Love Story of a Blind Couple_Chapter 4

HOW THEY MET
Again, this chapter is written by Nhi. Thanks for a beautiful piece of work, Nhi.

It was one August morning 5 years ago, Thien kept twiddling the broom that he�d just finished since that was the first product of his. He felt it through his hands and he cried. He wished he could see his product that it was difficult for him to learn and to make. However, he became fresh a moment later. He comforted himself that �I can �see� everything with my hands�. He was proud of that. That morning was longer than other mornings, he felt. While he was concentrating on his broom making work; he felt a gentle hit against his hand and the word �sorry� was said out. He recognized the girl�s voice but he did not know about her. Neither did she and the girl Huyen was in active to make friend with Thien.

Huyen was the member of Provincial Blind Association. She was invited to the district Blind Association to help members here learning Braille and Thien was one out of 14 members. Day by day, they had more chance to talk and work together and they gradually recognized each other by their voice. Thien became quieter than before when Huyen completed her task and Huyen was a little bit different. They both felt vaguely sad.


Thien & Huyen at Cam Lo's Blind Association

Huyen came back the Provincial Blind Association where she was living and working. Some months later, she was transferred down the district Blind Association of Cam Lo district for long-term working since her homeland was there.

Since then Thien and Huyen became the same Association members. They helped daily works and practiced Braille together and they fall in love. Everybody at the association supported their love, so did their friends but Huyen�s mother. She could not believe that one blind couple could have a family life for what she�d experienced in life and she knew clearly how difficult the family life was: working for money, having children and taking care children or even simple things such as organizing things in house, preparing meals�. All general worries about her daughter�s future living.

It took the couple almost three years to prove their love and gradually persuade Huyen�s mother.

There will be one last chapter to come. We'll tell you briefly how we knew about them and what they are planning for the future. See you.

Love Story of a Blind Couple_Chapter 3

THE GROOM�S STORY

This chapter is written by Le Thi Yen Nhi, CPI project officer. Thank you Nhi for sharing the chapters with me.


Thien at the broom workshop

Pham Van Thien was born in 1972 in a big and poor family of eight members. He is the second eldest out of six siblings. Although his parents were hard-working farmers, they still could not overcome their living condition. Food and schooling for the children has been a burden on their shoulders for long.

It was noontime of a day in 1977; Thien and a friend of his named Thu were playing together out side his home when he happened to see something shiny semi-buried on the ground. With the child�s curiosity, Thien picked it up and decided to find out what was inside. Just as he was in the middle of the process, the blasting cap exploded right on his hand.

The loud explosion terrified Thien's father, who was taking a nap inside the house. He rushed out automatically then saw his son, Thien, was writhing in pains. Thien's father and his neighbors ran out to look for a mean of transportation in deep panic. It took 8 hours before Thien got to an appropriate hospital.

It's difficult to describe the family's circumstance at that time since Thien's father was the only breadwinner and he had to cease all his daily work to look after his small son at the hospital. At home, Thien�s mother was so busy taking care of the other three siblings and the youngest was just nearly one year old. All the borrowed money and their savings ran out after the first ten days treatment. Thus, the father went back to the field to work. Thien�s mother took turn to look after him at the hospital. She took along the one-year-old daughter to the hospital because the child was just too small to be looked after by the older siblings. At home the two other siblings aged 8 and 3 were completely on their own� After 20 days, the family ran out of all sellable things and the father had to take down the metal roof as well as their last bucket of cassavas, which was their final portion of food for money.

One month passed, Thien came back home with 50% of eyesight and an amputated hand. Everyone in the family was very happy though they had nothing in their house even food. The parents didn�t have time to break, they worked intensively to feed their children and to pay back the debts.

Two months later, Thien�s eyes started getting painful. His parents took him to a higher-level hospital in Hue city, which was about 150 km from their home. Thien stayed here 25 days for a series of tests and X-ray. Finally, the doctors here suggested transferring him to higher-level hospital, Bach Mai hospital, in Ha Noi, which is about 800 km far from their home. However, the family�s efforts ended here, they did not have energy and resources to go any further. Despair was written on the parents� faces when they quietly took their small son back home. One week later Thien became totally blind.

In 2000, Thien became a member of Cam Lo district Blind Association. He was then taught Braille, and how to make broom, toothpick and incense sticks. Thien is a handsome and intelligent man, thus he easily mastered everything. Thien now earns a living by making brooms.

Friends, thank you for your patience. The coming chapter will be: HOW THEY MET? Until then.

Love Story of a Blind Couple_Chapter 2

THE BRIDE'S STORY

Huyen's parents are wounded war veterans who survived from all those fierce battles around the former DMZ. After the war they returned to Mai Loc, resettled in the area that they both knew very well and did farm work for a living. Their first two sons were born in 1974 and 1976; then came the two daughters: Huyen was born in 1981 and her youngest sister was born in 1985.

The unexpected thing happened in 1983 when Huyen was only two years old and was the smallest sibling in the family. This was a difficult time for Huyen�s parents: having to raise three young children they found it impossible to make ends meet. Thus, apart from farm work, they also did all other kinds of work for a profit. The children often stayed at home alone: the older looked after the younger, played any games they could create, with any toys they found� Everyone took it for granted that it was the way things were.


