Fixing schools and teaching children

whoops old

We have now spent two weeks in the Mekong Delta. The experience has been rather different from our experience in Saigon, and in many ways I feel that I have made a greater contribution. We have almost finished restoring the school. It has been a challenge in that we lack some basic tools. For example, to put primer on the wall we made paint brushes out of straw and bamboo sticks that were cut from outside the school. Luckily, once we began to apply the main paint we were able to secure some paintbrushes. I have to say that it looks better than expected.

There have been a few frustrations during the job. I spent an entire day painting a row of columns. The task took an entire day because I had to perch myself a bit hazardously on a desk. I was afforded with this special task as a result of my height. The next day the contractor informed us that the columns looked ridiculous, that every other school had the columns painted white rather than yellow. Despite my arguments that this was a waste of time, money, and paint, people proceeded to paint over my painstaking work. The last task at the school was to create a path. This was very interesting, for we helped the contractor mix cement. Now that we have almost finished building the school we are moving on to creating a road.

One of the best things about this campaign so far is the children. Each afternoon in between lunch and teaching we all go to a cafe. Many of the children who go to the school come and spend time with us. This is often somewhat exhausting, but they are very sweet. They give us gifts and put flowers in our hair. This is particularly entertaining when they put flowers in the hair of the males in our group. They have been pretty good natured about this.

I am constantly amazed by how much we can communicate with the children using our limited vietnamese and their limited english. My vietnamese is even beginning to improve in an attempt to communicate with the children. I have learned the words for "dirty" and "clean" very well, for the children think it hilarious to point at our mud stained clothes from the morning's tasks and say "dơ" and then point at their own clothes and say "sạch." This actually came in handy one day when i was having a hole sewn up at a store in the market. I was able to figure out that the woman was saying that my shirt was dirty, so I should come back the next day and it would be clean.

internship challenges and reflections

So far our internship has been a bit rocky. First of all, it is rather difficult to acclimate to the rhythm of the center. We sometimes come in the morning and other times in the afternoon. However, no matter when we come, there is a chance that all or most of the girls will be busy. For example, the other day we arrived at the center and found that all of the girls were cleaning. This was a bit frustrating, for we have a one hour commute by bus each way to get to the center. It is also an uncomfortable feeling to have a sense that you are being ineffective and possibly not spending your time in the best way.

My roommate made a good point about our presence at the center. She said that the girls are hesitant to interact with us because it is common for foreigners to come for a brief time, do very little, and leave. This led me to begin to question the validity of our service there. Previously, I had considered the possibility that our presence there would not be entirely helpful. However, this led me to question whether or not our presence could be harmful. To develop a relationship and then leave after a short time could be harmful. Furthermore, since we are there for such a short amount of time, we might see something that we think should change, change it, and then find that in fact it is a harmful change.

This issue of change has been very much on my mind. I was hoping to make some kind of change to the psychological care. However, though I might be able to offer the assessment tools, without having any treatment solution, I simply might be making the situation work. Also, coming in and questioning the manner in which they conduct their care would show an incredible amount of hubris. Before even beginning to try and make a change, I would have to spend awhile carefully assessing the manner in which the care is conducted. I found out today that there are social workers at the center. However, it is unclear how much training they have. Perhaps this experience is also teaching me that sometimes you have to be realistic about how much can get done in a limited amount of time. Yet, this will be a valuable experience if it gives me a better sense of how I could work to make such changes in the future.

In interacting with the girls, we have found that slowly but surely we can keep their interests with certain activities. For one, they enjoy learning songs in english. We have also taken pictures of them, printed them out, and then let them decorate frames. This is something special for them, for they rarely have pictures to remember their time at the shelter. This is especially true for the girl who is leaving the center at the end of the month.

In inquiring further about what we can do to help, we discovered that the staff wanted to practice english. This was a bit surprising to us, for we had been using our vietnamese roommates as intermidiaries to communicate with the staff this whole time. We found today that they actually speak rather impressive english. Hopefully practicing english with them will help build their confidence to better communicate with outsiders who may be able to help give funding or volunteer at the center in the future.