My motherland is in the middle of Bac Giang Province,
50 kilometers west of Ha Noi, where most people are farmers. Year after year, season after season, we sell our backs to the ground and backs to the sky.
We sell our sweat to have crops of rice and sweet potatoes. We are poor yet we are proud.
I am the last born child in a family with two brothers and a sister.My mother is a farmer and my father a school teacher. My childhood was a pleasnt time.
Each morning, filled with warm food,
laughter and joy, my sister, friends and I shoulderd bags and skipped to school.
In the afternoon, we helped our mom with housework or worked in the field.
My sister and I played in the cool evening breeze and rejoiced while listening to the whistling of flutekites in the sky.
We were fortunate to be born in a peaceful time.
We were aware of the American War through books, newspapers, and film, but more
importantly, through our fathers stories. We were told about the times his company fought to preserve the independence and peace of our country, and about friends who never returned.
Also, he told about seeing dead forests, brown and torn, that once coverd the
green mountains of Viet Nam, and plants without leaves because of the poison
from Agent Ornge.
My mother said older siter and I were born healthy, but when we were about eight years old, we started becoming weaker and weaker.
Our movements became more difficult and painful. Sometimes we suddenly fell
down for no reason. We could no longer skip and play with our friends or
attend school. We always wonderd: Why cant we walk like our normal friends?
What is happening to our bodies?"
Our Parents were very worried. With little money saved from selling crops
and the modest salary of a teacher, my father took us to many hospitals,
in search of an answer or medical solution. But day after day, our disease became more serious. We suffered pain in our joints, along our spines, in our muscles,
and in our spirits. When we could no longer go to school, sadness filled our hearts. At age fourteen, my sister Huong, could no longer walk. at age twenty
I could no longer use my legs.
We wish life could always be as beautiful as we once knew as children.
We wish we could have grown up strong and healthy and finished school.
We wish we could help our parents like our friends.
But this was not to be. it was not the life we were given.
We are only two out of millons of Vietnmese affected by Agent Orange dioxin sprayed by the Americam Military in Viet Nam. those effected have many
differant dieases and live in many differant areas, but they all have pain in thier bodies and pain in thier spirits.
Family members have to spend a lot of time caring for the victims,
so there is not much time left to earn a living, and they alway need to
buy medicine. Being poor remains forever the reality for these dioxin-affected
families.
So much pain and suffering has been caused by war time chemicals, bombs,
biological warfare and anti personel weapons.

Why do human beings still cause wars? Why do they produce Weapons of Mass Destruction? Human beings! War mongers! we do not live only for ourselves.
We live for future generations. Please make peace in the world so
future generations will not suffer pain from the past



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/01/2017 10:40AM by riverhousebill.