Befriending a Vietnam veteran

A grenade explosion during the Vietnam War cost him his hearing, but spared his life.

Thanh, now 51, sits on a street-side restaurant on Co Giang Street in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), a survivor of the bitter conflict around this city over thirty years ago. He sits just two blocks down from the main tourist drag, out of sight from foreign eyes.

I met Thanh while looking for dinner on the streets. He caught my attention by pointing to the food, smiling a large grin and pointing two thumbs up. I turned to my friends and we agreed to sit down and try the food.
The chicken and rice were delicious (and cheap).

We did not realize that Thanh was deaf, until he told his story. My friends and I sat and "talked" for several hours with a white board, a note pad and our hands.

I told him I was an American and to my surprise he gave a thumbs up. He mimed an airplane, two towers, the numbers 9-11 with his fingers. He put a finger down from eyes to show tears. Sadness. Then he mimiced a beard. Osama Bin Laden. He pointed two thumbs down.

He made the sign for America and pointed two thumbs up. Thanh, a veteran of a war against Americans, told me he supported America and felt bad about 9-11.

Seated across from Thanh were two women, an old woman named Hoang and a young girl named Hoa (flower). Hoa lost her hearing when she was a little girl after falling onto the floor. She now washes clothes to support her young daughter. Hoa is only one year younger than me, yet she already supports a child while studying sign language.

While I can not be one hundred percent sure that I completely understood, Thanh mimed to me that he is one of 20,000 or more deaf people in the city.

Thanh acts as uncle, father and brother to the deaf in Saigon. The community seems to revolve around him. As we sit and talk with our hands, at least 20 deaf people rode by, some stopped to join in on the conversation while others continued on.

He put his hands together after pointing to the other deaf people around him.

I understood. They were family. Thanh showed me that everyone supports each other. While Hoa and her daughter have a room to sleep in, Hoang, 62, does not always have a place to sleep or money to buy food.

Thanh works in construction, and by 10 p.m. he motioned that he had to sleep. He would be up at dawn to work for a very low wage. A wage that barely covers the cost of living in Saigon.

Although Ho Chi Minh has a growing economy, many people remain in deep poverty. Vietnam is a communist country, reunited after Southern Vietnam fell to North Vietnam in 1975. But capitalism is thriving and emerging in the south.

While traveling through the city I asked many of the peddlers where they were from. Most of them responded with Ha Noi. Many people are relocating to the south to find work. A large labor pool leaves many people open for exploitation, making it difficult for people like Hoang, Hoa and Thanh to survive.

When Thanh finished telling about the difficulty of living on the street, I made a tear motion with my finger. He smiled and put his hands together. Friends. I put my hands together. An American and a deaf Vietnamese veteran soldier, friends.