Aid Expedition, Day 2

So we're chugging along on our large pink bus heading towards Rach Gia. By 4am, i'm the one who is asleep, while everyone is up and taking turns getting on and off the bus. They have to get off the bus because as we get closer to Rach Gia, there are more river crossings to get through, and people preferred to be off the bus to watch the crossing. I do wake up pretty soon however, and catch the sights, as well as the people who are awake.

We end up getting to the hotel about an hour late, so none of us really have a lot of time to clean up and get ready, especially since we had to go get breakfast and hurry over to the center where we were distributing food. We unload our luggage and go to our rooms for a quick break before we head over to a restaurant where I and the rest of the team take our first big chance with the local food (except Don, who's been wolfing down everything you weren't supposed to for over 4 days now). Most of us do avoid the ice and the processed meat, but some of us charge right ahead into the ice, following this simple rule of logic that Tu shared with the group:

"You'll get diarrhea eventually. It's like chicken pox. Get it now and you won't have to deal with it later."

While there is an inherent failure of logic here in that diarrhea IS NOT like chicken pox, it works and soon, i'm chewing on ice and enjoying cold drinks for once.

We get to the center soon, and the entire plaza is filled with people waiting for food. Without hesitating, we hop off the bus and move quickly to unload everything we have. We have to move quickly because everyone in this plaza has been waiting. We unload everything off the truck and set up our system in about 30 minutes.

It's a really hot day, and we're all sweating like crazy. Frank "I'll eat anything" Vuong, Andrew, Tram and I handle the other non-rice food supplies. Mike is covering all the rice, while everyone else is assembling and distributing. It was wild to see how quickly our team was able to develop a system and move with it that quickly.



We go at it for 2 to 3 hours, and it's an intense effort because we have a couple snafus with folks who attempt to steal some food and with random kids walking in between us. There does get to be a lull in some of the action though, as we thin out the crowds. Mike gets real sweaty and sits on the rice to relax, which causes some of the poor folk to hand back their bag of rice. Frankie wipes the sweat off of him and poses on the wall to impress the young teens who stand next to him.


As we do start wrapping up, Loan, who has lived in the US and went back to Vietnam to do humanitarian work with Catalyst, pulls about half of us to take us to the dumpsite for the tour. I'm ending here because I want to dedicate a whole post to that tour. Suffice it to say, I was taken aback with what I saw.