Extracts From Vietnam.

Stories from an English teacher.

I had noticed in my short time teaching that there were some kids who struggled with English, to the point they couldn't retain anything. The Vietnamese way of dealing with this is forced repetition and shouting at the child until they learn it. In case you are wondering, this never works. These kids looked the same as the kids who would hear a word once and repeat it perfectly, it was around this time I noticed I hadn't encountered any kids or adults with learning difficulties. As far as the schools were concerned kids who fell behind their classmates did so as they were lazy. There was no mention of ADD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia or Dyscalculia. Words like Autism and Down Syndrome were not in the vocabulary of teachers, in English or Vietnamese. I asked the manager at the language center I was volunteering at and he wasn't keen to discuss the subject.

Later I found out that in Vietnam, when a child is born and it has a visible condition such as down syndrome, or if the child is physically deformed, has missing limbs or is blind or deaf there is a process that is followed. This child is removed from the mother and taken to a “special school” and is generally, never seen again. The parents move on with there lives, focusing on raising their healthy children or trying for more if it was their first. As a result the only kids who slipped through the net were those with a low IQ, these were the ones being shouted at by teachers until they learned something, anything. I asked about the “special schools” but nobody wanted to share any information.

Months later I would meet an Irish woman who had visited one, it was located around two hours drive outside of the city and wasn't on the map, it had no website or information listed anywhere. She was involved with a separate charity that provided bedding and food to homeless people in the city, one of whom had lost her husband and child in a motorbike accident and was trying to track down her other son who had been taken to this “school”. As a result of this the Irish woman, Joe, had gained access. What she described made me feel psychically sick, a crumbling concrete building in the forest, miles from anywhere, she said it looked like a former military base, perhaps a remnant of the war. There was a high metal fence surrounding the building and a check point with guards to gain access. Once inside there were windowless rooms, bare concrete floors and everything had years of grime and dirt on it. The staff were reluctant to let her look around but the homeless Vietnamese woman persisted and eventually they were guided around to look for this missing child. Joe said you would be arrested in Ireland for keeping dogs in these conditions. The place was overcrowded, dirty and hot. Children were locked in small cages, rocking back and forth on bare concrete floors, some crying out, some remaining silent. All having forms of serious disabilities. The staff claiming they were over capacity and under funded to provide any form of meaningful care. Some children played quietly together, kids that had physical deformities but were aware of their surroundings. They were told the ones in cages were there to protect themselves and others. Some had attacked other kids, either physically or sexually, some had attacked staff or inflicted harm on themselves. Joe said she was holding it together until a new patient arrived, a new born baby who was crying for their mother, this baby was placed in a cage, not dissimilar from a dog crate, and left. The homeless Vietnamese woman couldn't find her son quickly enough for the staffs liking and soon, her and Joe were told to leave as the staff had to begin feeding time. I asked Joe how many kids were in this place and she simply replied “hundreds”. I have no reason to doubt this description, Joe was the only person I met who had been to one of these schools and she told the story of her visit with the solemnness of person returning from war. I was left with a knot in my stomach that is still there years later as I reflect back on this conversation.

Hearing this tale really left a bitter taste in my mouth, its one of the problems with travel. You are presented with things you never imagined and you don't know what to do with the new found information. You are constantly left questioning your own view point of the world. On the one hand any compassionate person will say this is not what should be happening. The reality is Vietnam is a poor country with a proud history, a country where children look after their parents in lieu of any government help. I tried to put myself in the mind of one of the parents, living hand to mouth with no money to speak of, working fourteen hours a day. What would I do if I had a baby who would need lifetime care? Knowing I could barely afford to feed them and that I would have to provide and care for them until the day I died, then what would happen to then? As I thought about this scenario I began to understand why this institution existed. In a complex world sometimes there are no right answers. Vietnam has a population hardened by war, best estimates of fatalities during the American War are as many as 2 million civilians on both sides and 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. Devastation like that leaves deep scars on a nation. Perhaps it is less difficult to hand your child over when each generation of your family has suffered so much loss already. One thing is for sure, it changed my view of Vietnam and went some way to add a shade of gray on my rose tinted glasses.

I continued to volunteer with the orphans until I got more teaching hours in the evening. This meant I had to stop attending as the paid classes had to take precedence as I was running low on funds. I was now teaching for four hours a day, this doesn't sound like much but I also had three hours of unpaid travel getting to an from these classes. I had started to work with an American company who provided lesson's plans and teaching material, I also taught the same students four days per week. I built a rapport with the students and tried to bring some form of order to the chaos I was handed. All the while aware that any one of the children I was teaching could have an unknown sibling in a concrete building far away from sight.