On Monday evening we ended up on national VN TV! The station always does some story from the Tinh Khe region of My Lei on the anniversary. They dedided to highlight our little project with school children (and the major investment of Madison Quakers in the school buildings) as a sign of hope. Marge was doing a puppet show with a sea turle and I was teaching "row row your boat." To those who know my singing ...this should not be broadcast on TV, but they cut the sound anyway.The segment showed little girls crying about our departure and both Mike, in English, and Marge, in Vietnamese talking about the importance of the young people for the future.The little boys, who did not cry, said the girls were like "watery breadfruit." Great expression. When we got back to Hanoi we found ourselves briefly famous for being on TV! All of this was the result of the good work of Doh who works tirelessly for MQ, getting out positive messages, and persauding various officials that we mean well.
We also had a good article in a national newspaper.It turned out OK, but the reporter was determined to make us say that we thought the US government should compensate Agent Orange victims. We tried to talk about the "Compassion Houses" that MQ is buidling for victimes (more on this is in another post). Yes, probably the govt. should compensate victims, including our soldiers, but it is very unclear what the actual effects really are and we have been dragging our feet about our own US soldiers who have been affected by it. I doubt the govt. will ever do this. It is still a pretty touchy subject here.
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