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Passage to Vietnam : Part 3 - Dak Nong

If there is anything about Dak Nong that moves you, it is the children. I remember the time I stood watching a school assembly in front of me, with children chatted away on the school courtyard, half listening to the instructions of the teacher blaring over the microphone.

Some wore shoes, some wore slippers, while some had no footwear. Some wore jackets, some wore sweaters, while most wore just their thin layered school uniform. As I stood there with my hands tucked tightly into my pocket and a fur thicket jacket covering my body to protect me from the chilling cold, I wondered, ‘Don’t they feel cold?’

In fact they did. As the doctor’s delegation, whom my team was helping, later revealed, many had severe throat pain due to the cold. Given the high attitudes they lived at, they had little or no access to proper medication or food. The vitamins and other medicine we gave out would last for just a few months. After that what?

It was interesting to note that there were countless children running around the school courtyard during the medical screening, but just a few youths. Guess most of them did not make it to see their youth.

Because atop the mountain, it is about the survival of the fittest.

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