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group of Vietnamese volunteers picked us up by motorbikes at the mini hotel. They brought two of us to visit some AIDS patients and homeless people. It was the busiest morning rush hour of Ho Chi Minh, but our young drivers drove us smoothly, through a flood of motorbikes and bicycles, in the direction of the Saigon River. My driver got lost in the middle of the traffic and it took us an hour to meet our companions again.
e, finally, reached our destination. The place was a big bridge by the river where several homeless people were living. One had his right leg half broken with a bandage around it. A few months ago he had been hit by a dump truck. They were drug addicts with HIV positive.
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here was a big stone with some incense sticks on top of it. One of the homeless lighted three cigarettes and placed them by the side of the incense. They told us that, one of their homeless companions had been killed there by a truck a week ago. Upon listening to them I asked them whether I could also offer a cigarette, but they refused it. The reason could be that we were strangers, not companions of the deceased person.
group of homeless people gathered around us and guided us to a place closed with a wired fence. Inside, in a hammock attached to the fence, laid a man rolled up in old cloths. He was seriously ill and the other homeless took care of him. He had some medicines with him. To our surprise his wife and three children had left for the United States and were living there.
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We did not dare to ask him why did his family go abroad, but when he showed us a letter from his wife I promised him to write her, once I was back in Japan.
Author (the third from right) and homeless people
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hen we were leaving the place the homeless thanked us for the visit. They told us: "You came all the way from Japan and spent some time with us. We need friends and in some occasions we need people to help us, but here nobody cares about us." A month before I had heard the same words from homeless people living in Sanya (Tokyo). Really, social problems know no barriers.
rom Tokyo I sent a letter to the family of the sick homeless person, but there was no answer. Six months ago one of the young Vietnamese volunteers wrote me a letter. The sick homeless person had died.
(Edited from "CHAO VIETNAM", n. 16)
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