Virtual-Doug

Merry Christ Mass

(It’s a record – a record I am not crazy about.  This is easily the longest period of time of not writing s since I began blogging back in June, 2003.  In 4 ½ years, I have never gone this long between posts.  Even while living in Việt Nam, I usually posted twice each week.

The Gentle Reader may ask “Why haven’t you blogged lately, Doug?”, though most likely Gentle Reader doesn’t really care.  But, since its my blog, I’ll answer the rhetorical question anyway.

When the Mystery Guest Blogger and I got back from Việt Nam in November, I went to work part-time for a newspaper.  It’s the same paper where I’ve been freelancing, but now I’m also working in the production of the paper and a seasonal publication called The Winter Texas Times.  Since it takes me about 5 hours to shoot and process the photographs of a sports event, and I do two or three of those each week, plus I work 15-20 hours each week, as well as  visiting my mother almost every day, the days are busy.  Of course, I used to work 40 hours (or more) a week, and have time for hobbies and writing, but that was before I started getting Social Security.

So - - there are my excuses and I am sticking with them.)

Every one likes to talk and write about the spirit of giving during the Christmas season.  Like most other newspapers, mine has been running stories along those lines. I think it’s a good thing – I just wish the same feeling pervaded during the rest of the year.  I guess we feel that way, eh?

There was one family whose mobile home burned down in November.  A nearby Catholic church found out about it.  The youth director of  the church called on some folks who work in the construction industry – the same folks who work with teenagers during the summer on The Mission Service Project to help seniors and poor folks fix up their houses.  The photo ran in the paper along with a plea that folks chip in with some construction materials.  I’ve been thinking that I need to go back out to the site and see how the new house is coming along.

(As always, be sure to click on each photo – you’ll see a full sized version if you do.)

I enjoyed the Lighting of the Christmas Tree for the City of Mission.  It really was a family affair – lots of kids.  Santa was there, but every time I tried to get a shot of him with the kids, the Mayor put himself in the scene too – and I just didn’t want a politician in my Christmas pix.  But – I came up on this by accident.  I was walking around, watching the kids with candy and new toys when I saw a little girl break away from her Mom.  Nobody told her to do this – she just did it.  This kid knows what Christmas is about, eh?

Today, I went out with a group of folks from the local Lions Club.  Yeah – they had fun.  They joked as much as they worked, but work they did.  I followed two of them around as they went to drop off groceries to families in need.  This Mom’s husband used to bring home the bacon, but is disabled now.  She has her hands full with little ones, so three bags of food were much appreciated.

So – how’s your Christmas going?

Cycles

Life is lived in cycles, and this week, the Mystery Guest Blogger and I celebrate the completion of a cycle.  In this case, the cycle is the Christian liturgical calendar.  Every three years, the scriptures and the written prayers read in our church are repeated.   It’s not something that most people dwell on, and I dare say, most people don’t notice the cycle.  Three years is a long time to remember what scripture was read on a certain date.

But we remembered.

This past Sunday, the Gospel reading was from the book of Luke.  Most people who have ever been to Sunday School as a kid will recognize the Beatitudes – the series of “Blessed are the . . .” and “Woe to the . . . “  that can make you feel either joyful or scared, depending on your own circumstance.

Go ahead – read it.  Luke 6:17-26.

On Sunday, February 15, 2004, we were in church as per the norm.  That same scripture was read.  Our pastor at the time (a recovering attorney) admitted that when he got to the part that says “"But woe to you who are rich,  for you have already received your comfort”, he gets nervous.  While not as rich as Bill Gates, he certainly had a lot more than the people he saw in Mexico who live in cardboard shacks.  The passage made him uncomfortable.

Then he said this: “God speaks to us in our discomfort.”

Literally – at that exact moment – I took pen from pocket and wrote the letters “VN” on the service bulletin.  When I went to show it to the MGB, she was already in tears – she had heard the same thing I did at the exact same moment.

The rest, as they say, is history.  By May we had found an agency to send us, by August we had been accepted, and by November, we received our assignment to Huê.

