Notes from the Orphanage: Enhancing Relationships with Gifts

Editor's Note: This is a continuing series of vignettes covering a two-month volunteering mission that Renton resident and journalist Ava Van embarked on this past spring in Vietnam. 

Read previous stories:

• Renton Resident Crowdsources Humanitarian Trip to Document Vietnamese Orphanage
• Renton Resident Shares Love, Heartache for Children at Vietnamese Orphanage

It’s hard to argue that it takes a strong and heroic heart to be able to work in an orphanage. The women – called ‘foster moms’ - at Ky Quang Pagoda 2 in Ho Chi Minh City, the orphanage that Renton resident and journalist Ava Van spent two months working in this spring, largely come from poor rural communities, leaving their own families behind to tend to children and young adults who are not able to take care of themselves. It can’t be easy to see another child abandoned at the orphanage’s door steps, or to hear but know you cannot respond to every cry of every child who naturally craves the attention and physical contact so vital at this stage of development.

It also can’t be easy when volunteers like Van show up for a finite amount of time and offer their services because no matter how freely they give of their time and their heart and bond with the children, they all will eventually leave.

It was this kind of reality that found the orphanage instituting a rule for interaction between the volunteers and children – particularly the newborns and infants: no holding or feeding the babies. Only the designated foster mom can do this. The rationale was that when the bonds are made and the volunteers leave, it makes it that much harder for the foster mom to deal with the aftermath.

For Van, that was a hard rule to follow. While she was there, the foster mom was charged with caring for 19 children; not a single volunteer was permitted to help her feed or comfort the children. When opportunities arose for those rules to be bent, Van pounced.

Knowing this, Van still noted a strange exception to the rule: rich donors to the temple that houses the orphanage were allowed to enter the baby room and play with the children. She put two and two together, quickly. “I had to literally buy the newborn room so many things so that I could keep a good relationship with her [foster mom],” she said.

Van documented several shopping trips she embarked on, supported by her donor funds, to stock the orphanage with much-needed (and sometimes requested) items. Van said on the surface, the monks in charge and the foster moms collectively shunned the act of begging. When she asked what they were in need of, “they told me to just give what’s in my heart.”

One-on-one, the women were more forthcoming: a blender and meat grinder helped to prepare food more digestible for children still learning to eat solid foods; a new dish rack helped keep bowls and utensils off the floor; new sandals, clothes and toys for the kids were always welcome.

Van herself noted the constant need for medicine, formula and cereal for the babies, and new cribs and day beds for babies who would otherwise be laying on a floor mat all day. 

The items were received graciously, said Van, who was equally happy to see her purchases put to good use for the children’s benefit. Throughout her two months, however, Van noted certain items requested were never even opened as the women who requested them intended to take them back to their own families. She also witnessed one woman pocketing a monetary donation made by a wealthy donor, telling Van she’d never seen American money before and therefore wanted to keep it. “It just made me really upset,” she said.

These disheartening occurrences aside, Van observed repeatedly with these children that though they mostly ran around barefoot and had little to no possessions, they were at their happiest when there was someone there to give them attention and play with them. The head monk makes his rounds daily to ensure the kids have some play time with him. Fundamentally, they don’t care about toys or fun places to go. “They just wanted to be held and loved,” she said.

Holding and loving a little boy was just what Van was able to do when a nurse allowed her to name a newborn who had been abandoned at the temple with his umbilical cord still attached, shortly after she first arrived from the U.S. Van tracked the boy’s progress over the next few weeks and ultimately named him Thanh, meaning brilliant. The baby was weak, “I wanted to give him a strong name,” she said.

She asked the head monk when she is better settled in her adult life, if she could adopt Thanh and bring him back to the U.S. The monk told her not until he was 18.

Coming Friday: No Adoptions

Read More: Ava Van: 57 Days in Ho Chi Minh