By Vicking Dang, 2004
The first thing people warned me about when I decided to go back to Vietnam was the heat and poverty. It would be my first trip to the country since my family left in 1978. There is always someone who has been back to Vietnam recently ready to provide more information, but it could never be the same as going home yourself. Walking out of the airport into the humidity was expected, seeing the dichotomy of run down buildings and modern hotels adjacent was expected. It was the language spoken everywhere that first triggered a chord.
Vietnamese spoken in Little Saigon and in the home is a muted humming in the background interspersed with English words. In Vietnam,the accents and persistent usage of the language is a physical presence. It is a reminder of a culture that is, for myself, not thought much about. However, listening and attempting to speak to the patients at each site was a reminder that the language I barely know now was the first language I learned to speak. It was with profound luck, sign language and the patients’ laughing patience that communication with them was able to progress. With each day, traveling to each site on a narrow dirt road are images of a country that became more real than any stories told by parents and friends.
The mobile care unit would begin each day at 7:30 by traveling to a site. The vans would ride along side a whole range of pedestrians, motor scooters or even women or men hitched to carts dragging their loads to some far off destination. Upon arrival at the site, it would be swarming as people have been waiting long before to see the doctors or dentists. With the letters of invitation clutched in their hands, they would present the papers to be admitted to an exam room. Often times, patients would surge forward to a room so as to not be forgotten in a crowd of waiting patients. Looking at the people, there would be many faces old before their time or too young for their age. Are we doing anything, do we make a difference, is it worth it? There was an old woman who smiled at me through a mouthful of bleeding gauze. She just had three extractions, but she was laughing. The thought of only going through the normal process of working and living was the initial impetus to do something different. I did not expect a passionate awakening of cultural pride or devotion to helping the poor. The hope was to be able to offer some service, any service, to the group.
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