The low, single-storey house, sitting modestly in a narrow alley at the end of the village, is the home of Ms Tran Thi Ha, 54, who is struggling to support her sister with a disability, Tran Thi Nhat Le, 48, and their elderly mother, who is sick, in Hic hamlet (Hoa Binh commune, Dong Hy district, Thai Nguyen province). The lives of the three of them, mother and daughters, are like a heartbreaking diary telling of the cruel years when they held together to overcome the pain of fate.
A cruel childhood
Lying on two separate beds are the elder sister and the younger sister, who share a likeness in their short, stumpy bodies (60, 70cm). When they see a stranger, Ms Ha tries to prop her curled hand against the bed frame and struggle to sit up.
Inside the damp house of about 6m2, bare and empty. There is nothing of value in the family's possessions except a few sets of clothes hung on a line strung across the head of the bed.
Ms Ha said she was born into a farming family; her father was Tran Van Dat and her mother was Dao Thi Thu, and they had seven children. Two sons and five daughters, but the most unfortunate were the sixth daughter and the youngest, both of whom were born with deformities. With tears in her eyes, she said: “In (1959) I was born, and when I was first born my mother said I was already short and stumpy, round like a melon, and then six years later when my sister Nhat Le was born she had only one leg”.
When Ms Ha turned 21, her eldest brother suddenly fell ill with a terrible liver cancer, leaving his skin pale yellow and his face swollen. The family had no money for medicine, so her brother's illness grew worse and worse until he lay paralysed on his bed, withering away day by day. She loved her brother dearly but could only cry, cry until her tears ran dry. Before closing his eyes and leaving his parents and younger siblings, her brother did not forget to urge his sister with a disability, words she still remembers: “Remember to try hard to look after Nhat Le, raise her to grow up; I must go far away and cannot look after you any more”. Nhat Le was still small then and knew nothing; seeing her sisters cry, she burst into tears too.
Ms Ha sits on her untidy bed talking.
The pain had not yet eased when two years later, her second brother suddenly had a stroke, falling from his bed to the floor and lying unconscious for three days. Their parents borrowed a little money to take him to hospital for treatment, but his illness was too serious, and the second brother died while still young.
Later, the three elder sisters each married in turn, and married far away, so they could no longer look after their younger sister as before. Mr Dat's health grew weaker and weaker, with constant illness. When Ms Ha was 41, Mr Dat fell seriously ill and died. The thatched house with earthen walls became even more empty and dark, the oil lamp flickering on the table, now bright, now dim in the draught. The elderly mother and her two daughters with disabilities lay holding each other, tears welling up, wondering about their lives and what the road ahead would be like tomorrow.
The heartbreaking sight of sisters with disabilities caring for their elderly mother
Shouldering all the worries alone, Ms Ha put aside her shame about her fate. Every day the woman gets up at dawn and walks to the district association of people with disabilities to collect bamboo toothpicks, then carries them around hawking them through all the streets and alleys in the commune. With a figure like no one else's, at first glance she looks no different from a three-year-old child, and so on the days she goes out selling toothpicks she always sells out.
In recent years, their mother's health has grown weaker and weaker, and she is often ill. Loving her mother, Ms Ha can only wipe away her tears and work as hard as she can, and whatever money she saves she takes her mother to the commune health station for injections: “As for Nhat Le, she lies around on the bed, and because she is deaf she only looks across at me attentively. When I ask her something I have to write it on paper before she can answer, and she never went to school for a single day, yet she writes very beautifully and with correct grammar. Nhat Le said: “I first had to buy copybooks to practise writing, and every day I practised writing one letter, and then it became a habit”.
Once she could write fluently, she also wrote poems, kept a diary, and embroidered very beautiful pictures herself. As she spoke, she took out a pillow embroidered with a picture of a mermaid and showed it off with emotion: “I embroidered this picture myself as a keepsake, and now I only wish I had a little capital to buy wool and embroider many more pictures to sell and earn money so that Ms Ha does not have to work so hard selling toothpicks”.
The Great Solidarity house where Ms Ha and her mother and sister live was built for them by the central Fund for the Poor in 2006. Each month the two sisters rely only on a sickness allowance of 180,000 VND, but that money is far too little for the three of them, mother and daughters, to cover their daily living costs.
Mrs Ha Thi Theu (a neighbour) said: ” Ms Ha's family is a poor household in the hamlet, with not a patch of land to their name, the elderly mother is constantly ill, and the sister with a disability cannot help at all. All day long Ms Ha has to go out selling toothpicks for hire and still does not have enough to eat. We pity their circumstances but cannot help much; occasionally when Ms Ha is ill, I come over to visit and encourage her”.
Hopefully, in a not-too-distant future, the fate of the three suffering women in that peaceful, quiet rural place will become brighter
Minh Phuong – http://www.cand.com.vn