Week 1:
Phu My Orphanage and Medical Clinic

June 23, 2014

The first week of my fellowship has been extremely exciting and has kept me on my toes.  My fellowship is in Ho Chi Minh City, which is extremely vibrant and full of life.   For my fellowship I am working in a Hospital and Clinic, and providing physical and mental therapy to children with disabilities.  The first week was dedicated to orientating me to Vietnam and the Clinic, for this I had several intensive Vietnamese language and culture courses.  I have quickly learned that communication is not very direct here, there is a lot of beating around the bush. This makes it a little harder to plan events or know exactly what is going on but this is something that I will have to figure out in my time here.

The staff has also taken me to several museums and cultural sites so that I could better understand the history of the country.  One museum we went to was dedicated to the Vietnam War, which was very pertinent to the work I am doing.  This is because during the Vietnam War Agent Orange was used as a weapon, yet it still has implications to this day.  Agent Orange has caused hundreds of thousands of children to be born with various defects, both mental and physical.  Many, if not all the children at the Clinic suffer from disabilities related to parental exposure to Agent Orange, such as Cerebral Palsy, Autism, and Downs’ Syndrome.  Many of these conditions I have learned about during my psychology courses, but to actually see how dehabilitating these disorders are first hand is something you just can’t experience in a classroom.

The staff has also shown me around the Clinic, which is attached to the hospital.  It was a little frustrating the first week as I was extremely excited to get started working with the children, but the entire week was instead dedicated to my training and orientation.  Each day I was introduced to a different member of the staff, what they did, and I was taught some skills needed for the Clinic.  For example I met with the physical therapist, she showed me around her treatment room and taught me to do massages.  Massages are done on the limbs of children with Cerebral Palsy and Autism to stimulate their senses, nerves and relax their muscles.

I am excited for next week as I will start working with the children.  I am also suppose to meet with a speech therapist and learn more about how I can help improve the childrens’ language capabilities.  Also due to the nature of my work I cannot post any photos of the children that I am working with.  I also will not mention specific names or cases, but I will talk about my general experiences at the clinic.