Makes me wonder what the next three cycle will bring.

Việt Nam Needs You

I’m not sure I know why, but I’ve had quite a few inquiries from various people thinking about going to Việt Nam.  I’m not talking about tourists – I’m talking about people who have a deeper interest in the country, and want to do something productive there, or who want to get off the beaten tourist track and see the “real Việt Nam.”  For that reason, I have four different non-government organizations (NGOs) I have personally dealt with, have full faith and confidence in, and am proud to recommend if you want to go to Việt Nam.  All of these groups work in Central Việt Nam.

Think About the Children is the newest organization on this list.  Founder Tom Murray is a veteran whom I had the privilege to meet on his very first trip back to Việt Nam.  Like The Mystery Guest Blogger and I, he fell in love with the people and the country.  During my teaching time in Huê, one of my most enjoyable times was working with Tom to link up his students from the College of Charleston with six Vietnamese students of ours.  I was tickled to see two of my students on the History page of the TBTC web site helping to carry food into an orphanage in Huê.  Tom takes things personally.  During the recent typhoon in Huê, he heard that one of the Vietnamese students’ families had lost the roof of their house.  (Vi is pictured on the right end)  That put the energetic Tom to work.  In short order, he raised the $1,000 needed to replace the roof and had it wired to her.  Think About the Children also works with the Blue Dragon Foundation  to help kids who are trafficked and sent to the big cities to sell postcards to tourists – and kept in virtual slavery.  If you want to see Việt Nam – the real Việt Nam, and you want to see it with a vet, Tom is your man.  I will send you his email if you request it.

MEDRIX.  Not all NGOs in Việt Nam are run by vets.  Bob and La Relle Catherman have an incredibly deep love of Việt Nam – especially in and around the Huê area.  La Relle is the medical person who works with the hospitals in the area.  She put the MGB to work last spring teaching English medical terminology to the physicians of Huê.  She also does a lot of work with health education.  Last spring, she supervised a group of American student nurses doing the public service portion of their degree program as they worked in the hospitals around Huê and in the A Lưới area (what vets remember as the A Shau Valley). Bob is “The Water Man.”  He has developed an inexpensive system to produce safe water and works with the College of Science and the People’s Committee of the province to install systems in schools. If you are a medical type or a technical type, MEDRIX needs you.  And you won’t find two finer people to work with the Bob and La Relle.

Vets With a Mission  is a group we can not only recommend – but have actually worked with.  Our first return to Việt Nam was in the summer of 2002, and we did it with this outstanding group headed by Chuck and Joette Ward.  A major part of their work is to reconcile the people of Việt Nam and the United States, as well as American vets to their experiences.  They do medical trips as well as trips working in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity.  If you are a vet, we can think of no better group to return with than VWAM - - because you will have the camaraderie of being with other vets.  They’ve been doing this a long time – since 1988 when Việt Nam was just beginning to open up.

Peace Trees International  If you want to see more of “The Real Việt Nam”, take a citizen diplomacy trip to Việt Nam with them.  My connection is through Mike Fey, a veteran and a dentist who makes frequent trips.  Peace Trees works in Quảng Tri Province, the site of the old DMZ and still one of the poorest provinces in the country.  Peace Trees does educational work, as well as environmental restoration and de-mining.  Yes, Quảng Tri is full of unexploded ordnance, and people are hurt to this day when a farmer’s plow hits an old artillery shell.

These are all excellent groups you can travel to Việt Nam with and do some good while you’re there.  Obviously, there are lots of other groups, but not all would be suitable as a means to travel to Việt Nam.  Việt Nam has hundreds of NGOs working throughout the country.  One such agency is the Blue Dragon Foundation, run by Australian Mike Brosowski in Hà Nội .  I never met Mike in person, but as a fellow expat blogger, we swapped many an email.  Blue Dragon Foundation and Think About the Children have begun cooperative programs in dealing with the problem of child trafficking in the rural areas around Huê.

