Sea Olympics
Halloween--I was a robot!
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Vietnam
Vietnam was amazing, it was close to a second Ghana. Everything was super cheap, even eating at a fancy restaurant cost maybe $3 per person! The first day, Evergreen and I just explored Ho Chi Minh City for the day, then met up with the other girls for dinner at a restaurant where they bring you raw meat with seasonings and you have to cook it yourself using a burner on the table.
The next day, Jocelyn, Evergreen, Laura and I went to the War Remnants Museum for the American War (or Vietnam War). It was quite the experience: I didn’t really know much about the war, but the Vietnamese definitely did not like us being in their country…and for good reason: Agent Orange was a horrible, horrible chemical we should not have used on their country. There were mostly pictures of the war, and most of the captions said things like “the U.S. military killed women and children”. I am only 21 years old, and had nothing to do with the war, yet I felt guilty for just being American, especially as I stood beside an older Vietnamese man, looking at a picture of a deformed child, a child who could have been perfectly normal if not for the cruelty of my country.
I’m in a service leadership class and we split into groups to do a service project in 1 of the ports. My group consists of 6 people and we tried so hard to get a contact for Vietnam, but it was just not working out, people would not reply to our emails or the phone numbers wouldn’t work, and our professor was not helping us, etc.
Then, the first day we were in Vietnam we got 2 emails from 2 different places! Two of the girls in my group were gone, so we brought a few extra people with us. I brought Jocelyn and then 3 other girls came, too. The first place we went was a shelter for girls who had been trafficked (the woman in charge would not talk about the girls stories). We bought a printer for them that they said they needed. We stayed a couple hours and played games with the girls. We brought string to make friendship bracelets and we didn’t even have to teach them, the girls immediately knew how to make the bracelets, and one girl grabbed me and she made a bracelet for me! We also had nail polish, and she did my nails, then I did hers!
The next day, we met our second contact; an orphanage for children affected by Agent Orange. Agent Orange was the type of herbicide that was sprayed by the US military over Vietnam during the Vietnam War (or as the Vietnamese call it, the American war). This causes major birth defects, including deformations and mental problems.
After an hour taxi ride, we arrived at the orphanage. It was so hard to first walk in. Most of the children had birth defects that were very noticeable. They did not speak English, so it was hard to figure out their mental age. After an hour, we fell in love with these kids because they were so sweet. My friend Carren and I both spent about 15 minutes just hugging one boy, if I tried to walk away he grabbed my hand and put it around himself and hugged me harder. He must have been about 14 yrs old.
Then we went upstairs. Upstairs was harder to see than downstairs. There were about 14 kids that were under the age of 5. These kids were just laying on cots, no pillow, no blanket, some had a towel, just staring at a blank ceiling. A few fans were going and the open windows let the flies in. There was no one with them when we got there, and we were left alone with them. They couldn’t hold their heads up on their own or walk. I don’t think most of them could talk. We changed a couple of their diapers, and many of them had what seemed to be bed sores. Because they spent all day just laying on the cots, the back of their head was flat, since they were rarely moved off the cot.
I had brought Evergreen with me, and she loved it so much we made plans to bring some more people with us the next day. That night, Ev and I went to a grocery store and bought diapers and food (that’s what they said they needed) and we brought them the next day. That day we spent most of the time with the little ones upstairs. We would sit and just hold their hands or rub their backs or stomach and talk to them. We eventually felt comfortable to hold some of them. I ended up holding a little girl who seemed very stiff (there seemed to be only one occupational therapist, so many of the kid’s muscles must not have worked correctly), but had big brown eyes and would smile when I tickled her. I sat in the corner of the room and sang to her: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Loch Lomond, Rock-a-bye Baby and Three Blind Mice (those were the only songs I could remember the lyrics to). She lay there and just looked into my eyes the whole time, smiling.
The day before we left Vietnam, after Ev and I came back from the orphanage, we met Jocelyn, Katherine and Laura for dinner. They said right before they were leaving an announcement came over the loudspeaker: “Code blue, code blue, cabin 4…”.
Shortly after, Becca (the field office director) came over the loudspeaker: “all LLC, crew, medical team and staff, cabin 4…”. As they were leaving an ambulance was pulling up. We thought nothing of it, Code blue has been announced a few times before and nothing really happened…we generally assume it’s a lifelong learner who has fallen down or something. We got back to the ship around 11pm, after going up the gangway and thru security, we were met by some LLCs, and told they had some news.
We waited for everyone behind us to make it up the gangway, then they started talking: “At 5:30pm today, a student, Andre Ramadan, was found in his cabin. At 6:30pm he was pronounced dead.” His parents were notified and flew to Vietnam. We have been told that he died of unknown medical causes. I can’t really go into much other detail, mainly because rumors travel fast on the ship, so I don’t really know the true story. But the day after we left Vietnam, we had a really nice memorial service: there were readings from the Qu’ran and the Bible and a Hebrew reading, and a few of his friends stood up and shared stories. His favorite music was played, and there was a slide show of pictures people had donated. We sang Amazing Grace and finally we filed out to the back of the ship, following the captain, carrying flowers, and everyone threw one off the back of the ship. So many people were in tears. He was 20, a student at the Univ. of California.
It’s been quite an experience this past week. And now we are going thru a storm and the swells are huge…and they are out of seasickness pills in the medical center!
