VietNamNet Bridge – The sound of children reciting lessons aloud rings through the house of ‘teacher Nhat’ — as his 71 adopted children lovingly call him — located in the distant commune of Ia Hlop, in the Central Highlands province of Gia Lai.

Some of the 71 children saved by Dinh Minh Nhat at lunchtime. — Photos courtesy of Dinh Van

Some of the bigger kids help the younger ones learn, while others hang clothes out to dry on in the garden. To sound of laughter comes from a group of youngsters while set out dishes and bowls for lunch.

It has been 9 years since Dinh Minh Nhat took in his first child. The 55-year-old man, having never married, is raising 71 children in the house that was passed down to him and which he has haphazardly extended and divided into several tiny compartments, with different areas for boys and girls. Sixty-seven of his children are of the Jrai ethnic minority, the remaining 4 are of the Kinh. The oldest is 16 and the youngest just 9 months old.

On a stormy, winter night in 2008, a two-day-old Jrai infant was about to be buried alive with her dead mother. An adult-sized grave and a smaller one had already been prepared. A shaman was invited to oversee the burial.

“She must die with her mother,” villagers screamed, as Nhat asked to take the infant with him. It had been a custom for thousands of Jrai generations that if a mother dies in labour or while the child is breast-feeding, her living child must be buried with her - a practice in which no relatives of the child have a say, not even the father. Not abiding by the custom would be in defiance of giang (God of the Jrai).

Knowing that he alone couldn’t fight off hundreds of villagers, Nhat ran to the commune’s People’s Committee as fast as his legs could carry him and asked for help. After lengthy debate and persuasion, villagers finally allowed Nhat to rescue the infant, in exchange for an enormous pig and several amphorae of liquor to make amends with giang. He named the infant after him—Dinh Hong Phuc—meaning “a blessing”.

Carrying Phuc in his arms, Nhat circled the village for months asking for every single drop of milk to feed her. At the same time he was working to pay back the lenders who loaned him money to buy the ‘offerings’ to giang.  

The good intentions behind Phuc’s name were not reflected in the infant’s life. Phuc often fell ill, and Nhat made many visits to hospitals in Hue.

“Luckily for me, a group of nuns in the city learned about the child and said to me: ‘Let her live here with us, don’t make her travel back and forth in such conditions’,” Nhat said.

“Phuc is 9 now,” he said. “She’s in the third grade and has a strong Hue accent.”

Dinh Thai Bao is the second child Nhat took in - a child born with no anus and Down syndrome, who was abandoned by his parents and found covered with ants and flies. Nhat heard his cries, taking him to a hospital in HCM City for colostomy surgery.

Nhat himself was struggling with a kidney disease at the time, but he spent all of his money on Bao. The day the child fully recovered was also the day Nhat found himself without a penny to his name.

From then on, Nhat took in every orphan and homeless child he could find. His neighbours, on seeing abandoned children, would pick them up and take them to his house.

“Coming from different areas of the province, they didn’t get on well at first,” Nhật said of his children. “Now they take care of one another like siblings—sharing food and snacks, tucking each other in at night.”

Not all sunshine and rainbows

Nhat’s compassion touched Le Sy Quy, chairman of the commune’s People’s Committee. “Only a noble heart does that,” Quy said.

Over the years, Quy constantly called for support from humanitarians, organisations and individuals to donate clothes, food and necessities to help Nhat raise the children, as well as helping with necessary procedures to request that schools waive tuition fees.

However, since no donations last forever, it still fell on Nhat to provide for his children. To earn money, he helped farmers pick coffee and pepper during harvest season. When the season ended, he took care of inpatients at hospitals and saved the money their relatives paid to care for his children at home.

Not everyone approved of Nhat taking in homeless children, he said. Do Thi Loan, former chairwoman of the commune’s People’s Committee, asked him to ‘dismiss’ his family, as she considered it to be an ‘illegal gathering of children’.

“She went to their schools and threatened to ban them if they kept staying with me,” Nhat said. This scared some of the children, and they skipped classes. Later on, Loan gave up her crusade after numerous objections from teachers.

The situation was brought to the attention of the Division of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs of Chu Se District. The division offered to help Nhat apply for welfare for the 71 orphans, on the condition that he is able to present their parents’ marriage and death certificates.

“I picked them up from the streets; some of them were brought to me by strangers… How can I know who their parents are?” Nhat asked, after which the division’s officials left and never came back.

Siu H’Penn (born in 2002), one of the orphans saved by Nhat, said “’Teacher Nhat’ is very kind and thoughtful. He helped us study, he taught us to cook, to behave ourselves and to love one another.

“I want to become a doctor so that I can cure my siblings’ illnesses and help them get healthier,” she said.

Some of them suffered from heart conditions and pneumonia but he was too poor to provide them with proper treatment, Nhat said as he watched his children gather and help one another at lunchtime. Most of them do well at school, which is a blessing and a curse for Nhat.

“I can’t afford to get them through college,” he said.

“My only hope is that they get vocational training so that they can find jobs,” he said. “I hope they will be able to raise their own families.”

Some of the 71 children saved by Dinh Minh Nhat help each other study at his house in Ia Hlop Commune, Chu Se District, Gia Lai Province.  The children saved by Dinh Minh Nhat at his house in Ia Hlop Commune, Chu Se District, Gia Lai Province.   Dinh Minh Nhat talks about his journey of raising 71 orphans and homeless children over the last 9 years. — Photo laodong.com.vn

VNS

Dinh Van