But - - if you travel to Hà Nội , you are commanded to eat at KOTO (Know One Teach One), another Australian NGO that provides training in the restaurant and hospitality industry to street kids.  If you eat at KOTO, you will enjoy one of the best meals you’ve ever eaten, and you will have helped another kid learn both an employable skill and self-respect.  Their fund raiser is a Brit, and I’ve swapped many an email with him as he is the author of Our Man in Hanoi.

Travel to Việt Nam if you can – any of the above groups will serve you well.  Can’t go but would like to be involved?  Blue Dragon and KOTO would love your help.

And if you travel to Huê, then you must visit the unofficial hub of NGO activity there.  Go by my friend Cu's Mandarin Cafe for a bite to eat - and meet the other NGO workers in Central Việt Nam.  Tell him Doug sent you.

Love One Another

They’re good kids.  They’re the kids older people love to complain about, saying they’re too selfish and too shallow.  But here they were, sleeping on the floor of a church in Texas for a week, trooping over into Mexico each day to help children who will never have what they have.  They were missionaries, if only for a week,

They went to see orphans.  Reynosa, Mexico,  is a large city on the border with America where many poor Mexicans come to find jobs in one of the maquiladora factories  in the area.  For those who can’t hack it, the children suffer.

Some of the orphanages in the city are run by Catholic nuns.  They receive no help from the government and subsist on the largesse of others.  When our group arrived, they were met by a church group from Illinois/Missouri who were painting the interior.  Help comes from many places.

The missionaries-for-a-week brought shoes – shoes given by well-to-do families of San Antonio.  It was a time when young adults bonded with younger kids – a time when the young adults found out about how others live in this world.  Don’t misunderstand – this was not a tough time.  This was a time of laughter and fun.  It was a learning time.

The other orphanage was run by the government.  More boxes of donated toys and clothes were delivered.  Most of the  young missionaries headed towards the nursery, while the leaders arranged to deliver stuffed toys and crosses to the older kids.  The young orphans created an atmosphere of both joy and concern.  There was a set of three-day old twins who had just arrived.  Its tough to hold a new life in your hands and ponder what lies in the future for one born with no family in a land of little opportunity.

Sometimes the excitement and commotion is a bit difficult to handle.  Strangers had come into her home, and this little one’s insecurity brought tears.  Off to one side, some words of comfort and love.  Nearby, another little girl got some help with her new shoes.

As I watched all this, I wondered what lay ahead for all involved.  Life will be hard for the orphans.  For the ones in the government orphanage, they will have to fend for themselves once they turn fourteen.  Those from the Catholic orphanages will probably do better as they were raised in a more nurturing environment and can stay there as long as they wish.

It’s the young missionaries I am more curious about.  They have choices.  They are well educated, and come from middle-class homes.  I wonder how many will make the choice of serving themselves.

– or, after this, of serving others.

Heather’s Hoedown (Part II)

(If you have not read the previous post, do that before reading this one.)

Of course, you can’t have a party, eat barbeque, and drink beer without music.  At this kind of a party, the music has to be country music.  And it was a live band.  Of course, they donated their time.  As a part of giving, a local radio station also contributed time and money to the fund raiser.  The band would play a song or two, then the announcer would use the microphone to encourage people to join the auction and help raise even more money for Heather.

The auctions.  People and businesses donated a huge number of items to be sold to raise money. They were laid out on tables for viewing – and all kinds of things were for sale, from fishing poles to bird houses to brush-busting grills for pickup trucks to bottles of wine.  If you liked it, and you wanted it, then you promised to pay for it if you offered most money. 

Auctions can be a lot of fun.  One person stands up front and asks people how much they would pay for an item.  If you are want to buy it, you raise your hand.  But, somebody else may want it too, so they may offer more money.  A third person may want it even more, until finally, somebody offers money that nobody else is willing to pay.  Once again, people donate the items to be sold.  In this case, the grandmother of the cancer victim’s husband offered a quilt.  Handmade, it had been in the family for generations, but she was willing to have it sold to help someone else.

The party lasted for four hours.  People had a good time, but in the back of their minds, they knew they were helping somebody else.

How much did the community raise?

Would you believe $87,000!

