This week was Lan, Nancy and my first full week at Sao Mai due to our trip to Ha Long Bay and Vietnam’s Independence Day. On Monday, Nancy and I went to the Café located inside of Sao Mai. I talked to Chi Uyen about the shop and why it was there. She told me that it provided training for the kids who had autism. Those kids are sixteen and according to her they are not really capable of doing difficult work so she helps them with basic, household tasks such as wiping down the tables. While learning these practical skills, this also gives them an opportunity to talk to some of the customers or workers there. They know simple things like their name and how old they are. I believe that this type of training is a good skill for them to learn; however, I do not think that they system or infrastructure that is in place is very efficient. There are a total of 14 sixteen-year-old kids with autism. Every morning from 8 to 11am, there are two of them working at the coffee shop and every day they rotate so the next day there would be two different students. I think this is very inefficient in that it would be two weeks before the kids could work in the coffee shop again and during the meantime when they finished their turn and wait for the cycle to repeat, they’re pretty much are not learning any other skill which I believe could be really beneficial to them. At this time, I have not though of any ways that I can help these kids because whenever I come to volunteer at Sao Mai, these kids are already done with their shifts so maybe perhaps, sometime I can come in the morning this week or next to see if I can work with them. Also, I know that maintaining the store front of the coffee shop is important but I believe that our time was better used to help and interact with kids rather than sweeping and mopping the store while Chi Uyen plucked out the white hair of some older lady who worked there. Chi Uyen is really nice but I just didn’t really understand the point of that task except lending a hand (of which we did offer to help in the first place).
On Monday, Nancy and I worked in the kitchen for about 30 minutes. There we met Co Hieu. I talked to her for a while while I was washing the dishes. She asked me questions about my family and past and I told her and so I asked her about her past especially since I noticed that she had a southern accent, I was interested to hear why and how she was living the North. She asked me about my parent and I said that they escaped Vietnam during the war and she told me that she was not able to escape herself. Thus she fled to Russia for the past 18-20 years and recently moved back to Russia because she wanted her son to learn Vietnamese because of growing up in Russia, he learned Russian and never really had a connection to Vietnam besides his parents. IT was definitely interesting to hear her story and I want to perhaps sit down and have a deep conversation with her because we do not get to hear a lot of the story of people who were not able to escape and we don’t know much about their struggles.
The week before Chi Uyen went to the bus station and asked around for us which bus would take us directly back to Hanoi University. We found that the 22 saves us about the 13 minute walk on the street with floating with syringes. So after taking the 02 there, Nancy and I took the 22 back to campus (Lan was sick that day). On Friday, we tried taking the 22 to Sao Mai, got off at one stop too earlier and got lost in the hot sun for 45 minutes.
On my last blog, I wrote that someone (Miki) saw the teacher hit one of the kids with an object. This week was the first time that I’ve seen such action with my own eyes. It is really difficult to see a child get hit. What was even worst was that when Hien, the little girl, persistently kept crying and wandering out of her seat, one of the teachers grabbed her by the ear to sit her down. My brother and I were never hit or spanked in any way but we were still really discipline. I understand that culture is very different but I bet that the teachers would not spank a child in front of their parent so why even do it at all. All the teacher is doing is creating fear in the kids and that’s no way to grow up.
I think the more and more I come to Sao Mai, the teachers get more used to me being the classroom and treat the kids how they normally do when there isn’t more supervision in the room. On the first day, she seemed like a caring teacher and as time progressed I see more of these heinous actions.
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