View of Huyen's Homeland

Huyen was playing on her own in the front yard when her 9 year-old-brother arrived home. He had just wandered around the village with his neighboring boys. The brother came and sat down next to Huyen, pulling out from his pant pockets some "toys" he'd just found. It was a handful of propellants and some short, tiny copper tubes. The boy had already known what he could play with the propellants; however, it was the first time he found those shining tiny tubes. He picked one up to examine, then he decided to break open one of the tubes to see what was the content inside. Huyen was focusing on her own girly thing, paying no attention at what her brother was doing next to her. The boy grasped a rock and stroke its sharp edge into the tube. The impact deformed the tube but could not break open the copper casing. The boy made the second strike. This time it was not the outside force but the blast from the content inside that broke open the casing together with an explosion. Neither of the two kids heard the explosion for they were too close to the detonation point, but the boy felt something happened: at first, he felt a strange force pushed the rock backward, then he felt something at his ankle. All those strange feelings lasted about half a second and then a wave of pain spread over his entire body. He turned to his younger sibling and saw she was covering her face tight with her hands. The boy was too shocked to make any sound but the little girl started screaming out loud. It were the neighbors who heard the explosion rushed up to help and ran to find their parents to deliver the bad news�

Huyen was too young to memorize the beautiful surrounding scenes of her homeland. She was unable to go to school as her eye capacity could only help her to tell day from night. As time passed by, Huyen became acquaintance with her disability and learned how to do simple things for herself. In 1998, 15 years after the accident, Huyen left her village for Dong Ha town where she learned Braille at the Provincial Association for the Blind. Then she was selected to send up to Ha Noi for a 3 months training course to be a Braille instructor. Huyen completed the course successfully and came back to the Association. She devoted her time and energy in passing on the knowledge for others. During this time, Huyen spent her free time learning how to make brooms, incense sticks and tooth picks at the vocational training courses organized for the blinds.

Late of 2000, The Cam Lo District�s Blind Association invited Huyen to deliver a Braille course for its members. Among her blind students there was a guy named THIEN.

As you may recall, THIEN is the name of the groom. Thus, stay with us for the next chapter: THE GROOM'S STORY

Love Story of a Blind Couple

THE WEDDING PARTY

A wedding party was held on July 2, 2006 in Mai Loc village, Cam Chinh commune, Cam Lo district, Quang Tri province. The wedding was so special, for the bride and groom were both blind. Nearly half of the wedding attendees were also blind people, who are members of the provincial and district Blind Associations.

Download this to view their wedding clip

Huyen, the bride and Thien, the groom both experienced severe accidents when they were only several years of age. The devices that they were playing with suddenly exploded, and the tiny fragments from the blast took away their eyesight ever since.



After so many years struggling on their own, they have finally found each other and the wedding came as a happy ending.

Please stay with us for the next several chapters of their Love story. We will try our best to share with you all what we know about them. Our next chapter will be �The Bride�s story�

Donation to CPI Vietnam from the Alliance Holdings, Inc.

A cheque value $ 750.00 was donated to Clear Path's Vietnam Office on July 1st, 2006. The donation is from the Alliance Holdings, Inc. PA, USA. Ms. Bach Nga Vo, a company's staff who was on her trip to Viet Nam with her family granted the cheque on behalf of the company's president, Mr. David Fenkell.

The Clear Path's Vietnam Team would like to thank Mr. David as well as the Alliance Holdings, Inc. for their kind contribution to Clear Path's humanitarian activities in central Vietnam. Clear Path's implementation budget relies on donor fundings that include many individual donations.

Burmese Band-Aid: Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone

MAE SOT, Thailand - In the middle of a thatch building a ten-year-old boy waves a fan over the motionless, naked body of his two-year-old sister lying on a woven mat.

She is sick with malaria, like so many others at this clinic, but the ravages of fever have given way to her exhaustion. For now she sleeps.

Malaria, a preventable disease in this century of advanced medicine, is still rampant on the border between Thailand and Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), separated here only by the Moei River.

The Mae Tao clinic, an unregistered medical center on the Thai side of the border, treated more than 6,300 cases of malaria in 2005 � by far the most prevalent disease.
Video

Life on the border � View

"The Burmese government isn't doing anything about mosquito abatement," says Terry Smith, a physician from Davis, Calif., who has volunteered at the clinic for as long as 18 months at a time. "More than 75 percent of our cases come from Burma."

The clinic was founded by Cynthia Maung, one of the first in a wave of refugees to seek asylum on the Thai-Myanmar border, following the violent crackdown of a short-lived pro-democracy movement in 1988 by the ruling military regime. Then known as the State Law and Order Restoration Committee (SLORC), the regime is now billed as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The military has governed Myanmar and viciously suppressed dissent for more than four decades.

Dr. Cynthia, as she's known at the clinic, fled to the Thai city of Mae Sot and joined other Burmese refugees, mostly ethnic Karen people who have been at war with the Burmese government since the country's independence in 1948. At 58 years, it's the longest active civil war in the world.

The clinic has grown to be an essential lifeline both for Burmese refugees living in Thai refugee camps, as well as mostly ethnic Karen people living on little slivers of border land inside Burma.

The clinic is supported by several non-governmental organizations and does not charge for its services. But it's by no means flush with cash.

Despite Dr. Cynthia's increasing profile � a mention in Time Magazine as a Global Health Hero and several international awards, including one from the Dalai Lama � the clinic faced a severe shortage of operating funds in 2004.

Read the rest here.

Thank You Norwich!

I just heard from Martha that the Norwich group has headed home... I want to thank all of them for their service to CPI and the people of Vietnam....

Job well done, friends!