Residents in front of their current home, with Br. Jean-Baptiste

(In the bustling and sprawling metropolis of Saigon, the Assumptionists run an orphanage that resembles a big family. The experience has been so positive and the needs are so great that the Congregation is considering building a new house as soon as possible, larger, more functional, and more welcoming.)

It's early morning in Saigon. Frosted light with bluish tints rises over this southern city, re-baptized Hô Chi Minh City since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. An overwhelming swarm of motorbikes fills the maze of the city's by-ways. Only a few narrow back streets, still asleep, escape this deafening invasion.

In the twelfth ward, located in the northwest section of the city, there is an alley lost among small shops still  shielded by a closed metal screen. It leads to Dong Hung Thuan Street where, behind a iron gate crowned with a cross, you'll find a four-story square house rising toward the Asian sky. Who would have thought that this cramped, quiet dwelling was an orphanage housing thirty-two children aged 6 to 19, coming from thirteen of Vietnam's sixty-four provinces?

You hear no noise coming from the bedrooms where sleeping mats are rolled up in the flash of an eye. There is no unruly rush down the cluttered stairways. Soon all you hear are the intermittent sounds of hymns escaping from a small room cut off by a white curtain that moves gently back and forth with the drafts of warm, humid air. Sitting cross-legged, the children are reciting their morning prayers before they head off for breakfast. Even at breakfast everything is calm under the humming sound of the large ceiling fans. The children dip their French baguettes deep into bowls of steaming noodle soup.

It's Sunday and outside one can already catch a glimpse of people off to church in this neighborhood largely populated with Catholic families. Quickly, putting on their white shirts and a colored scarf around their neck, the children join the crowd of parishioners, pass a marketplace already a-buzz and make their way to their seats in a church teeming with youngsters their own age. Mass demands of them complete silence and then they leave, shoulder to shoulder, once again past colored marketplace stalls with the aroma of ginger and fried shrimp in the air.

Back to the orphanage and daily chores: sweeping the floors and cleaning the bathrooms for some, kitchen duty for others who wash the dishes or prepare the automatic rice-makers. Then they're all off to do homework that needs to be completed before the next day's classes in local elementary, middle, and high schools. It's a heavy program but one peppered with time for a nap, games, TV, friends' visits, and riding their bikes through the dizzying labyrinth of the city's alleyways. What you see at the heart of this orphanage as time goes by is the face of a huge family…

Children reviewing their homework

At the time of its opening in the year 2000, this place was no more than an extended family dwelling. In order to help children of her country who had nowhere to go, Mrs. Kim Hué, an elderly widow, embarked on a project to receive them in her own home. And she did so with a vengeance! But she would also do so with few resources and no trained personnel. Three years later, exhausted, at the limit of her resources, and sheltering a dozen young people, she met Fr. Pierre Huyen, an Assumptionist priest. The Assumptionists had just begun their presence in Vietnam.

Families at great risk

Faithful to its history and its charism, the Assumptionists are particularly interested in doing educational work here ---- something that responds to the great challenges of society in Vietnam. Won over, Mrs. Hué offered her house to the Assumptionists. It would become their responsibility to develop the orphanage and give it a soul.

The Congregation opened its first community in 2006 and took over direct responsibility for the orphanage that year, renovating the house so that it could accommodate 20, then 30 children. "To be admitted here, there are two criteria," explains Br. Jean-Baptiste Nguyen Ngoc Thang, the middle-aged young Assumptionist in charge of the operation. "They must all come from poor families in which at least one parent has died." There are so many stories, sadly too frequent, in this sliver-like country, stretching north from the Mekong and Red River deltas past the central highlands of the Annamite Range up to the Chinese border.

Br. Jean-Baptiste, standing to the right, is the director of the orphanage.

It was ravaged by wars for more than thirty years. Reunified under Communist yoke in 1976, Vietnam experienced another period of trial, impoverished by a Soviet-style economy. It became such a mess that the government was forced to change its doctrinaire ways --- guaranteeing free enterprise, tolerating private property, attracting foreign investors, separating the roles of the State and the party in running the country.

