**Remember! The password to read this is- wonderchurch
Ho Chi Mihn City. Saigon. Whatever you wish to call it, has been a hard one for me.
The city is divided up into districts, with District 1 being the center of all the sounds, sights, and luxuries.
The further out you go from District 1 the more “Nam” it gets, as we like to call it.
And then if you go ALL the way out, 1 hour, until the very last stop on the bus 3 route to be exact, when all the bus attendants start to look at you funny for being the only American ever who rode to the dead end of the bus route, you reach district 12.
Our humble abode for the month.
Dining options consist of Pho, snails or street meat. Garbage pick-up is a luxury that is not afforded, and the smog from all the city traffic seems to gather just perfectly around these less populated streets.
Hence, the Hunger Games joke that I couldn’t help myself from making.
We are volunteering in a daycare this month that cares for impoverished children in a village-like neighborhood community of District 12.
All of the children at the daycare are under the age of 6 and they are cared for until they are old enough to attend school. Free of charge. Our ministry host originally hoped to start an orphanage but he was unable to secure a permit from the government because they are aware he is a Christian.
So the daycare is the best way he can help at the present time. He himself grew up in poverty. He was born in a Vietnamese refugee camp and understands the consequences of not receiving crucial nurturing care as a young child.
The children that attend the daycare typically arrive at 7am and don’t leave until late in the evening. The daycare is place for them to receive all the needs that their parents or guardians are unable to give them.
Most of the children come from difficult homes and the guardian that cares for them is gone or busy during the day working. Lots of them live in little one room concrete homes that also function as a family business such as a laundry mat, a convenience store, or a sewing shop. If it were not for the daycare, many of these children, some of them only at the age of 18months, would be left at home completely uncared for during the days.
And our ministry host makes sure these children receive nothing short of the BEST care.
They have 3 meals, snacks, showers, freshly washed clothes, everyday exposure to English (which is the only way to overcome poverty in Vietnam) and so much love.
I have truly fallen in love with these little Vietnamese nuggets. While many of the babies were at first afraid of our Western faces they have finally opened up their arms and hearts to us.
But I’ll be the first to tell you, caring for a house full of babies is nothing glamorous.
To paint the nicest picture, here are some highlights from yesterday morning:
5:30am- The alarm goes off
5:45am- I finally quit pressing snooze
5:46am- I throw on my orange polo I have been wearing for a month straight that serves the purposes of letting the local police know that I am in the area for the sole purpose of “teaching english”.
6:30am- Countless tears are shed by the babies as they are stripped from the arms of their family. Many of the babies show up tired, hungry and sick as their home life is never the best, so the start of the day is typically an uphill battle.
7:00am- We attempt to shovel rice into each tiny mouth that doesn’t quite know how to chew rice yet. I’d say 60% of the rice ends up back on the floor.
7:30am- I somehow get a nosebleed, most likely relating to the gruesome sinus infection we all caught from the babies mixed with breathing in mouthfuls of pollution
8:00am- I sit in a puddle of urine, (it is unheard of to put kids past the age of 1 in diapers here because they are too expensive)
8:30am- After handling my urine covered pants, I walk back into one of the classrooms and immediately my foot is vomited on by a sorry looking little culprit named Mickey. Of course I wasn’t wearing any shoes because I’m still in Asia and shoes inside are hardly an option.
9:00am- While holding back a feisty little girl named Bihn Ahn from a full-blown girl fight over the one and ONLY yellow puzzle piece, she decides to sink her teeth into my forearm and cling on with all her might, a few seconds shy of drawing blood.
10am- Today’s lunch of egg-drop soup becomes a fun game of lets just drop the slimy egg drop. All over the floor, all over the table, all over our clothes.
10:30am- Ready for battle. Also known as bath time. “Nothing to ruin a great day like getting a little water on your face am I right !? Let’s retaliate and spray the teacher (me) in the face with the toilet bidet shower!”
11:00am: All the babies are bathed, in fresh clothes and ready to sleep on their floor mats in sweet little rows. Don’t worry; they didn’t go down without a fight. And is it really naptime if you don’t steal your neighbor’s pillow, sit on it, scream and cry?
11:30am- NAP TIME
**Note: napping is not exclusive to just the babies. Truly the best time of the day for all of us.
SO yes, this is a small glimpse at my job as tribute for district 12. Not glamorous and not easy. Some days I somehow wake up feeling more exhausted than I was the night before.
But these sweet children have taken over my heart. You better believe Monday morning I will be waiting impatiently for each baby to be dropped off on the doorstep, with their tiny little hands grabbing onto mine.
And then as the sun sets on another long, draining, but beautiful day, a little piece of my heart never fails to ride off with the babies, clinging to the front of their parent’s mopeds for dear life. Yes, even babies ride on mopeds here. (What’s a seat belt? What’s a car seat? What’s a helmet?)
I am learning that while volunteering as tribute for District 12 has it’s fair share of challenges, it is pushing me into deeper understanding of what it looks like to be a willing vessel, a humbled servant, and how to tap into that source of energy from deep within where only love lives.
And.. an exclusive look at Vietnamese “Car Pool”
