It never rains but it pours...

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Well, it really has been a couple of weeks! Firstly, Karen, who runs the charity here and who I've been working with for the past 3 weeks went home to Australia - it was a very emotional goodbye, the kids really get attached to her when she's here and miss her terribly when she's gone. She'll be back at the end of December for another 2 month stint. The day after she left, in the early hours of Saturday/Sunday, we were hit by typhoon Xangsane! Hoi An and Danang were the worst hit areas, many people in Danang died (over 60 we're told), thankfully no casualties in Hoi An (apart from 7 of my chickens that I was going to deliver to families on one of the islands, which we couldn't get to because of the flooding). It was pretty scary to be in the middle of a typhoon (another new experience for me!), even though I was in the relative safety of the hotel. The storm raged for about 10 hours. I have a ground floor room in a 3 storey building owned by the hotel (and across the road from it) and although it's a pretty sound building, water was gushing through the roof and down the stairs right up to the door of my room - thankfully it stopped short of flooding me out. After a few hours I decided I didn't want to sit the storm out on my own so I made a mad dash across the 20 metres to the hotel. The winds were so strong that the rain was falling horizontally - after a bit of a struggle I managed to get across safely but completely soaked! The hotel was completely flooded both in the reception area where the doors just weren't enough to stop the rain coming in and also on the first floor restaurant where the rear of the restaurant opens out over the pool area with just a couple of bamboo blinds as protection. We guests spent a desparate (and fruitless) few hours helping the staff to bale the water out. Even though our situation wasn't good, we were relatively lucky, as the damage to houses, particularly those on the peninsular (an area just over the river in Hoi An centre) where the poorest families live and where many of the families Karen helps live, was extensive. I went out on inspection on the Monday following the storm and many of our families had lost their roofs, along with most of their possessions and food. The area of Hoi An where I am, and where most of the tourists stay, was almost unrecognisable from what it was before the storm - a high number of the flimsy houses and other buildings had collapsed, so many roofs had gone and several huge trees, hundreds of years old, were lying along the roads where the winds had lifted them at their roots. Damage in the Quang Nam province which covers Danang and Hoi An - the 2 worst hit areas - is reported to be millions of US$.

Although we had no electricity here for about a week, (with the exception of the hotel which was out for a few days until they got the generator going), I did manage to keep teaching during the clean up process with the exception of one group where the school we teach in was badly flooded and out of action until the government got round to repairing it. I start back there tonight.

On the Monday afternoon after the storm, I got a call to say that the mother of one of the families we help had been badly hurt in a motorbike accident. I was told she was in a coma in Danang hospital and asked if I could go and see what help the family needed (all medical treatment has to be paid for in Vietnam and often patients aren't treated until they can prove they can pay the bill). Before I could get to the family, I got another call telling me that the mother had died, but I still needed to go and see the family. Having absolutely no experience of this type of situation, and feeling totally unqualified, I got myself together to go and see them. Just as I was about to leave I got another call telling me that she hadn't died but had recovered consciousness and had been sent home from the hospital. (confusion on this scale is the result of rumour and heresay rapidly spreading through a small community where everyone knows everyone). Thinking she wasn't as bad as originally reported, I went off to do something else before visiting the family. I then got another call telling me that she had now actually died at home. After confirming that the information was definitely correct this time, I prepared myself to go and see the family. She was 29 with a 5 year old son and needless to say, I found her mother and husband in a terrible state. As soon as I got to the house, the mother grabbed onto me as if her life depended on it. With no experience in this type of situation, all I could do was hug her and tell her, through my translator, how sorry I was. Her little boy, not really understanding what was going on, was running around, stopping every so often to look at his mother who was laid out on a bed a few feet from us. It must have seemed to him that she was asleep. It was the saddest thing I've ever experienced in my life. As immediate neighbours and other locals who know the family, became aware of what had happened, the house, which was extremely small, consisting only of one main room used as a reception and a bedroom, and a small kitchen behind, became more and more crowded. Realising there wasn't anything I could do right away, after what I thought was an appropriate amount of time, I told them I had to leave but would come back in a few days to see if there was anything they needed. Early in the morning, 3 days later, as I was coming out of the road from my hotel, her funeral procession passed. Buses crammed full, bicycles and motorbikes followed behind the funeral car - there must have been at least a thousand people. When I went back a few days after the funeral, the husband told me that as the accident was the fault of the boys riding the bike that knocked her down, they would have to pay money to the family to cover medical and funeral costs plus money for the loss of his wife's life........

