More pictures from Vanna and Christina

click on the picture for more

more pictures of Viet Nam from Jack

Click on the picture to see more of Viet Nam, pictures from Jack

more of Viet Nam

all the tropical fruits you want

Mable mountain and the shops

wood carving shop

jewelry shop

stone sculptures

river walk of Hoi an

fishing boat

Danang at sunrise

last dinner in Danang with the team

new and old friends Vanna, Diem, Marie, Toan,

Christina, Tuan and Tri

Now in the comfort back home, there are more of Viet Nam to remember...

Leaving Viet Nam 3-24-07

this baby may not survive

burns from herbal wraps

pharmacy

pharmacy

Team pictures

Erin with her patient and her interpreter Diem(at window)

VIMM team

Sleeping Beauty of the VIMM board

Glasses station Toan and Bill

James and his patient with Tuan looking on

Nancy and her patient

Jack and his patient with Laura looking on

Joe is more than a GP he is pulling a tooth

this wound is 35 years old

Laura is doing wound care

Mary Kay is the treatment nurse, sister Teresa,Patty and Tien are looking on

Beverly and her little pateint

Murt, Marie, Beverly( in blue) with her two interpreters ( white caps), Tien and Patty

Cat is visiting with the children in front of her pharmacy

Murt,Marie, Sister Maryam and Tien

The mission is completed, we are back in Saigon. Only Joe and Erin stay back in Viet Nam for another week, the rest of the team are leaving on either Saturday or Sunday. Tien, Tri, Murt and I are the first group to depart in the next two hours for the airport and will be in St.Paul by 4:30 PM Saturday. We made a great team, all working very well together through out the whole mission, many newly made friends and many old friendships deepened. We saw over three thousand patients, many were handicapped, many elders, many were children. All and all we had a very successful mission. As with any mission we hope to make it better next time.

Monday 3/19/07 Danang continue

Today is the fifth day of clinic. We had a day off on Sunday and it was great. We work hard on the first four days and had seen more than 1500 patients. I had never saw so many cripled children in a city like here now. They made up a large number of all the patients we saw beside many old people. We did not see many of the poor people that we hope to see at the clinics except on the second day that we went into the higland area where there are many mountain minority groups. None theless, we are here to serve our neighbor.

The weather are hot and humid, with beautiful beaches, with out swimming in it. We took in some sight seeing yesterday, and it is a beautiful country. It is very difficult not to be inlove with Viet Nam and her people.

DaNang 3/15/07

Here we are finished with the second day of clinic. Murt, Tien, Tri and I got to Danang on Friday afternoon 3/9/07, the whole team arrived on Sunday evening. The medicines got here to the hotel the day before we got here last Thursday,but were in sealed storage. Apparently after a year of working with the Vietnamese contact to get permissions for the mission, we still have many hoops to jump over. We were not allowed to get to the med until Tuesday PM 3/13/07. Finally after pulling many teeth we got the med and got ready for our mission. We started our first clinic yesterday in a clinic about a half hour drive from the city. We examined and gave med to more than 400 patients. Most of the patient were malnutrition, ache and pain, hypertensive, and GI problems. Most team member brought many gifts for the children. We also purchased sugar to give to the people, 100US dollars purchase over 500 pounds of sugar for each day of clinic. We drove an hour into the mountain today and set up at two different locations, in the AM we saw about 150 people and the PM were about 200. People are sicker and poorer in the highland.
This is the first time I can get to the Internet. There are many pictures from the clinic, but the connection are not able to handle the download. We will try again soon. The beaches are beautiful here, unfortunately the hotel's beach smell bad because of the sewage system closed by. Guess what...you cannot swim in it.

Murt

This is our breakfast table.....hmmmm, just can't decide which delicacy...and all the hard work the cousins did fishing, plucking, etc. We aren't certain if those eggs are yesterday hard cooked...fine but not refrigerated. That straw is in coconut milk-pretty great, mango is awesome, teensy great bananas, and beautiful shrimp, if it had not come out of the muddy water behind the house....I am a confessed American whimp, but you should see my chopsticks fly.





This is auntie cleaning the chicken that she slaughter....out of the back yard. Note that she is cleaning the head and feet (they will be in the pot) I don't believe the inerds have been removed, either. I just can't do inerds, and am trying not to be rude. Hope the rest of you are ok with inerds and feets, apparently they are delicacies. ooooow. Chopsticks 101 is pretty essential for eating solids, and a bottle of Joy or Aquafina ONLY for drinking, or you will swell and bloat from the mineral water served here. As you may suspect, hbp is prevalent among the locals. So far, we are all well after getting over the swelling and bloating....and icky airplane food. Thank heaven for GS cookies!!



This is "the girls" on their way to Nordstroms VN. Notice how they are avoiding melanoma, but also trying to breathe fresh air through the cute masks (available anywhere) as the air is quite poluted. The streets are polluted with scooters.....scary!! We hooked a ride on the back of scooters and have yet to determine if we were brave or stupid....but we lived.

Now you have entered Cub of Ben Tre VN. Personally, I was not hungry for meat. Can I pick up something for anyone??? It's fresh and unidentifiable

Behold the Macy's of Ben tre VN, on the 13hr sale day! It was hard to make a choice.

Mekong continue

Sisters of the Holly Cross free clinic

this church can be the future clinic site

Sisters of the Holly Cross convent

sewing shop

this child has deformation of the upper limbs

day care nap time

Clinic pharmacy

Beautiful hand embroidery

This free clinic open 7 days a week except Sunday. There are 314 people living at the convent including sisters, the elders with out family, young women from the country, handicapped children, and a daycare center for local children. Some times these children are staying for days when parents have to work away from town.

Sisters operate with donations and with the labors earned by all who can work in the sewing shop, growing crops in the garden, making communion wafers, they are pretty self sustained in their campus. A highly skilled person can embroider a beautiful table cloth in seven days, earning $1.25 a day. Sewers can sew for 60 cents a day. All young people require to go to school, and some young women are attending medical training to become nurse practitioners and to work at the clinic. Volunteer physicians come by to help from time to time

It was amazing to see the people working together and the dedication the sisters have to help these poor people. The young women otherwise would end up in the streets in the City. Here they are being schooled and making a living for themselves and to support others. Some stay with the sisters, others go back home and make a totally different life for their family. We gave them some of the medical supplies and money to help them get more meds for their clinic.

It was a great experience to be in the Mekong, we were treated with much kindness, the people are happy.

We are back to Saigon now getting ready to go to Danang tomorrow. The heat is getting to us now, I am not moving as fast as I would like to. Thanks for your good thoughts, and more to come later....

s