Tutoring children is the daily work of Tran Thanh Son, who holds a master’s degree (seated in the middle).
In the small room on the second floor, at 124/12 Nguyen Van Cu Lane, Nguyen Cu Trinh Ward, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, two small children are being tutored by a special “teacher” in a wheelchair, preparing for the new school year. He is Tran Thanh Son, a victim of Agent Orange/dioxin who has been paralysed in both legs and arms since childhood. But with willpower and determination, Son has earned two master’s degrees. In addition to tutoring Maths and IT, Son also tutors the children in English, from primary school to high school. He teaches children from disadvantaged backgrounds free of charge.
Tran Thanh Son was born in 1984, the youngest of four siblings in a family in Phan Rang – Thap Cham City, Ninh Thuan Province. Misfortune struck Son after an illness when he was just nine months old, and from then on all of his daily activities depended on help from his family. Son said: In 1962, three months after his eldest sister was born, his father joined the army and took part in the resistance against the US to save the country in Phu Tai, Binh Dinh. Throughout the resistance, marching through many areas, he was exposed to dioxin at some unknown point. Son was born affected by the poison from his father. Loving his youngest son, who had unfortunately been poisoned through him, Mr Tran Lai (Son’s father) gave all his affection to Son and became his “legs”, taking him to school until he finished grade 12. Most importantly, he passed on a soldier’s steel to Son from an early age. Throughout primary and secondary school, whenever his classmates teased him, Son thought of his father’s words: “You have only one way to support yourself, and that is education. Only by studying really well can you get ahead in society later on. For able-bodied people, even if they do not study well, they can still do many jobs, such as working as a bricklayer’s assistant, digging the earth or pedalling a three-wheeled cart… but you cannot do any of those jobs”. Those heart-to-heart talks with his father encouraged Son to study and strive.
In 2002, joy came to Son when he passed the entrance exam to the University of Natural Sciences, but it was mixed with sadness for the whole family when they discovered that his father had liver cancer. Although he could no longer take his son to school as before, he remained Son’s spiritual support, and once again Son learned a very valuable lesson from his father: the soldier’s fighting spirit in the face of illness. In 2006, just as Son graduated with a bachelor’s degree in information technology, his father passed away. Grieving for his father and remembering his advice, Son worked even harder at his studies. In 2014, he graduated with a master’s degree in information technology from the University of Natural Sciences, Ho Chi Minh City, and a master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City. In the same year, Son married a woman without a disability, and the couple now have a healthy child.
Son hopes that society will create an environment in which Agent Orange victims in particular, and people with disabilities in general, can integrate into life and work. At the same time, he hopes that authorities at all levels will work with the Association of Agent Orange/Dioxin Victims to issue certificates to all second-generation victims, in a compact format like those for people with disabilities, so that they are easy to use when taking part in traffic.
PHUONG THAO_http://www.nhandan.org.vn/