The leaden shroud began to crack toward the end of the eighties. The might of the Asian tiger had its effects even here with a tremendous economic boom that led to a certain measure of freedom, strictly controlled. It was tailored to be an evolution "Chinese-style", from forced collectivization to unbridled capitalism, marked by a rise in the standard of living, but also by terrifying social inequalities. It is in this context that the Assumptionists quickly decided to come to the aid of these orphans, symbols of the extreme vulnerability of Vietnamese families!

The case of Lanh, 31 years old, illustrates well this vulnerability. Four years ago when her husband, a construction worker, died, she was left alone with two young children. They lived in a room 20' by 20' in a shabby neighborhood of Saigon where migrants flee their rural homes to find refuge. She herself came from the poor province of Vinh, surrounded by the central highlands and the China Sea.

Hired at a textile mill, she works 12 hours a day and earns $200 a month, a salary eaten up by her rent and the costs of child care. Four months ago, in extreme emotional and financial distress, she had to find a solution. She could not go on this way. She had heard of the home run by the Assumptionists and decided to entrust her elder son Nhat, aged 11, to the Assumptionists. "Every Sunday, on my day off," she says, "I go to visit him. We play and talk quietly. I ask Br. Jean-Baptiste how he is doing in school. I lend a hand in getting meals ready and help out in other ways around the house. Then I leave, my heart wrung, but also with so much relief and so much hope for my son's future. I see him growing up so well, surrounded by friends, and learning what it means to be a real Christian."

Lanh, a young widow who works in a textile mill, visits her son, Nhat.

Family bonds maintained

Kiet, another boy, 12 years old, came to the orphanage two years ago from the maritime province of Binh Thuan. During our visit, one bright, sunny day, at the beginning of the dry season, he was going back home for a visit in the company of two Assumptionists, Br. Jean-Baptiste and Fr. Pierre Huyen, who wanted to spend some time with his family, bringing them up to date on his school-work and his general progress. After spending four hours traveling on Route 1, the famous Mandarin Road, which links Saigon to Hanoi, we arrived at his home village, near the seaside resort of Phan Thiet, in the middle of dragon-fruit country.

His maternal grand-parents, Anh et Ngoc, who took charge of Kiet when his parents died one nine years ago, the other four, weep for joy as they welcome us in front of their small photography shop. In times past, they managed to earn a living from this Mom and Pop business, but that was before the death of their daughter and son-in-law.

In 2012, another drama --- another child was run over by a truck and left severely handicapped in spite of six operations. To pay the outrageous costs that the hospitals demanded, they had to use up all their savings and, even more, to go into debt.

So it was well-nigh impossible for them to pay for the high costs of Kiet's education. On the advice of a nun friend, the young boy made his way to Saigon and the orphanage, where, surrounded by his new won buddies, he has flourished. Still he maintains his family bonds, with regular visits and telephone calls to his grand-parents. It's the same story for all the children. Br. Jean-Baptiste calls their families regularly and they in turn come to the orphanage which is not only open to them but also to their teachers and friends, to government officials, to neighbors, and to merchants in the area who drop by to deliver free food. Full of life, this place attracts people. Maybe it is the victim of its own success because now it has become too small. So the urgency to expand and put up a new building.

The big plans are coming along. Sent out as scouts on their motorbikes along national Route 22 in the direction of Cambodia, Fr. Pierre and Br. Jean-Baptiste located some land in a mushrooming neighborhood, near a market-place, a church, schools, a bus-stop under construction, and soon a university.

The preliminary plans, designed by the Assumptionists, call for a much larger and functional building that will be able to receive twice as many children, that is to say, seventy orphans. They envision a vegetable garden to provide for part of their needs, a ball field, and a guest house for visiting families. But there is urgency because the cost of land is going up all the time and there is no time to waste for all the children who will be welcomed here and who will receive an education enabling them to go further yet and find an even brighter future full of hope.

by Benoît Fidelin, editor-in-chief, Le Pèlerin, Paris

(Readers interested in supporting this project may send donations to:
Assumptionist Center
330 Market Street
Brighton, MA 02135
Please specify that the Vietnam orphanage is the object of your gift. Thank you!)