We started the day at a club for disabled and mentally challenged children. This little girl and I bonded and she kept wanting to have our picture made together. So, here it is. She liked it a lot.
The work done here with these children is incredible. Though this society is just now coming to grips with the fact that a disabled child is not that way because of something the parents did wrong or because of something the child did wrong in another life. The woman who runs this club is disabled and was refused entrance to a local university because of her physical condition, though nothing was wrong with her mind. She went elsewhere and ended up studying in the U.S. and earning 2 masters degrees and getting invited to do doctoral studies. She turned down the latter so she could get back to Vietnam and work with these kinds of children. She has to raise all the money for her program on her own.
I am in Da Nang tonight. This afternoon we visited one of the three “hot spots” in the country that have the highest concentration of Agent Orange in the soil. This is where the U.S. planes were loaded with the chemicals and unloaded after the chemicals had been dropped on the forest.
