Fallen Leaves, Broken Lives

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Tap, age 21, had severe hand and foot deformities, and a younger sister at home had the same disability. Their father had been born in 1958 near the Laotian border in an area that was heavily sprayed with Agent Orange.

Dang, age 19, had a humpback with severe upper spinal deformities. Her father, now 48 years old, fought with the North Vietnamese army in the heavily sprayed south and now suffered from red, crusty eyes and skin rashes.

Without definitive medical or genetic testing, Diep said, no officials or family members claim dioxin poisoning, mainly because money and resources for performing such tests don't exist. In families with only one or two disabled children, no causal connection is claimed. Only when most or all of the children in a family have similar disabilities is Agent Orange cited as a factor. As a result, the number of afflicted children probably far exceeds official estimates.

DOAN XUAN TIEP raised enough money to open Hong Ngoc Humanity Center in 1993 and take in 40 children. The former soldier is now director of the center, which receives no government funding but still manages to expand steadily, thanks to donations and the sale of goods produced by residents. Hong Ngoc now has enough school, work, and dormitory space for about 300 residents.

In addition to its main building with work and sales facilities and a cafeteria, wings contain residential living quarters: tiny rooms that house between 8 and 20 residents and are lined with bunks two or three beds high. Trunks crowd the little available floor space, and every patch of exposed wall is decorated with photos of family members or fading magazine pictures.

Some students arrive having previously been cared for like babies, their disabilities compounded by lack of exercise and movement. The staff provides physical therapy, practice, and training every morning. Thuy, for instance, learned to walk for the first time after having been at the center for only a few months. He was 20 years old.

The center is not only a refuge for the children of war. Dinh, age 55, has worked there since 1996. He was a truck driver on the Ho Chi Minh Trail from 1968 until the war's end, hauling supplies from the north to the south. He was wounded during B-52 raids over Laos and exposed to Agent Orange there and along the border. "The grasses died. The trees died. The ground was flattened. We had to get our food and water from the forest that remained and many of us got infected," he says.

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