. It was also apparent that the children live in "family" groups as you could see an older girl taking care of several younger ones. To bad our children do not appreciate more what they so easily take for granted.

As they left the lunch each child was also given "goodie bags" containing toothpaste,toothbrush, comb, pencil, eraser, madigras beads, candy and stickers. They were delighted and I was very thankful we had appointed a couple of our volunteers for "crowd control" as the kids definitely demonstrated their eagerness and enthusiasm in the hand-out line.

As a balance to the mayhem at this event, our next stop was at a pagoda run by Buddhist nuns. They served us a delicious all vegetarian lunch and sang the sweetest songs to entertain and relax us. I made friends and exchanged addresses with one of the young nuns who is working on learning English. She is a very special young woman and stood at the door of the pagoda longingly waving me goodbye. You have to be cautious when visiting with the Vietnamese people. They take you at your word and remember everything. If you say you will come back to see them again, they really expect it. I was cautious not to promise anything I am not sure I can follow up on.

After some sight-seeing, late afternoon found us making another heartwarming humanitarian visit. We arrived at the Duc Son Pagoda Orphanage to be greeted by shouts of excitement from a few of the children who were outside. This is a regular stop for TOP so many of the children remember their visits from year to year.

We were ushered into a receiving hall to meet and have tea with the head nun at this Buddhist orphanage. I was especially struck with how clean and well kept everything was. The children behaved perfectly and were very happy.

We were warned by the head nun that our visit with her would have interruptions. I loved the reason why. Out of respect, as each child returns from school they stop at her door to repeat a type of Buddhist chant and greet her and any visitors. It was precious and heartwarming. She says it also helps to keep track of the children.

From there we moved into a long narrow dining hall where all the 190 children were already seated at tables in age groups. They started out by singing to us a song of greeting. We had stacked our items for presentation at the front of the room.

They run a training program for their older children to teach them tailoring skills and had requested a donation of fabric for their use. This was obtained by us for them through contacts in Vietnam.

We personally had one special donation of $150 which we obtained from a veteran who learned about our trip via the internet. These funds financed the purchase of milk for this orphanage. Nutritional needs for the babies is a high priority and this gift will help immensely.

A generous donation from our Oregon Vietnam Veterans group financed a large stock of medicines for this orphanage. I was the one to do this presentation and wanted to speak of something they might relate to. I told them that like they ride motorbikes in Vietnam, we ride larger motorcycles in the United States and that we have a group of veteran friends who ride together with us and sent money for their medicine. I told them that next time they have a tummy ache or runny nose and the nuns give them medicine, I hoped that they would think of us riding our motorcycles in the United States. They seemed to related to it.

After the presentations, it was time to sing some more and then play. The children impressed me with the number of English songs they had learned to sing to us. Finally we started passing out stuffed animals, toys, balls, stickers, pencils, hot wheel cars, balloons and bubble blowing supplies. They were having a ball playing and so were we. There was not so much of an issue of everyone getting the same items or same numbers as children in orphanages are taught to share their toys so there seemed to be less urgency on the part of the recipient. "Crowd Control" was not needed at this location.

Next on the agenda was dinner for these kids. The nuns had told us that they are always short of funds for a decent meal so we financed probably the best meal these children had seen in a long time. Again, like the street kids lunch, it was stir fried rice and a generous portion of meat. We helped to serve it and then watched them enjoy it. The nuns explained to us that it takes about $65 per day to feed these 190 children (11 cents per meal per child is pretty reasonable) and most times they do not have the funds to pay for it. What a concept if they could just get 30 people to finance one day of meals per month...me thinking out loud...something to consider.

Once we said our good-byes, we returned to the reception hall to find that the nuns had fixed us dinner also. Oops! we already had dinner being prepared for us elsewhere so we had to courteously decline and hope they would just save the food over for the kids use the next day. At that point there were still a few children we had yet to meet. Here came a procession of nuns with tiny babies in arms. The youngest baby was just 4 weeks old. Her mother had serious mental problems and could not care for her. As if they had not yet captured our hearts, they proceeded to put these tiny bundles into our arms.

When we finally headed for our bus, many of the nuns and children lined the corridor and patio to shake our hands and say good-bye. There were many hugs from very needy, lonesome kids. One little girl in particular (about 3 years old) ran out and locked herself around my legs. I picked her up and she wrapped herself around my chest. All of a sudden I heard a little sucking noise in my ear. She was blowing kisses into my ear and unknowingly "tearing" at my heart.

All of Life is an Adventure

You just have to play with the children to put it into perspective

Linda