It was getting hot even at 5-15am when I left the CEF office in Hoi An to join two of our staff, Thuy and Ngoc to travel to Dai Loc district to visit students and their families. We reached the first house while the sun was quite low and the view from the family’s garden across the rice fields to the hills in the distance was still fresh and clear.
We visited eight families that day. It was lovely to see some children I hadn’t met for a year or two and to learn how they were getting on and what their plans for the future were. We spent time with one family whose two high school girls are quite new in CEF’s program.
Thuy and Ngoc interviewed the two young women and talked to their mother about how things were going for them all during COVID 19. We sat in their father’s tailor’s shop and he worked at his bench ironing and cutting cloth the whole time we were there. We learned that business was slow because not many customers had the money to have clothes made but they were managing with father’s income and a monthly gift from donors who had given to CEF’s COVID19 support fund.
While Thuy helped Tuyet Mai with her university application, mum told us how her husband had stopped working in a garment factory to set up his tailoring business in the front of their home. He had been travelling 1 1/2 hours to the factory on his three-wheeled motorbike, renting a room near work, staying the week there and returning for a day or two at the weekend. Disabled from birth he found the travel and factory work exhausting. it was special to see him together with his wife and daughters. His broad smile told me that he was very happy no longer having to ride so far for work and being able to spend so much more time with his family.
We visited eight families that day. It was lovely to see some children I hadn’t met for a year or two and to learn how they were getting on and what their plans for the future were. We spent time with one family whose two high school girls are quite new in CEF’s program.
Thuy and Ngoc interviewed the two young women and talked to their mother about how things were going for them all during COVID 19. We sat in their father’s tailor’s shop and he worked at his bench ironing and cutting cloth the whole time we were there. We learned that business was slow because not many customers had the money to have clothes made but they were managing with father’s income and a monthly gift from donors who had given to CEF’s COVID19 support fund.
While Thuy helped Tuyet Mai with her university application, mum told us how her husband had stopped working in a garment factory to set up his tailoring business in the front of their home. He had been travelling 1 1/2 hours to the factory on his three-wheeled motorbike, renting a room near work, staying the week there and returning for a day or two at the weekend. Disabled from birth he found the travel and factory work exhausting. it was special to see him together with his wife and daughters. His broad smile told me that he was very happy no longer having to ride so far for work and being able to spend so much more time with his family.
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