Wan and Dong

Today we had time for individual projects.
I met my translator Chau, who should help me in talking to the people on the street. She is a 22 years old student, who learns German.

Together with another reporter (Christoph) we went to look for immigrants in slum areas. As we talked to some Hanoi' people we found out two places to look for the poor. To my surprise there we didn't found too large slum areas. About 20 families where living in huts at the red river. Regarding the fact that over 300.000 new people come to Hanoi to look for work this was quite strange to me.

On our way back we met the 15 years old Wan with his 6 years old brother Dong, begging on the Long Bien bridge. It was a sad look, because Wan didn't look like a 15 year old boy at all and both made a pretty depressed impression to me.
They came here to Hanoi one year ago with their mother because their father died. They earn around 10.000 DVN/day with begging (approx. 0.5 Euro) Their mother works as a garbage collector and earns ca. 1 Euro/day.
They sleep und this bridge.

The last days where quite packed with program.
See
- here
- here
- here
and here

PS: Sorry for not writing that often and that much, but we have tight packed program and so it is hard for me to find
enough time for editing and publishing. Unfortunately blogger.com is not accessable in Vietnam as well.


Tomorrow morning we will leave to Vinh and we will be back in Hanoi on the 12.02.2007.

Hope to see you then.

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An meine Eltern und Grosseltern:
Es geht mir sehr gut, es gibt bloss viel zu tun, da wir ein volles Programm haben und auf meinen Webblog habe ich auch nur eingeschraenkten Zugriff. Ich kann nicht so regelmaessig schreiben wie ich gerne moechte.

Ich denke an Euch.