Morning’s Late Light
Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
I only went to that orphanage in Vietnam once, so I don’t know much about it. It had a lot of children in it, and a lot of those children were healthy and lively. Then there were the children who were disabled; there are still babies being born who are badly disabled because of Agent Orange, they said, and they were in a pretty terrible condition.
And then there was one little girl who had been abandoned in a field and rats had eaten off her toes. There were rooms full of cribs.
They said that part of the problem with the children was the lingering effect of Communism. When everyone was guaranteed basic life needs many people became disinclined to do anything. Falling onto the people below like a crowd-surfer, believing that they would be held aloft. And that these kids found, for a time at least, that it was easier and more fun to get money out of tourists than it was to work for a company that did so.
We went into the classroom. For some reason I have the impression that the style of teaching was vaguely French, I’m not sure why. I remember that there were severe desks and benches and a severe board and the style was clearly teacher-stands-at-the-front-with-a-stick. I think that there may have been no room to move. And I guess all the kids old enough and capable enough of having schooling were put in the same room.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
I remember the orphans in the Romanian orphanages, terribly sad. Some of them were adopted by American couples, some were so badly damaged, the well meaning adopted parents could not cope.
I hope the Vietnamese kids were better cared for….
LikeLike
I like your painting, Lehan.
LikeLike
thanks helvi.
LikeLike
It is good that you reminded me of those monsters, I remember too, Helvi. That horrible regime controlled by the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena created thousands of orphans in Romania. They were living in a luxurious palace while those neglected orphaned children were rolling in their own excrement. Terrible.. terrible.
LikeLike
Well hph, the second world war left orphans all over the globe. Of our generation, many parents were orphans, or at least a great deal of the population was fatherless. Was there anything we all learned from that?
LikeLike
No Lehan. We will never learn.
Unfortunately what dictates our actions towards each other is not our Humanity but our Human Nature.
Humans are the only specie on this Planet who is capable of displaying Hypocrisy.
We give in so easily to satisfy our own urges & desires even if it means causing discomfort or even death to another human being and then feel good about it afterwards.
And what makes us Hypocrites is when we try to justify our actions by *moralizing* with our language and thought processes.
Once, I saw a young girl wearing this T-shirt in Queensland,
on the front it said “oops..!”
on the back.. “I’m on the wrong Planet!”
It sums up all my feelings for this World.
LikeLike
Which is interesting hph. My own response, for example, was not “what can I do here and now to make some difference”, but “I will come up with a plan”, and then “I will do something when I can think of something that will make a difference”, and then “I am in no position to do the thing I had a vague idea I wanted to do so I will wait until I can do it”. In the process, I did nothing.
LikeLike
Dear Lehan, it is more likely that it is the lingering effect of wars in Vietnam. For the most part the post-war generation of Vietnam has grown under a population of adults who were psychologically damaged during those warring years. The war has also created tens-of-thousands of orphans whose parents died from the biggest aerial-bombing in the history of warfare on this planet. Orphaned generation gives birth to orphan generation. Last thirty-seven years were recovering years for Vietnam. I hope they are doing better now even though the US land mines are still causing casualties today.
LikeLike
sorry, I put that response in the wrong place, it’s up there.
LikeLike