Final Thoughts and Sincere Thanks!

The 2010 March Vietnam Aid Expedition is officially over (although we have a few hundred pictures to post still). The team this year is amazing - we all worked really hard before the AE to raise money for the projects (a total of $26,330!) and collect clothes, toys, arts and crafts supplies, tools, stickers and everything else we brought! And of course they worked even harder during the AE - everyone woke up early and worked hard in the heat. Everyone worked "above the line" and met our expectations of being excellent representatives of Catalyst Foundation and all our supporters around the world.

Often people ask what they can really do to make a difference - and the Aid Expedition is certainly an answer to it. Poverty is extreme in the community we work in but we just are lucky enough to help open the door to...hope. The joy of the children, the connection with community members and the perserverance of the human spirit motivates and inspires each of the volunteers. At the very core - we are all the same - we love our children and want the best of them - a home, an education, and good health.

We are so thankful for our amazing volunteers, their family and friends who support them. The work never ends though..we still desperately need funding to continue the projects in Kien Giang and Dong Thap. AE funds are specifically for AE projects. If you can hep us continue our work - and be a catalyst for change, please consider making a donation!

Celebrating Khmer Tet in Kien Giang

From Nelson Family's blog:

This evening we had the most amazing Cambodian New Year celebration at the school — Chol Chnam Thmay. As we are so close to Cambodian many in the community are ethnically Khmer. The Catalyst community spent the entire day cooking for us and prepared an abundant feast.

It was such a wonderful sense of community as our team and the Catalyst kids gathered together to share some amazing dishes. Grace and I were most fond of the duck curry which had simmered for six hours (and I think the ducks had been wandering the courtyard not long before). Watching the joy of the kids enjoying these special dishes was such a delight.

After dinner there was a ceremony to honor the winners of the Little Red Fairy art contest, for which the 5 top artists received scholarship money, followed by performances by each of the Catalyst teams and then some performances by the Catalyst community. It was a wonderful party, so great to spend some relaxing time with the Catalyst kids. They are so full of joy, smiles and hugs, which made it so very hard to say goodbye.

*Caroline's notes:
This was the second year in a row that we celebrated Khmer Tet. The community loves to say thanks with food and song - and it was fabulous! We had some special VIP's from nearby provinces and the Political Officer & Deputy Consul General of the U.S. Consulate office in HCMC even came to see all the fun! It truly was one big happy family - even though the U.S. team left a little early - the Kien Giang families stayed all night - eating the food, dancing and singing Khmer songs! Each one of our teams also sang some fun songs...we'll post the lyrics soon! Tomorrow morning we all go our separate ways - most of us are going via long bus ride back to Saigon.

Medical Team - Last Day

From Nelson family's blog:

The medical clinic was open for a 1/2 day today, but it was a tough few hours. We saw some patients who didn’t get seen on the prior days and a very special group of girls (who Catalyst supports in the scholarship program) who had suffered sexual and physical abuse. We hadn’t used even close to all the fluoride treatments so we started the day by treating kids whose families didn’t get numbers to be seen that day. It’s not much, but at least their teeth have a bit more protection. Each day has ended with having to turn people away, but today being the last day it was so much more difficult. I can’t explain the emotion of having to deny someone even the most basic of medical care. You so want to take just one more, but there is never just one more and where do you draw the line. Yesterday there was a father who came with his two young boys, barefoot and unbathed, asking for help for his son who had been having stomach pains for days. As a parent, I cannot fathom how he must have felt to arrive too late.

After the clinic closed and the construction work was done, the medical and building teams visited the dump. It was the most humbling experience of my life. Here are a few more photos. The baby in the photo was brought to the clinic yesterday – he is 3 months old, but was born 2 months premature. To see him the next day in the dump was heartbreaking. The fact that he is alive shows that his family is doing absolutely everything they can for this child under the worst possible circumstances.

It’s hard not to question whether the work we have done will have enough of an impact in light of all that is left undone. I thought a lot about that on the drive back to the hotel. The only way I can reconcile at this point is to focus on what was accomplished. Approaching such poverty requires empathy with action and without judgment.