Karen has a number of families with medical problems that she helps , a couple of whom I'm working with while I'm here. The first is a family of 8, 6 kids and mum and dad, all of whom have TB. They've been ill for some time, mainly because they've not been taking their medicine properly. As a result, the mum and one of the son's have both been close to dying. Karen has agreed to pay the costs of a second treatment programme and I'm going to 'supervise' the taking of the medicine! I met with the head of Hoi An hospital today who specialises in the treatment of TB, and he explained to me everything that the family has to do every day for the next 3 months - that includes having a good breakfast at 7.30am (the family are extremely poor so we are providing them with food as well as the medicine to help them get better); taking their medicine at 9.00am - this is complicated as the treatment is different for each member of the family depending on age and condition and I have to make sure everyone takes what they should be taking (god help me!); having a good lunch at 11.00am (no food to be eaten in between, just water) and bed by 9.00pm (I'll have to trust that they do this!). As I'm only here for another 2 months, and keeping to the strict regime of the initial 3 months of treatment is vital to their recovery, I will hand the family over to a vietnamese friend I've made here, Giao (pronounced 'yow'). She has a thriving pottery shop and already does a lot for the locals here and has kindly agreed to take over when I'm gone.

The second family have an 11 year old daughter, Ngoc (pronounced 'nop') who contracted measles about 2 years ago. As she wasn't vaccinated as a baby, treatment to cure her is extremely difficult, and she is now in a serious condition. I went to visit Ngoc and her family about a week ago. I won't describe her condition, but it was immediately obvious that this little girl is extremely ill. The family were unable to explain exactly what treatment Ngoc had had or what could be done for her now - they could only tell us that she'd had 'western' treatment when she was in Danang hospital some months ago - that she'd had a bad reaction to it and as they couldn't afford to keep her at the hospital any longer, they'd brought her home. They told us that Ngoc was now taking a chinese herbal medicine which, although slow, did seem to be helping. With such vague information from the family, it was difficult to really understand what help we could give, so I took a note that the family had been given by Danang hospital which had diagnosis and treatment to Dr Van, a paediatrician at the local hospital who I've got to know and who helps Karen with the medical problems of the children (and adults where necessary) of the families that she works with. On reading the note, Dr Van told me that Ngoc's condition was very serious, that the chinese medicine she was taking was not a cure, and that she was unlikely to survive. Although I had a suspicion before I saw Dr Van that it wasn't going to be good news, her confirmation was extremely upsetting. When I'd recovered my composure Dr Van told me that we really needed to get Ngoc back to the hospital in Danang to be assessed for possible treatment. In the (probably unlikely) event that she could be treated, she would need to stay in hospital for a month to 6 weeks so that she could be monitored each day for any improvement in her condition. With no national health service here, the stay in hospital and any treatment, has to be paid for by the family. On top of that, the family have to pay their own expenses to stay at the hospital with Ngoc - this includes food and any travel expenses. The costs could be as much as 10 million dong (about 350 pounds) which although not much by our standards, is a huge amount for the family, and money they simply don't have (average earnings for this type of family is probably less than 15 pounds a month). I now have to go back to the family and explain what needs to be done and how we can help. I am going to help with the costs of getting her to the hospital for assessment, and if she can be treated then hopefully Karen's funding will be able to cover that cost and the parent's expenses. If she can't be treated then it will be a case of making her as comfortable as possible until the inevitable happens......

Just in case you think I'm at risk of getting depressed by all of this - I'm definitely not! I have great balance with the teaching I'm doing - which is extremely rewarding. The kids are great to work with - I'm seeing a difference already, particularly in those kids that I'm teaching one to one. Plus, Hoi An is a lovely place to be - it's small and has a real community feel to it. I've met a nice group of people who live here, vietnamese and western (many of these are bar and restaurant owners which is very handy), so my social life is good - I'm out doing something pretty much most nights after English lessons. On top of that, the staff in my hotel are absolutely lovely, most of them know what I'm doing and treat me like royalty - which is great! And as I ride around on my bike each day I get waves and shouts from the kids and parents of the families I've got to know!!

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