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Though I am in Cambodia seeing and experiencing almost more then my emotions can contain (ALL GOOD). II will send a Cambodia update hopefully next week. have a few more days of journals from Sage Hill High School to share. Todays are written by Nicholay and Ryan. Still stunned by depth of these students. I can honestly say this was not the type of things was thinking in my High School years in the late 60's
The other day my schoolmates and I assembled a couple dozen wheelchairs for selected Vietnamese families with disabilities. I say families, because based on the stories I've heard, it's obvious that a single chair eases the life of everyone around the recipient. My words will poorly describe how I felt that day.
In both of the stories I've heard from the people I've interacted with directly I learned that their disabilities have greatly affected their lives over the course of many years. In the first case, a woman wanted to see her garden for 10 years, but couldn't because her family could not afford a chair. I got to push her to the garden right after we assembled the chair. I felt an emptiness inside me while I was hearing her story, but that feeling disappeared once we got to the field where the crops grew.
The strongest emotions hit me the day we distributed many wheelchairs at once. After hearing a similar story to the previous one from one of the recipients, I then looked at all the other recipients. All of them were lined up in a row, sharing their story's. Even now, two days after, I can't grasp the full magnitude of the situation nor how I truly feel.
To say I'm feeling conflicted would be an understatement. I'm sad when I hear about the countless years of suffering. Frustrated that nobody has been able to help these people earlier. Happy that they are being helped now. Excited that they will now do the things they've waited many years to do. These are all the simple things I feel, but somehow they make together to create emotions that are far more complex. There is more to it than that, but maybe I'll figure it out how to say it another day. Applying their situations to myself, I can't comprehend how I would stay strong in a similar situation. Personally I don't know anyone in the US who had to deal with such horrific conditions.
For decades I'd rely on others to take of me. Every day I wake up, knowing I won't be able to accomplish my dreams. Any fantasies I had about the future would be crushed. My stomach turns and shivers when I think about it. I'm glad they can find happiness in that day. The day someone helped them just a little. It probably didn't solve all of their problems, but maybe that doesn't matter to them anyways.
Thanks;;
Nicholay Osokin
I remember thinking that this was a very stupid and inessential question: "does language represent an important part of your identity?" It was asked during a cultural exercise in school and my immediate response was no. No, language was just a means of communication. No, language was something learned, something separate from you. No, language was an ability, not a quality. No, language was just language. Yesterday, I learned otherwise.
While building and distributing water filters in a mountainous area of Vietnam, my group encountered a situation I never could have expected. Talking to the Vietnamese of that area, we found out that for all their lives, they had drank most of their water directly from a stream. We met families that did not have equipment to boil the water, leaving them extremely susceptible to disease. That felt painful enough already. When a woman started crying in front of us, I figured it was because with the water filter, she would have consistent access to clean water for the first time. But I was wrong: she was crying because her daughter was not there, that she had missed an opportunity to practice her English with us native speakers.
We have met three generations of Vietnamese people: the elderly, who lived through the war, the middle-aged, who grew up through the aftermath of the war, and the youth, who are growing up amidst new economic growth and a new concept of hope. To many people we have met, much of this hope rides on a strong command of the English language. And I take that all for granted.
I am a stubborn person. I like to feel independent, like I have been on my own. But the simple truth is that in a world that runs on English, I have grown up surrounded by it. I have never had to fight to get my fair share of English, like the mother crying for her daughter, or the father a few feet away asking for any educational resource available on the language. For a while now,
I have thought about the privilege that comes from my family's socioeconomic status and the color of my skin, but I had never considered that privilege could be just as prevalent in the language that I speak. I have had it so easy, and as an individual coming from this background, I want to find a way to make our language more accessible. I do not know how, but I am thinking, and I am grateful to be thinking.
Sincerely;
Ryan Simpson
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