September 14, 2009
June 4
Thursday, June 4
The taxi pulled up to the curb of Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Sai Gon, and I took time to admire the beautiful of the old, but still glamous wing before they close it down. The famous Tan Son Nhut serving passengers in South Viet Nam since the 1930’s will no longer serve domestic flights when construction of the new airport, inconveniently located 25 miles away from Sai Gon, is complete. Before I could fully observe my surroundings, my taxi driver demanded $160,000 ($8. 89USD) Vietnamese Dong. Unfamiliar with the currency as I was, I still realized that he was ripping me off: the meter was at $148,000 ($8. 22USD) when he pulled up to the curb. His tip should have been more than the 67 cents that I spent five minutes arguing about, but I just hate the idea of getting ripped off. I am having serious doubts about living in a culture where bargaining is habitual and setting extravagant prices is a rule of the road. Even the officers in immigration were negotiating for a higher bribe.
Unfortunately, money was the least of my worries. I was to arrive in Da Nang in less than two hours, and the director of the program thought I was scheduled to be there yesterday. I am half way across the world-- entering a city I have never heard of with no address or phone number. I figured that I could always take a taxi to Hoi An and ask around the small town, so I purchased a ticket on the spot and flew into the closest airport.
8:15: I’m at DAD airport, retrieving all of my luggage and anxiously searching for my name among the crowd of bustling family members and hustling cab drivers. There it was: “Cherilyn Tran” on a loose sheet of notebook paper. I was on the move--again. The trip from Da Nang to Hoi An was exciting, as with the rest of the country, but also disappointing. Along the the 20 mile road from Da Nang to Hoi An, there were blueprints for construction of five star hotels and retirement palaces for foreigners. My friend Vy Vy’s words echoed in my head: imperialism was unpredictably changing the face of Viet Nam. I just hoped that the change was mostly good.
Not long after I arrived at the hotel I received a call to meet up with Josh at CHIA (Children’s Hope in Action), an Australian NGO that provides assistance to some of the most underprivileged children in Quang Nam province. Josh did not have the exact address but was certain that it was on the same street as my hotel, so I thought that it would be easier to spot the sign if I walked. It felt so hot that I stopped three different times to purchase a hat, a fan, and bottle of water for a one mile walk. In retrospect, it was far from the hottest day in Hoi An, but the novel heat felt deadly. I finally arrived at CHIA, but no one was working except a young gentleman who wasn’t working at all- he was sleeping at the front desk during business hours. I woke him up and asked for Josh. “Josh does not arrive until 2:30,” he replied. Was it not 2:30 yet? It turned out that my treacherous journey lasted ten minutes. Oh, I am so not going to last in this country. It was an hour before Josh arrived at CHIA, so I had plenty of time to look at Josh’s work.
We saw about twelve patients that afternoon, but the encounter that stood out in my mind was with a young lady and her 5 month old baby. She carried the baby with ease as he was sleeping. As usual, Josh asked about pregnancy or delivery complications. The baby had an irregular skin rash pattern that I could not recognize, so I just sat in silence while Josh enlightened us. The young mother said that early in the pregnancy she was hospitalized with a serious fever that ended before long. Josh slowly approached the baby but his stethoscope’s cold chestpiece disrupted the baby’s peaceful nap. Screams soon filled the room. The baby was small, but he knew that he was not going to be touched by a stranger. He twisted and turned weakly in his mother’s small arms while Josh took any short opportunity to look at his rash pattern. He was not old enough to speak but those eyes were crying to be left alone. He had a difficult time turning his body around but tried with all his strength until he was out of energy. The mother seized the chance to shift the baby’s weight to her other arm as soon as he stopped crying.
I finally understood. What appeared as robust arms that would rather bear her baby’s weight than disturb his sleep were actually a mother’s frail arms that shielded her disabled baby. The baby could not sit up and did not have enough energy to turn away from Josh’s cold chestpiece. Josh diagnosed the baby with congenital rubella syndrome, an illness that the baby acquired when the mother contracted rubella during pregnancy. Josh briefly explained the condition and symptoms to everyone in the room, ending with, “and she’ll have to take care of him for the rest of his life, but you don’t have to tell her that,” to the translator. I did not know enough about the illness to play the blame game, but I remembered all the trouble that I went through to satisfy my school district’s mandatory MMR immunizations in the U. S. I could feel the blood rush to my face. I could not decipher then that the feeling was anger. What the CDC declared in 2004 as a closed chapter in America’s history of endemics had destroyed her baby’s life, if not her own. His illness could have been prevented with a simple immunization that almost every elementary school mandates in the United States. It was injustice.
Well at least CHIA, Josh, and not I were not waiting on the world to change -- we were grabbing the shovels to dig an alternative path.
Posted by Cherilyn VyVy Tran at September 14, 2009 10:51 PM
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