Service Learning: First Week at Xa Mẹ Orphanage

My first week volunteering at Xa Mẹ was challenging, intense, thought-provoking, and emotional. The children are great, and many of them are very affectionate and outgoing with John, Kristine, and myself. I found myself reflecting on what my goals are for the next few months I will spend with these children, and worrying that my presence could ultimately do more harm than good. This worry stems from my concern that the children will become really attached to us (of course we will be really attached to them, too!) and then really hurt when we leave. The fact that several of the children are particularly warm and trusting with us makes me worried that these children who really crave parental figures and parental love will be hurt by this temporary volunteer situation. I talked to my mom about my concerns, and her view was that I should not try to be somewhat distant with the children or limit how close we become because the experience of being loved by us and developing relationships with us is really important and positive, even if we cannot stay forever. While I appreciate her insights, I feel that I still need to reflect on the issue of becoming close with the children and then having to leave, because this is a particularly sensitive issue when it comes to orphans.

Additionally, my lack of Vietnamese language skills has brought a lot of challenges to my volunteer experience. Even though I have done my best to communicate as well as I can (through non-verbal communication, bringing dictionaries, and using the Vietnamese that I know), I still feel that I miss out on so much that is going on and also am unable to really talk to the children and find out more about their stories and who they are. While my language limitations are extremely frustrating for me in this particular situation, they have made me even more motivated to really step up my efforts to learn Vietnamese. To me now, learning as much Vietnamese as I can seems like a necessity rather than a somewhat optional exercise. I know that working really hard to improve my Vietnamese will affect my experience at Xa Mẹ in a really significant way, and I look forward to both finding new ways to communicate with the children using what I know and to being able to speak Vietnamese with the children more.