Back again

Sorry! I know that I have not posted for awhile. There is a lot to update on! Today I did not have class so I have some time to write. Last weekend, our class went to the Reunification palace and the War Remnants Museum. The reunification palace was pretty boring. It was the former residence of the president of South Vietnam. After the war, it was turned into a museum but some official functions are still held there. We basically just went through a series of fancy meeting rooms that had no descriptions on them and we were crowded out by a huge group of Chinese tourists.

The outside of the reunification palace

One of the many fancy meeting rooms

After that, we went to the war remnants museum. It was one of the strangest museums I have ever seen. It was very interesting, but quite different from museums in the United states. There were a lot of photographs and maps with paragraphs in Vietnamese and English. The point of the museum seemed to be to evoke strong emotions. There were many, many photos of agent orange victims and graphs of deforestation and land area bombed. There was even a display of deformed fetuses of agent orange victims. There were also a couple of bizarre souvenir shops selling everything from Obama's autobiography to I Heart Vietnam t-shirts, to Vietnamese dolls. I found the museum to be extremely one-sided. It made the war seem to be entirely between the Americans and the Vietnamese as opposed to the Americans aiding the South Vietnamese against the North. Although I personally don't think either of those views are entirely accurate, I think that the museum could have been a little more balanced in its portrayal of the war. However, the museum was by no means anti-American. It has a large section on American protests of the Vietnam War and tried to show that the country as a whole was very against the war.

Sunday, Anna and I went to Cho Lon, Saigon's Chinatown. There were so many shops crammed into such a small area, it was truly amazing. And while people were somewhat agressive about selling things, it was much, much better than Benh Thanh market where I was grabbed from all sides by vendors. I think I expected it to be more like China though. The food seemed to be mostly Vietnamese, and almost everyone spoke Vietnamese. The only different seemed to be that some shops had Chinese writing on the shops as well as Vietnamese.

An Dong Plaza, the central shopping area of Cho Lon

I am continuing to volunteer at The Little Rose Shelter. It is sometimes a little frustrating because they don't seem to have a clear idea of what they want me to do there and language is definitely a large barrier for me to overcome. Some members of the staff speak English, but it is about the same level or worse than my Vietnamese and the girls only speak Vietnamese. At the staff's request, I've been teaching them English because they want to be able to communicate better with foreign NGOs. I also spend time playing with the children. Sometimes this is frustrating because I have a difficult time understand their accents and there is a lot that I cannot convery, but it can also be rewarding. Today they taught me some Vietnamese songs and and how to make the baskets that they sell for fundraising at craft fairs. When it was time for me to leave, the girls all asked when I would be back again. When I said Monday, they asked if I could come tomorrow. Today I finally felt that if nothing else, I was at least able to provide some friendship.

A 13 year old girl at the Little Rose Shelter practicing painting her fingernails

Wednesday, our class had the very unique privledge of visiting a not-for-profit HIV clinic on the outskirts of the city. I was extremely grateful for this oportunity because I am interested in public health and especially health initiatives in Vietnam. I am considering writing my Biology and Society honors thesis on some topic related to healthcare in Vietnam. Following are some of my notes on the clinic and things that I learned about healthcare in Vietnam.

Today I visited a nonprofit hospital run by a catholic church. I am leaving out names and places at the request of the doctors and the woman who took us to see the clinic. Although there are government run clinics, they are often crowded and discriminate. The doctor I talked to said that the government clinics will often turn away criminals or injection drug users. The woman who took us to see the clinic also said that it is very difficult for foreign visitors to visit government clinics because they communist government wants to have tight control and not show the problems with public health. The surgeon that we talked to, who is also the founder of the clinic, was one of the first surgeons in Saigon to operate on HIV positive patients. Government clinics refuse this. Government provides ARVs for pregnant women. If patients can afford it, a small fee of 20,000d is charged for a visit. If they cannot afford it, they can wait at the free clinic for services but must wait longer. If someone travels to the clinic from far away, they provide lodging for poor people to stay. We had to wear masks because tuberculosis, a common opportunistic infection in developing countries, is frequently seen in these patients. We saw patients whose tuberculosis had spread to other parts of their body and patients who showed the wasting effects of HIV. While I was there, I saw a seven month old HIV positive baby and his parents. The parents had gotten HIV through unsafe sex and the mother passed it on to the baby. Because they did not know that the baby had HIV, the doctors at the hospital gave the baby a shot that is routine for newborns but deadly for those with a weakened immune system because it is a live shot. The baby had a severe lymph node infection from it. The nurses were attempting to clean the wounds on the lymph nodes. This was occurring on a piece of newspaper on a plastic lawn chair while the baby’s parents looked on. The clinic is run entirely on private funds and donations. It does not receive government help. The surgeon we spoke to works long hours, often going to work before his children wake up and coming home after they have gone to bed, yet he still took the time to give us a very thorough tour of the clinic and answer all the questions that we had. In addition to treating patients, the clinic also provides counseling for those who come in. Because most of the patients are poor and uneducated, they do not know much about the diseases transmission and need information about how to prevent transmission to others. Another interesting aspect of the organization was that they tried to hire and train some nurses from the highlands of Vietnam. They represent an ethnic minority in Vietnam that has historically faced a lot of discrimination. The surgeon explained that it was his hope that the nurses could go back home and use the skills they learned to help their communities.

An assistant attempts to calm and distract the baby while nurses tend to its wounds

In the examining room with the doctors. Because tuberculosis is a common oportunistic infection in developing countries, we were required to wear masks for our safety as well as the patients.

An HIV education poster hanging in the doctor's office

I will write my Vietnamese entry tomorrow, but now I must go to bed because we are waking up at 5 in the morning tomorrow to drive to Cu Chi. Also my Vietnamese keyboard seems to have stopped working... sorry for the abrupt end.

Xin lỗi các anh chị. Tôi không viết được bao lâu. Vì hôm nay không có lớp nên tôi có thể viết Blog của tôi. Cuối tuần trước, chúng tôi đi Dinh Thống Nhất và bảo táng nhớ chiến tranh. Dinh Thống Nhất khá chán. Trong khi chiến tranh Mỹ, tổng thống miền nam ở cung này. Bây giờ Dinh Thống Nhất là bảo thàng và tỉnh thoảng có cuộc hơp chính phủ. Dinh Thống Nhất không có nhiều thông tin và đông quá.

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