One last thought about volunteerism in America.  Obviously, Americans like to help one another – but they aren’t always so crazy about receiving help.  You see  - - they want to do things themselves.

But they always want to help others.  In this case, Heather and her husband have decided to “pay it forward.”  Since she cannot bear children – they will adopt, and the money will help do that.

One more person helped.

(A note to my Vietnamese friends.  Barbeque is both a verb and a noun.  To “barbeque” meat is to cook it very slowly, usually over a wood fire of mesquite or other fragrant wood.  As a noun, it refers to the meat, either pork or beef, covered with barbeque sauce.  Everybody has their own recipe for barbeque sauce, but it is usually a spicy tomato-based blend.

Country music is very popular in America.  It is not necessary that you live in the countryside to enjoy country music.  Think of it as a different kind of music to differentiate it from rock n’ roll, or rap, or classical, or ethnic music.

Hoedown is an old word.  It derived from a time in the early pioneer days of America when farmers worked hard all day.  If they had been out in the fields using a hoe, putting the hoe down meant it was time to stop work.  A “hoedown” became a term that meant a gathering of neighbors for music, food, and talk.)

Heather’s Hoedown (Part I)

Alexis de Tocqueville,  Democracy in America,  circa  1830

Although private interest directs the greater part of human actions in the United States as well as elsewhere, it does not regulate them all. I must say that I have often seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare; and I have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another. The free institutions which the inhabitants of the United States possess, and the political rights of which they make so much use, remind every citizen, and in a thousand ways, that he lives in society. They every instant impress upon his mind the notion that it is the duty as well as the interest of men to make themselves useful to their fellow creatures; and as he sees no particular ground of animosity to them, since he is never either their master or their slave, his heart readily leans to the side of kindness. Men attend to the interests of the public, first by necessity, afterwards by choice; what was intentional becomes an instinct, and by dint of working for the good of one's fellow citizens, the habit and the taste for serving them are at length acquired.

De Tocqueville took stock of America’s fledgling democracy when it was only 50 years old, yet 175 years later, many of his observations still ring true.  The above quote is one of them – Americans help each other.

American’s are strange beasts. We are both brutally competitive and tenderly caring at the same time.  America has a welfare system that many other countries envy, yet we also expect people to got off welfare and “be on their own two feet.”  We love to do things ourselves, yet bind together in strong community when the need arises.

This is an example of how Americans help each other out. 

The young lady had only been married a short time when cancer was discovered.  Surgery relieved the immediate danger but also eliminated the possibility she would ever bear children.  The cancer was aggressive, and she needed more treatment – include chemo-therapy, which some people describe as a cure worse than the disease.  She lost her hair, vomited for days, was (and still is) chronically fatigued, and has many other bad reactions to the chemicals intended to kill the cancer.  Her husband and her brother are both stalwart enough to shave their heads in sympathy with her having lost her own hair.

Like most people in America, she has health insurance - - but that doesn’t cover such items as having a place to stay when in The Big City for her treatments, nor the time away from work, nor the travel – and certainly there are huge bills for medicines and procedures not covered by the insurance.  If not paid, the debt would cripple the young marriage.

So what did the folks of deep south Texas do?  They raised some money to help out – and they did it with a party.

A Texas kind of party.  A hoedown.  Over 500 people came to eat barbeque, drink beer, dance to country music, and buy donated auctioned items.  They paid $50 per person – and some paid extra just because they wanted to help.

(As always, be sure to click on the photos to see a larger version.)

When I say “Texas”, I mean things were as Texas as can be.  You knew you were in Texas while still in the parking lot – there was nothing but pickup trucks and SUVs.  Texans love to drive trucks.  Even those who live in cities love to drive pickup trucks, though they seldom carry anything in the back of the truck.

Inside the big hall, there was food aplenty.  Heaping plates of barbeque, with beans, onions, bread, Spanish rice, and other goodies.  Big appetites were welcome to come back for more.  Sit down with your friends, wash all that food down with a beer (or two), and enjoy the company of friendly people.

(To be continued in the next post.)