Building Team - Last Day

The goal of the day was to get the playground installed and "fixed" into our newly cemented play area - all by 10 a.m.! Originally I had said Noon - but the families from our community were coming to prepare food for the Khmer Tet celebration that we really needed to get out of the way.

Our team leaders on the previous day figured out how to weld a steel plate to the playground base so then it could then be bolted into the cement. That would be needed as 40-50 children are going to jump on it at the same time! One of our Building team members also bought rubber mats to be placed in some "key" places and of course no playground is complete until we have a ship's wheel installed! We also put up some very cool "sail" shades over the area. We could probably use 3 more but it was enough to keep the parts from getting too hot in the sun! Our kids absolutely loved it - there were some that just went up and down the slide for a few hours and couldn't stop smiling! Thanks so much!!!!

The house is well on its way to completion in the next 10 days. Unfortunately our team couldn't finish it in our four days. But we left it in good hands with the construction workers. The roof work is more detailed and then there will be stucco added to the outside of the house. The building team has worked so hard in the heat - no one volunteered to "switch" to the team, but a true testament was that no one was asked to be off the building team either! Everything was done by 1:00 p.m. and there was definitely a sense of accomplishment!

School Team - Last Day

This day was meant for fun - for all of our kids. The only job the Catalsyt AE Kids had was to play and play hard with the Catalyst Kien Giang kids. It was of course the hottest day, someone said 107', someone said it was "only" 102'...it was hot - I believe we have wiped out the supply of Aquafina in the Mekong Delta! Everyone has exceeded their 15 bottles of water a day rule!

Here's some more info about the day from various blogs:

From McFarlin family's blog:
I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to watch our VN American kids interact with the VN Catalyst kids. Not only was witnessing that exchange extremely insightful, but the interactions between our VN American kids amongst themselves was also very meaningful. Again, I don't have the energy and mental ability to post all that I want to on this subject, but thought I would share some of the quotes/sayings I heard during the Aid Expedition... some make me smile... some make me think:

"We don't do the 5 second rule in Vietnam!"

"Team USA... come on kids, we can do this"

"Be the chicken... "

"Be the clay pot..."

"Count off..."

"Well... we gave her 27 cents... and some shoes..."

"Fresh garbage comes in at night..."

"Try not to react..." (In response to our visit to the garbage dump)

"Big Sale" (On our hygiene kits and toothpaste)

And of course our song (Sing to the Tune of Down By the Bay):

Down in Kien Giang
Where the Temperature Grows
Back to Saigon
We Dare Not Go
For When We Did
Caroline Has Sang...
"Have you ever seen a stack of clothes
as big as Rose?"
Down in Kien Giang...

The quote part changed for each time the chorus was sung.

Medical Team - Wednesday

From DeWitt Family's blog:

We left on the bus every morning at 6am, ate breakfast and then arrived at our medical site by 7:30 to begin working. The gates opened at 8am and there was always a long line of people waiting. I began most mornings with a ca phe sua and a French baguette, usually accompanied by pho or beef stew.

Some of the many patients, lined up when we arrived in the morning. Crowd control was an issue. Without any barriers to keep people at bay in the open air market, we relied some rather inexpensive strapping rope to keep areas off limits. With so many people needing care, it did the trick for awhile each day, although we still had gate crashers and line jumpers. Most people saw our rope barrier as a challenge, or invitation, depending on how you look at it, to step over, under, walk through, play with, stretch, you name it.

There was a little guy was all smiles until he needed to get blood work. Although he was relatively robust and healthy, it took a few tries to get the sample. He wanted nothing to do with giving up his blood sample and his pitiful wails brought tears to my eyes. Once the traumatic event was over, he was all smiles again and got a mother lode of plastic dinosaurs and stickers for his trouble.

We drank A LOT of Gatorade. I'm sure I drank more this week than in all of the last 10 years. Brenda and Catherine were in charge of painting fluoride varnish on teeth. And boy did those teeth need it! Judging by their reaction, most of the kids we saw have never had this. There was much spitting and rubbing off of the newly applied varnish. Win some, lose some.

*We saw 220 patients on Wednesday.

