First week of volunteering over in a flash!

November 9th, 2008 by Denis Brouzes

Louise and I can’t believe that we’ve been here volunteering for over a week now. Time flies so fast and it seems like we are not moving fast enough. Our first week…10 days really, (because we started a bit early as we were in Da Nang on the 28/10/2008), were pretty hectic; a lot more than expected. We had to call on family & friends for financial help to get an 18 month old baby operated. Baby Tam was a “blue baby” and had just been recently noticed by a volunteer in an orphanage that GVN Vietnam does not look after anymore. Mr Viet, Director at GVN VN, contacted a private hospital in Saigon that had operated another similar case for us, in early Oct. All was arranged, funding was committed mostly by volunteers and their immediate families. An emergency operation was performed Saturday night and was very successful. Baby Tam made progress for 4 days, but on the evening of the 4th day, infection set in the lungs. Unable to fight the infection because she was too weak, she passed away on Friday AM. We attended the funeral on Saturday! That was a downer!

Louise is assisting in teaching at a Da Nang College, a small class of 60 students, aged 18-22, 4 days a week, 2 hours per day. So far, the assistance came from the teacher…English to Vietnamese translation. Louise does a good portion of the work and prepares activities for the classes. She likes it, especially the singing. She had to sing a song in front of the group…oh how I would have liked to be a fly on the wall!

We are also every involved in orphanages working with both able babies that have been abandoned by mother or parents for various reasons. Some that we have fed, changed diapers and fed again are as fresh as 4 days old. We also work with disabled children 6 to 25 with all kinds of problems. The most frustrating right now for me (Denis as I am writing this portion) is the repairs on an electric wheel chair for a 25 yrs old boy who has cerebral palsy. An electric chair was provided by an org in the USA some 2 months ago and has gone defective. The power adapter to charge the batteries is wired for 115VAC with 3 prong plug. Someone cutoff the ground lead and plugged the charging unit in 220VAC and fried the controller.

I’ve been working with the supplier of the chair to get specs and spare part to try to fix. It is slow in Asia and one has to be patient. I have located a replacement unit in USA (ebay) for $10.00 but can’t get it shipped to Vietnam. If I can’t fix it by end of next week, I will have to purchase and make arrangements with a volunteer to bring into Vietnam. We would have a controller only at the end of next month (Dec), but better late than never. Tam is stuck in a manual wheel chair and is every disappointed but still smiling every time he sees the volunteers. I also have to install a 200VAC/115VAC converter on the chair and make it weather proof somehow.

The weather has been pretty good during the week with some rain but not to much. This weekend, we went to Hoi An (30 km) after attending the funeral. Five of us went by local bus. Price is reasonable at 15000 dong. Man this is less than a $1.00 for those of you not familiar with this currency. I’ve walked around with a couple of millions in my pocket lots of time….but never felt like a millionaire. Well it rained like check on Sunday and we left early afternoon. Couldn’t get into the shopping mode!

Food is good but I still long for a good hamburger. Louise and I have been eating vegetarian or sea foods only for a while now. I’m such a sensitive guy that I decided that I wouldn’t hurt the chickens, beef and pork in this country. I like this diet but…I will return to a bit of meat once we are back in Canada. I miss the variety.

Enough for today, have a good week, we certainly will.