Veteran builds a family for the needy

LookAtVietnam - Retired, single and childless, a former soldier opens his heart and wallet to men and women often seen as outcasts.

An armload of kids: toddlers follow grandpa Man whenever he comes home.

LookAtVietnam - Retired, single and childless, a former soldier opens his heart and wallet to men and women often seen as outcasts.

A man in his later years braves his own disability to tend to the young, but he receives no salary and uses money from his own pocket for others’ expenses. He adopts children abandoned by their own parents, and never marries but ends up having a bigger family than he ever imagined.

Such stories of generosity are rare, but not at the Tu Tam Nhan Ai (Humanity) Shelter located in an isolated area in Binh Duong Province’s Thuong Tan Commune, about a two-hour drive from HCM City and a ferryboat ride across a river.

One of a handful of homeless octogenarians confined to their beds.

The shelter, sitting alone surrounded by fields, is an enclosed cluster of five simple houses that constitute an entire world for a group of needy but vulnerable souls — from newborns to 90-year-olds — whose troubles have required separation from the harshness of life outside.

As you approach the area, there’s no hint that the houses are a social shelter – no office space or manager’s room but only an unadorned space with beds for elderly volunteers to sleep overnight. Several stone benches are available to receive guests.

“We started with just two shabby concrete cottages about four years ago,” says Nguyen Minh Man, a native of Binh Duong Province, who opened the

One of a handful of homeless octogenarians confined to their beds.

shelter and is its owner and manager.

For the first two years, the 65-year-old gave up his bed indoors and slept outside under a hanging canvas so that others could stay inside. But now, with the new expansion, Man has a solid roof over his head.

Life savings

“I’ve spent everything on the shelter, drawing on my lifetime savings,” says the war veteran. “That’s why I could only build little by little, depending on how much I earned at different times.”

He renovated two of the five buildings, spending VND480 million ($27,000) of his own money to do so.

Man, who suffered a head wound during the American war, sources all of his monthly of VND20 million ($1,100) income from his invalid’s pension, profits from a rice store and an apartment rental in District 9.

The amount is enough to sustain the shelter, apart from volunteer contributions. “They have families to care for. I have none,” he says, smiling.

His income supports up to 70 people, including the homeless, elderly men and women paralysed by strokes, pregnant women who have been abandonned, rerebral palsy patients, and individuals with mental disabilities.

Man says every bottle of soy sauce and pinch of salt are saved to make ends meet, but he often ends up borrowing or buying on credit when patients need hospitalisation or parts of the houses need repair.

“Unlike other charities funded and run by religious, governmental or non-governmental organisations, mine is probably the first and only one in the country that is a one-man job,” he says. “Donors aren’t willing to travel to a secluded place like this.”

Man says he also lacks fundraising experience and is too busy juggling all of his jobs to pursue grants or donations.

Good karma

The shelter, however, tries to give residents as much as it can, including “funerals organised right on the grounds for any person who dies,” says Nguyen Van Thanh, a friend and war comrade of Man’s.

Thanh helps out at the shelter with five others who contribute their time and money to keep it running.

“The daily chores are shared between the residents,” he says, adding that the healthy residents help the sick and bedridden, while the mentally stable help those who are severely mentally ill or physically disabled.

Man says such kind-heartedness displayed at the home may stem from his karma, as a Buddhist monk once told him.

“It’s kind of in my blood and I was born to do what I’m doing without a second thought,” he says.

He recalls how he was touched seeing street children waiting for leftovers from others to feed themselves and how he felt an urge to help the needy, given his own rough childhood.

At first he gave them hand-outs, but then later found them jobs or gave them shelter at factories where he served as manager.

“My giving grew into something much bigger,” says Man, adding that he had no lofty plans in the first place and everything came to him gradually and naturally.

Now that he’s older, he knows he’s on the right track and has dedicated the rest of his life to his calling since he “can’t take all the cash and properties to my grave.”

“I think a human being is just like a bottle of perfume: let it give out its sweet smell until the bottle is empty and just dispose of the bottle,” he says.

As for the young mothers and babies, Man says his thick skin can protect the kids from the malicious scandals that circulate about him and the girls.

“If they’re left out there, I believe the kids will grow up ill-nourished, uneducated and end up as thugs or rascals that pose more burdens to society,” he explains.

The young mothers, most of them workers whose boyfriends were so poor that they shrugged off responsibilities, were desperate and considered abortion.

Remembering his wartime experiences as a medic, Man recalls the dangerous methods doctors used to get rid of their babies. “They pump water into themselves to suffocate the feotus before taking it out. That will haunt you forever.”

Beloved grandpa

Walking around the grounds and the houses, Man, who is called ong noi (grandpa) by the kids, is often surrounded by a handful of toddlers and pre-schoolers, imploring him to hug or pick them up.

“They’re like that every time I come home,” he says. “Hearing the kids’ babbling is gratifying to me and I don’t feel lonely at all. I tell the girls to do this and that and sometimes scold them for not taking good care of their children, as if they were my own daughter and grandchildren.”

When the babies are strong enough, Man says he will let the mothers leave the shelter so they can work and earn money.

When he opened the shelter, local residents and authorities branded him deranged, given that he was using up all of savings and had a wartime wound.

“Why doesn’t he spend his money for himself? What drives him to help others and clean up all their sh – ?”, recalls Man of the neighbours’ taunts.

But, defying the naysayers, he acquired a license so he could function legitimately as an organisation. In fact, his bad reputation had the unintended effect of leading some people to his shelter.

Some of the current tenants, Man says, were found wandering on the streets and then driven to the shelter, some were sent in by their families who were too poor to support them, and some just came by themselves.

“The more they come, the more worried we are that we can’t afford to cater to all of them. However, we have no heart to turn anyone down,” he adds.

Life’s margins

When darkness falls in the evening, the residents get under their mosquito nets for a good night’s sleep. For some of them, there is no tomorrow and they only await the end. They know nothing about the outside world and the world knows nothing about them.

“I miss my mum and my two brothers a lot,” says Kha, an 18-year-old girl who has epilepsy, and was sent to the shelter to avoid her violent stepfather. “Mum says she will come.”

In one house next to the mothers and babies’ ward, a group of severely mentally ill men and women lives. Crammed with beds into a narrow space, the entire space has a rank smell because patients often relieve themselves on the spot.

In another house, Nguyen Kim Chi, 20, whose cerebral palsy has shrunk her legs, says she spends her time reading Buddhist teachings and wishes uncle Man good health so that he can help more people like her.

Nearby, a grey-haired lady wakes up in a desolate room, startled by visitors at that time of the day, while another woman can remember nothing about her home or her family.

“I want to go out to work to lessen the burden on uncle Man and to buy stuff for my baby,” says a young mother from a faraway northern province.

Man says his biggest wish now is to build a decent ward for the severely disabled so that hygienic and living conditions are improved.

Confronted with a prospect of an influx of newcomers, he says after months of thinking he has arrived at a solution: selling all his property in HCM City and spending the money on the shelter’s expansion.

In anticipation of his core income being disrupted, Man says he’ll begin to farm on his site to provide food for the shelter’s residents. “I’m glad I’m still strong enough to carry on the job, but when I’m gone who will take over?”

VietNamNet/VNS