“Our eyes cannot see the light, but we do not worry about going hungry, because we still have our hands to guide us and earn a living”, Ms. Sam said, her long, slender fingers still busy folding votive paper.
Mr. Dam Dinh Bang and his children born with disabilities. Photo: Hoang Phuong.
Luu Xa village, Quat Dong commune (Thuong Tin, Hanoi) is famous for its talented craftspeople in the traditional embroidery trade. Sisters Dam Thi Sam (49 years old) and Dam Thi Gam (42 years old), who were born blind, also loved learning, but because their eyes could not see the way, they had to give up. Ms. Sam switched to learning to make votive paper, while Ms. Gam was given a place by the Thuong Tin district Red Cross on an office IT training course.
They are the daughters of veteran Dam Dinh Bang (Luu Xa hamlet, Quat Dong commune). The 87-year-old man has six children, four of whom have disabilities. His eldest son, Dam Van Chien, and his two daughters, Dam Thi Sam and Dam Thi Gam, were born blind. His fifth child, Dam Van Banh, is not blind and moves about actively, but is deaf and unable to speak.
Of the four children with disabilities, Mr. Chien is the most severely affected. The 56-year-old man, whose hair is almost all grey, knows nothing except sitting absent-mindedly counting numbers from 1 to 20. “When everyone sits and talks, he only listens and does not understand anything; sometimes he even has fits of waving his arms and legs like a child”, Ms. Sam said of her brother with an intellectual disability. The two younger sisters after Mr. Chien were born normal, grew up and married far away, and only come home to visit occasionally.
Borrowing a neighbour’s house for the time being, sisters Dam Thi Sam and Dam Thi Gam make votive paper to earn an income.
Photo: Hoang Phuong.
Looking at his eldest son sitting huddled in a corner on an old chair, Mr. Bang said bitterly: “When they were born, they were already like that. Three of them cannot see anything, and one is permanently deaf and unable to speak. I took my children to hospitals everywhere, but they said they had congenital disabilities that could not be cured”.
He used to work as a defence industry worker. His unit specialised in producing weapons for the two resistance wars against France and the United States. Mr. Bang himself does not know whether he was affected by toxic chemicals in the war. When his children were born less fortunate, he and his wife only knew to take them to hospitals everywhere. When doctors concluded they had congenital disabilities, he brought them home to raise, believing it was fate and that resisting it was impossible.
The house is full of adults, but only Mr. Banh’s wife is healthy, looking after a few sao of rice fields to help the family. The others are all old and weak, or unable to do heavy work. Sam said that before, the two sisters used to weave bamboo fans to sell. Now people have switched to electric fans and air conditioning, and no one pays any attention to the bamboo fans of the past, so the sisters lost their jobs.
When she first switched to learning to make votive paper, Ms. Sam had to practise for several months before she could skilfully bend the bamboo strips, curve each piece evenly, then dry them and stack them on a rack. At first, the votive paper boxes were crooked and misshapen, not looking like anything, and not as beautiful as they are now. Criticised constantly by the shop owner, Sam sometimes felt discouraged and wanted to give up. At night, when the whole family had fallen asleep, Ms. Sam lay sighing, tears welling up, with the question always turning in her mind: “Why can other people do it, but I cannot?”.
Working all day making a thousand boxes of votive flowers, Ms. Sam earns only 10,000 VND. Photo: Hoang Phuong.
Suddenly, she remembered the days when the two sisters studied at Nguyen Dinh Chieu School. For nine years, Sam and Gam learned Braille, were taught how to move around, and did everything by themselves. Learning was hard, but she never gave up. If she could still weave bamboo fans, why could she not fold votive paper?
Thinking this, she asked the owner to let her take products home to make and learn at the same time. Sam said that in this trade, people only teach you part of it; the rest you still have to learn yourself. Now, each day she folds more than a thousand boxes of votive flowers, earning just over 10,000 VND in total. Making votive paper brings the blind girl an income of 300,000 to 400,000 VND a month. It is low, but Sam is still happy because she earns money herself.
“I only hope that, with capital, I can take on goods and make them from A to Z myself, then hire sighted people to stick flowers on the products to finish them. That way, the profit will be higher and I will depend less on the owner. But that day still seems far away, because I have only just started”. Sam smiled, her bamboo-shoot fingers never leaving the wooden bamboo strips and the pile of coloured paper. Her hair already has some grey strands, but her hands are fair, with long, slender fingers no less than those of a girl in her twenties.
Having just finished her IT course, Gam is taking the opportunity to fold votive paper at home with her sister. Gam still hopes to have a computer to practise her knowledge more, but does not yet have the money to buy one.
“When I have a job, I will continue to study English. I always tell the children in the neighbourhood that they are foolish to be given the chance to learn a foreign language by their families and not learn it. Our parents are old and weak, and feeding us siblings is already exhausting, so I long to study. Our family is poor, so we have to plan step by step, using the short term to support the long term. The allowance of 350,000 VND a month for each person is only just enough to live on”. Gam spoke of her plans for the future, her eyes shining with hope.
Every day, Gam still takes a motorbike taxi herself or hitches a ride with a neighbour to Thuong Tin town, more than 4 km from home, to study. Mr. Banh moves around normally and could take his sister to school, but Gam does not ask him because she wants to do everything herself. Of the four disadvantaged siblings, only Mr. Banh has married and has a 9-year-old son. The other three do not dare dream of such simple happiness. “Taking care of ourselves is already hard, how dare we hope to take care of someone else”, Gam sighed.
“I only hope to have a trade in hand, to earn money to support myself, my brother and my elderly parents. Having a trade in hand is still the best long-term plan”. What the two daughters long for is also the worry in the heart of the old veteran Dam Dinh Bang, now at an age close to the end of his life.
Hoang Phuong – http://doisong.vnexpress.net