Thai's friend Ha met us at the hotel after getting a bit lost in the Old Quarter. She lives in Hanoi but I believe few Hanoians venture into this part of the city. We followed her down the street to meet up with those she had come with, one of whom owns a car! We hopped into a new Mazda 3 with Ha, two older women friends and the 5 year old son of one of the women and made our way out of the city center to a program for developmentally disabled young adults. We visited a classroom where a dozen or so people who have Down syndrome and other significant cognitive delays are eating lunch served by a woman named Mrs. Chung. She has been running this program where disabled people can come and participate in art, dancing, music, sewing and learning English. They socialize and she seems to work very hard to support, teach, encourage language development and vocational skills. When possible they work in factory jobs after leaving the program. She gets no government money and takes no pay and has been running this program for 20 years. When she found out that I had been a special ed teacher she kept asking me for suggestions. It was interesting.
After this we went to lunch in a large mall at an Italian place in the food court. It is quite close to the home of the woman who owned the car and her son who, it turns out, also has some learning issues. They explained to me that the boy, Viet, is really, really smart but learns differently. At lunch he was able to do multiplication, adding and subtracting in his head at a pretty advanced level for a 5 year old but was very impulsive and demanding. He can read and write but also grabbed the squeeze bottles of hot sauce and squirted it all over Ha's pizza even though she told him no. Turns out, Ha runs a small school in her home where Viet is a student. The more time we spent with her, the more we learned about her life and choices.
These women are all part of a church called Word of Life. They are evangelical Christians in a country that does not encourage religion. Our next stop was their church in the home of the pastor after meeting up with a few more people at the huge home of the car owner. It was Sunday and this was their first service of the year. There were 100 people there for a full-blown worship with music (electric keyboard, acoustic and electric guitars), 3 lead singers with hand held mikes, an hour long sermon, a review of their work of last year, communion and more. A very handsome young man with flawless English sat next to me and translated. Finally, after about 2 hours, I told Ha we really needed to get back to get ready to make our way to the airport. I convinced her to call a taxi so that she could stay with her congregation for the rest of the service and whatever else followed and not be burdened by us. Who would have figured that Lou and I would wind up at a church service in Hanoi, Vietnam surrounded by evangelical Christians speaking in tongues and singing upbeat hymns in Vietnamese? Not me.
We certainly got a taste of Hanoi not seen by a regular tourist.
No comments:
Post a Comment