Tam Ky - Dioxin centre

Tam ky is about 1.5 hours drive away - it is a bit far to go on motorbikes regularly, but while the physio students have been here we have been going down in the van every Wednesday.

Kids dancing

The Dioxin and unfortunate children centre is a fairly new school and vocational training centre for kid with agent orange based disabilities (dioxin), and any other disabilities as well. The school is a bit bare at the moment, with one teacher, a nurse and the director. But it is a really nice place, they are all really happy to have any help at all and work with suggestions or ideas we provided. The kids get lunch there, and it is actually a nice looking lunch! (as opposed to the gruel that is served everywhere else!) meat, rice, vege. Good looking food!

Showing me how to use the incense making machine

At the moment they are not able to accept kids who need wheelchairs as they don't have enough staff to support those children, which is unfortunate.

The young adults also work together to make incense sticks. Which these gentlemen told us they love doing, I get the feeling they didn't have a role in their lives outside of the centre. Now they are in charge of the incense production line, teach the kids (and random foreigners who come sticky beaking like me) how to use the machines and get to sell their products to help support the centre and pay for lunch etc.

The fellow in the photo above has athetoid CP. So his left arm is constantly writhing and moving and throws him off balance if it is free. It is hard to see in the photo - but he has a piece of plastic twine tying it down. Which does work to stop his arm moving too much, but also bit into his skin!

The students got some leather in Hoi An one weekend, and we got out cook here to sew us a belt with a little loop for his hand to slip into. This is nice and stiff and stops his hand from moving around too much. Plus it is a lot thicker and softer than his twine, so now more cutting into his string! Sometimes, the littlest seeming things - like getting some leather and making a belt - can make the biggest difference. Now, if our belt eventually breaks at least he can take it somewhere and get a new one made to the same design!

We are pretty sure that the fellow in the background of the photo on the left is now also acting as a teacher. He seems to boss around the kids often, and sometimes the other teacher. If he is, what an amazing role model for these kids. Showing that just because he is missing a foot doesn't mean he can't do anything he wants! He also drives around on a cool three wheeler motorbike and was really keen to come to another centre (a place we were thinking about buying incense machines for) and teaching the young people there how to use the machines.

He also sold me 80 000 dong ($4) worth of incense..... which is actually 10 giant packets that fills up a shopping bag!! but it smells nice!

The very beautiful and photogenic kids of the Dioxin centre!

 The kids always get excited when they see a camera get whipped out and start posing, smiling, giving peace signs and generally doing entertaining things. If the camera is being held and not used..... constant tapping on shoulders and pointing at the camera to ask you to take their photos!

 It is hard to know exactly what the kids usually do during the day. It seems they get lessons and have books to write in. But there isn't a chalkboard in the classroom. So I guess everything is taught orally. One of the teacher's main concerns for physio was that the kids all have messy writing. I was amazed that half the kids could write at all! But Vietnam does have a big emphasis on neat writing. The kids we teach English too have such neat writing it makes me ashamed of mine!

 They also have a karaoke machine in the classroom. Because every kid should get to karaoke machine..... instead of a chalkboard! They do love it though. On our first visit we were hoping to get to see what the kids usually do.... but instead we got sung to by various children.





Including one (on the right) who apparently can't actually speak - but loves to sing and just make noise. It was actually quite tuneful singing too.
While playing with some beading I had her copying the colour names (in Vietnamese). Seems if you spend some time giving her the language she can copy and pick it up! But the only teacher doesn't have time to sit and do it all day, I guess her family is probably too busy working to spend the time. But it is so sad to see someone with so much potential who just doesn't have people with time to teach her.

dancing fun

 We decided to try to get some physical activity into the kids day. A few of the kids are on the bigger side, and tend to sit around all day not really running around and playing. So we started with the macarena - you can see in the photos that they are having a great time dancing!

teaching the kids the macarena

We had a great time teaching them. We also went through the chicken dance, and then a simple version of Gangnam style..... as soon as the music for gangnam style started playing the kids were laughing and getting more and more excited!

The only problems were the heat - which was getting intense towards the end of the 5 weeks! the weather here is really heating up!

Hopefully the school will keep going with the dancing, and hopefully they can do so early in the morning when it is slightly cool. The kids absolutely had a ball dancing, in the last week they were even singing along to the songs.

We also taught the kids how to play tunnel ball and bought them some balls to keep so that they can play soccer, tunnel ball, generally throwing or kicking the balls around.

over the top tunnel ball

intense tunnel ball action