School Team - Wednesday

From Wylie Family's blog:

Today we had food distribution. Each month Catalyst distributes food to people in their community. The food consists of rice, beans, oil, sugar, noodles, milk and formula. The amount given will last a family of 4 for one month. Many people from surrounding areas arrived, thinking they would also be receiving food. We said we could give them all but rice and oil, they were not happy about that. One mother with a 9 month old and a 6-7 year old was in tears, she just wanted to feed her children. It's hard to watch.

If we give food away for everyone, the program doesn't work. The idea is to educate the children and teach the parents, for that they earn vouchers for food and other items. If a child scores well on tests and gets good grades, they get vouchers. If parents attend special trainings on the weekend, participate in community events, they get vouchers. If they don't do any of the above, no vouchers. It's the give a man a fish, eats for a day, give a man a fishing pole he eats everyday philosophy. Even knowing all of that it's hard to watch a mom have nothing to feed her children.

*Caroline's notes:

The afternoon was spent with the last of the activities and crafts we had planned for the children. Lots of stickers, card making, soccer, feathers, masks and piggy back rides. Mimi, Shelby and Haley did an amazing job organizing our 10 activities for the week...and it was so nice to "delegate" that task to the teens! Our kids couldn't get over how much bigger they were to the children in Kien Giang so it seems even our youngest kids were still bigger and stronger. As one of our Catalyst kids said, "It's because we eat fast food all day, and they have pho!". That probably 1/2 true :). The painting crew is really hard at work painting the outside of the school and library building. The quality of paint is not great, but that just leaves us something more to do next time!! It's hot...103' on the thermometer today!

Building Team - Wednesday

From Susan's blog:

Another day at the work site. Load the bus at 7:30 for breakfast – “same, same” meaning same time, same restaurant, same breakfast. That is one of the few disadvantages of traveling with a large group instead of on my own as there are not that many restaurants that can fit 80 people and get everyone served in 30 mins. Therefore, there is not much variety.

Our job for the day was similar to the first day but more cement pouring then shoveling and grading. The team got 3 squares of cement poured the first day, but it was slow as we were mixing the cement by hand. The Vietnamese would mix the cement on the ground and then we would shovel it in to the wheelbarrows and pour it. We were able to get a cement mixer from somewhere but the town had a power outage for most of the afternoon so we could not get any electricity. We started the day off by laying out the shade sails again to figure out where to put the poles. Before we could pour more cement we needed to know where the poles needed to be placed. The poles are 5 meters high and will be used to tie off the sun shades. Hard to describe, but if all goes well there will be photos to explain in a few days. Funny thing was that they didn’t seem to fit the same way that they had the day before. Odd. So, we moved them around until we found a configuration that we thought would provide shade for the yard and leave an opening for the towers of the playground. Once we had the pole locations identified several team members dug 4-5 foot deep and 2 feet wide holes. That was tough work.

I got put to work building the forms for the cement sections. This involved a lot of measuring, plumb lines and hammers and my tendency to want perfection and precision was appreciated by Dave S who is one of our team leaders. He also strives for the best we can do. We got 2 and a half rows completed. With the cement mixer working today, it was a challenge to keep up the forms with the cement making team. We had a limited amount of material for forms so we would have to wait for a section of concrete to form enough to be able to pull out the used form and put the form in the next section. Besides building forms there was still a lot of digging, weeding and grading the rest of the yard to prepare for cement. Our team put in three of the four poles and angled them so that we would have the proper angle for tension of the shade sails.

Sometime during the day someone was instructed to go buy rope to attach the shade sails. They came back with rope that was about 2 inches in diameter. Humph….something did not translate well on that request. I think asking for strong rope without also clarifying that it needed to be thin rope to fit through the eye holes, was the mistake. So, we knew there would be a few more hardware store runs tomorrow. Of course there is nothing like a Home Depot or Lowe’s here. We have found some small shops that have supplies with the help of the Vietnamese local students.

We finished pouring concrete for two and a half rows of the yard, which is about 1/3 of the yard. We quit at about 4:30 so we would have time to go back to the hotel and shower before dinner. This time I was smarter and took my shoes off before I went in to the hotel so I did not dump sand and dirt all over the hotel room.