A traffic accident robbed a once quick and energetic young woman of both her legs, but with a desire to live a useful life, love has forged in Ms Nguyen Huong Duong extraordinary determination to overcome her fate, recording more than 1,400 audiobooks given free to blind people. The name Nguyen Huong Duong has become a title and a source of faith that many children with visual impairments and disabilities admire and follow as an example in rising up.
A story told through letters
The small room of Ms Nguyen Huong Duong, Director of the Audiobook Library for Blind People on Dinh Tien Hoang street, District 1 (Ho Chi Minh City), is always neat and tidy. Beside the second-class Labour Medal, the Medal for the Cause of Protecting and Caring for Children and many other titles and certificates of merit, the reward that matters most to her is the thank-you letters from students with visual impairments, which give her motivation and faith and always make her happy. “Each letter is a story of a student with a visual impairment overcoming hardship. I always find in the letters happiness that drives me to try to do a small useful thing to help the children firmly believe they can rise above their fate. After hours of recording and hard work, the letters are always my confidants and kindred spirits,” Ms Nguyen Huong Duong said. Leafing through the letters, many of them 5-6 pages long, some written in simple, sincere words, some arriving as a poem or a picture… we were truly moved. A letter from Le Thi Nhung, a third-year student at Ho Chi Minh City University of Education, reads: “Whenever dawn breaks, I often wander in the garden touching each flower and leaf. When night falls, I often dream of cartoons and fairy tales with beautiful princesses and princes. But that is no longer strange or mysterious to me. I found those fairy tales in the audiobooks of Ms Nguyen Huong Duong. With her sweet, warm voice, she not only helped me absorb knowledge but also lit in me a light of love, a light from the heart appearing in sound, warming my soul and encouraging me to rise above my misfortune. I learned determination from her, and from that I became a student…”.
Ms Nguyen Huong Duong (third from the left) presents gifts to students with visual impairments who have overcome hardship to study well.
Writing in her letter, Do Thi Bon, a student at the Central Pedagogical College in Ho Chi Minh City, said: “I remember clearly how, in my first years at school, holding a book I could not read made me resent my fate. I thought I would collapse and let fate carry me along. But when I was 9, listening to Ms Duong’s audiobooks engraved in my soul a determination, with a sharing like that of a friend, and also an excitement as if I had just received a prize, mixed with a stroke of luck as if I had just escaped danger, and the feeling of a child receiving a gift from parents returning from a long business trip. She always takes the faith and success of people with visual impairments as her own certificate of merit. Her example reminds me of the fairy tales I learned. They are lessons in love, determination, sacrifice and sincerity, the baggage that helps me rise above my unfortunate fate. Those dreams seemed as though they would never come true, but they are gradually coming true for me”. Those are just a few of the many letters sent every day to thank the Director of the Audiobook Library for Blind People. That is also why each of her audiobooks is always fresh and has a special appeal for students with visual impairments.
Legs of determination
Over more than 17 years, Ms Nguyen Huong Duong has recorded more than 1,400 printed books in many genres – history, culture, literature, science, textbooks from grade 1 to grade 12, university entrance exam materials, college and university curricula… – given free to 95 schools for blind people, shelters and associations of blind people across the country, and serving millions of online users through the website sachnoionline.com. To produce such a large number of audiobooks is the work of a person whose fate has been unfortunate in a way some people do not even know about.
Nguyen Huong Duong, born in 1971, lives in Ward 11, Binh Thanh district, Ho Chi Minh City. From early childhood, she was always a diligent and well-behaved pupil, loved by everyone. Because of her circumstances, after reaching her third year at Ho Chi Minh City University of Education, she switched to studying to become a tour guide and became a tour guide for Saigontourist Travel Services Company. With her expressive reading voice, besides completing her guiding duties well, she was also an active collaborator with the Voice of the People of Ho Chi Minh City radio station on children’s programmes, the bridge of compassion… Life was blossoming beautifully when a sudden railway accident cut off both her legs. Pausing for a moment and gently wiping away the tears welling in her eyes, she recalled emotionally: “During my days in hospital, many nights I could not sleep, my health grew worse and worse, and at times I thought of giving up and letting fate take its course, feeling that my life had come to an end. But at those times, I realised that while I was sad, my parents and friends were many times sadder. My parents always gently encouraged and comforted me, guiding me to choose something suited to my circumstances. In mid-1998, I hobbled on prosthetic legs to visit a friend at Nguyen Dinh Chieu Special School (Ho Chi Minh City). “Seeing the students with visual impairments listening so eagerly to audiobooks planted in my mind the thought that blind people always know how to rise above their fate and become teachers, engineers… like Nguyen Van Long, a master’s degree holder and teacher at Nguyen Dinh Chieu Special School (Ho Chi Minh City)… while I still had my eyes. My idea of building an audiobook library for blind people began from there”.
To realise the idea, she bought equipment and technology and tried it out in practice. The first work, “Sans Famille” by the French writer Hector Malot, was completed, and she was both delighted and worried, not knowing whether people would accept her work. When she gave the books to blind people in the city, the work was highly praised, not only because the content was faithful but also because her voice conveyed sharing and empathy. With this first success, she became ever more passionate about training to improve her voice and recording technique, producing many audiobooks to meet the increasingly diverse needs of blind people. She said: “On days when the weather changes, my wounds ache, but thinking of the children with visual impairments who lack books, I try even harder, hoping to help in a small way so that the children can overcome the darkness of their lives”. To make her works worthwhile, for each work she chooses and reads it beforehand to understand its content deeply, so that she can express it in the best way. Besides that, she actively studies to raise her scientific knowledge and her reading and recording technique. On days off, she visits people with visual impairments to listen to their comments and understand more deeply their inner lives, feelings and wishes. Thanks to this, her audiobooks have become ever richer and more diverse, from updated knowledge about current affairs and life to textbooks, literature, biographies of famous people, medicine… To organise on a tight and systematic scale, she researched and successfully built the “Audiobook Library for Blind People” project of the Ho Chi Minh City Women’s Charity Association. The audiobook library for blind people has spread ever wider, attracting society’s attention. In 2010, the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee decided to establish the Audiobook Library for Blind People, with her in charge. From then on, she brought together a large and effective team of readers for blind people. Although the recording studio had to be rented and moved many times, from the early days of recording onto cassette tapes, through her efforts, audiobooks for blind people are now recorded digitally and have a website that everyone can access. With a pure heart, the Audiobook Library for Blind People has always received support in every way from organisations and individuals, helping the library grow. Through the Audiobook Library for Blind People, many children with visual impairments and blind people have been helped to study, grow up and integrate into life. In recent years, she has also mobilised benefactors to donate more than 4,000 scholarships (each worth 1.5 million to 5 million VND) to students with visual impairments and disabilities who have overcome hardship to study well, along with many meaningful charity programmes, such as “Lighting up faith” and the “Anh Sen Scholarship”… In the process, Mr Pham Duc Trung Kien, an overseas Vietnamese in the US, actively supported the funding. When naming the award, he proposed, and everyone agreed, to name it after her. From 2000 to now, the “Huong Duong Scholarship” has awarded 542 scholarships (each worth 5 million VND) to students with visual impairments who study well.
There are many reasons behind these first successes, but it is her legs, no longer intact, and her love that have forged the determination for her to rise above her fate, stand up and walk on, becoming a “fairy tale” for many children with visual impairments and disabilities striving to rise above their unfortunate fate.
Article and photos: NGUYEN DUY HIEN- http://www.qdnd.vn/