Vietnam was amazing, it was close to a second Ghana. Everything was super cheap, even eating at a fancy restaurant cost maybe $3 per person! The first day, Evergreen and I just explored Ho Chi Minh City for the day, then met up with the other girls for dinner at a restaurant where they bring you raw meat with seasonings and you have to cook it yourself using a burner on the table.
The next day, Jocelyn, Evergreen, Laura and I went to the War Remnants Museum for the American War (or Vietnam War). It was quite the experience: I didn’t really know much about the war, but the Vietnamese definitely did not like us being in their country…and for good reason: Agent Orange was a horrible, horrible chemical we should not have used on their country. There were mostly pictures of the war, and most of the captions said things like “the U.S. military killed women and children”. I am only 21 years old, and had nothing to do with the war, yet I felt guilty for just being American, especially as I stood beside an older Vietnamese man, looking at a picture of a deformed child, a child who could have been perfectly normal if not for the cruelty of my country.
I’m in a service leadership class and we split into groups to do a service project in 1 of the ports. My group consists of 6 people and we tried so hard to get a contact for Vietnam, but it was just not working out, people would not reply to our emails or the phone numbers wouldn’t work, and our professor was not helping us, etc.
Then, the first day we were in Vietnam we got 2 emails from 2 different places! Two of the girls in my group were gone, so we brought a few extra people with us. I brought Jocelyn and then 3 other girls came, too. The first place we went was a shelter for girls who had been trafficked (the woman in charge would not talk about the girls stories). We bought a printer for them that they said they needed. We stayed a couple hours and played games with the girls. We brought string to make friendship bracelets and we didn’t even have to teach them, the girls immediately knew how to make the bracelets, and one girl grabbed me and she made a bracelet for me! We also had nail polish, and she did my nails, then I did hers!
The next day, we met our second contact; an orphanage for children affected by Agent Orange. Agent Orange was the type of herbicide that was sprayed by the US military over Vietnam during the Vietnam War (or as the Vietnamese call it, the American war). This causes major birth defects, including deformations and mental problems.
After an hour taxi ride, we arrived at the orphanage. It was so hard to first walk in. Most of the children had birth defects that were very noticeable. They did not speak English, so it was hard to figure out their mental age. After an hour, we fell in love with these kids because they were so sweet. My friend Carren and I both spent about 15 minutes just hugging one boy, if I tried to walk away he grabbed my hand and put it around himself and hugged me harder. He must have been about 14 yrs old.
Then we went upstairs. Upstairs was harder to see than downstairs. There were about 14 kids that were under the age of 5. These kids were just laying on cots, no pillow, no blanket, some had a towel, just staring at a blank ceiling. A few fans were going and the open windows let the flies in. There was no one with them when we got there, and we were left alone with them. They couldn’t hold their heads up on their own or walk. I don’t think most of them could talk. We changed a couple of their diapers, and many of them had what seemed to be bed sores. Because they spent all day just laying on the cots, the back of their head was flat, since they were rarely moved off the cot.
I had brought Evergreen with me, and she loved it so much we made plans to bring some more people with us the next day. That night, Ev and I went to a grocery store and bought diapers and food (that’s what they said they needed) and we brought them the next day. That day we spent most of the time with the little ones upstairs. We would sit and just hold their hands or rub their backs or stomach and talk to them. We eventually felt comfortable to hold some of them. I ended up holding a little girl who seemed very stiff (there seemed to be only one occupational therapist, so many of the kid’s muscles must not have worked correctly), but had big brown eyes and would smile when I tickled her. I sat in the corner of the room and sang to her: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Loch Lomond, Rock-a-bye Baby and Three Blind Mice (those were the only songs I could remember the lyrics to). She lay there and just looked into my eyes the whole time, smiling.
The day before we left Vietnam, after Ev and I came back from the orphanage, we met Jocelyn, Katherine and Laura for dinner. They said right before they were leaving an announcement came over the loudspeaker: “Code blue, code blue, cabin 4…”.
Shortly after, Becca (the field office director) came over the loudspeaker: “all LLC, crew, medical team and staff, cabin 4…”. As they were leaving an ambulance was pulling up. We thought nothing of it, Code blue has been announced a few times before and nothing really happened…we generally assume it’s a lifelong learner who has fallen down or something. We got back to the ship around 11pm, after going up the gangway and thru security, we were met by some LLCs, and told they had some news.
We waited for everyone behind us to make it up the gangway, then they started talking: “At 5:30pm today, a student, Andre Ramadan, was found in his cabin. At 6:30pm he was pronounced dead.” His parents were notified and flew to Vietnam. We have been told that he died of unknown medical causes. I can’t really go into much other detail, mainly because rumors travel fast on the ship, so I don’t really know the true story. But the day after we left Vietnam, we had a really nice memorial service: there were readings from the Qu’ran and the Bible and a Hebrew reading, and a few of his friends stood up and shared stories. His favorite music was played, and there was a slide show of pictures people had donated. We sang Amazing Grace and finally we filed out to the back of the ship, following the captain, carrying flowers, and everyone threw one off the back of the ship. So many people were in tears. He was 20, a student at the Univ. of California.
It’s been quite an experience this past week. And now we are going thru a storm and the swells are huge…and they are out of seasickness pills in the medical center!
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)