Helpless in Hanoi

After a few weeks now, the children have really opened up to me and some have begun sharing their stories; stories about who they are, what they like, and more even more sensitive, their background and how exactly they ended up at the orphanage. While I cannot disclose their stories, the things that I have heard have surprised me tremendously. When I decided to volunteer for this program, my motivation in selecting Xa Me was that the children grew up with no parental figure or role model and were literally street children with no parents. My goal was to be some sort of role model to these children and given them tools essential to succeeding in life. However, I realized that they do have families and some are often aware of their family existence and whereabouts. The reason for some of the children’s placement in the orphanage is because they’re family do not have enough resources to provide for the whole family and subsequently, some of the children must be given up. Sometimes it is more than one kid as evident by the fact that there is a brother and sister staying at the orphanage. Another surprising thing I discovered was the fact that one of the older girls had to apply to get into the orphanage. She is currently attending cooking school and for the sake of transportation and saving money she stays there, but is free to return home whenever she can. This perhaps explains why it was the first time I saw her in the three weeks I have been volunteering. These facts change the dynamic of what constitutes an orphanage and if a girl has to apply to stay at an orphanage, issues of ethics have to be raised.

These aforementioned issues only begin to scratch the surface of what concerns ethically about the orphanage. I understand that this is Vietnam and some of things I am accustomed to are not applicable here, but not everything can be negotiable. For one, the safety and supervision of the children of the orphanage cannot be compromised. My biggest concern has to be the lack of supervision that I see when I visit the orphanage especially at night. It’s obvious that the children seem very self-efficient, but the fact of the matter is, kids will be kids. Without supervision, the children will do as they please and there is not much stopping them from leaving and wandering the streets at night. Perhaps this explains why I see some of the older kids less often than the younger ones and why they will sometimes bring friends over. My fear is that the younger children will see this and as they begin to get older replicate the behavior and tendencies of the older children. Another concern has to do with the friends that the older children bring over. While a majority of them seem like very nice people, there are a few that the children seem to fear and in the second week, I encountered one girl like I just described. She verbally threatened a few children and badgered others to answer whether they liked her or not and often times she would feed them the answers. The physical threat here is a concern, but more critically, I believe the emotional and psychological abuse that is occurring here has a bigger impact on the children. I did step in, but it seems to anger her more and her attitude seemed to suggest that in my absence it would continue. In the future, maybe someone will bring someone over who is even worse than this girl and then who will protect the children. Are the owners of this orphanage aware of outsiders coming in and if so what is there feelings?

I believe the owners are not aware of the presence of the outsiders because from what I have heard from the children, they are very strict. It is simply a matter of them not caring too much and assuming the role of financial caregiver. Don’t get me wrong, it is a great deed that they are doing, but ethically, if you open an orphanage to provide for the well-being of children, it should encompass the physical, emotional, and psychological components. As we have learned from John Bowlby’s attachment theory, physical caregiving is not nearly as important as emotional, which impact the children tremendously. In his experiments as well as others who study attachment, secure attachment relationship is the biggest assurance of future healthy relationships. These children obviously do not have the attachment figure to help ensure that they will have a healthy physical, emotional, and psychological future. I do not want to generalize and say that all these children will turn out bad, but it certainly does not help their situation. Further, it also seems that there may be some kind of reprimand in the event that the children misbehave. The children sometimes will say things to me and follow up with a do not tell the owners. This suggests to me two things; either there is physical abuse going on or psychological abuse, in the form of threatening to kick the children out of the orphanage if they misbehave. I have no concrete evidence or proof of this, but having dealt with troubled youth in the past, I have an intuition about things like this. Further, if this is true, what exactly can I do?

Ethically, I know I am obligated to do what I can to protect these children but with little resources or the know-hows, I am limited in what I can do. This has a big drain on me emotionally because I care so much about each and every single one of them. I try not to think about this but when I am there, it’s a constant in my mind. All I can do now is try my best to help the children and in my heart I trust I will know the right thing to do.