This week was by far my favorite week of service learning. I finally got to met the board of the Hanoi Deaf Association Monday night. Several of the board members know some ASL so I was able to communicate to them and have them explain parts of VSL to me in ASL. I learned so much in 1 night. There are also enough similarities between the two languages that I was able to reach a basic level of communication with the other board members. OH-I-SEE and UNDERSTAND are the same, and the VSL sign for SAME is like the old ASL version. That gave me the tools to ask questions and pick up new vocabulary.
They invited me to their board meeting Tuesday night from 8:00-10:00 and one of the interpreters, Phoung took me there on her motorbike. Phoung's english is fairly limited but I still managed to learn a ton from her on the two motorbike rides. She said that the first deaf school in Vietnam was founded by a french man... which explains the similarities to ASL (the closest language to ASL is FSL). She is self taught in sign language; she learned by going to the board meetings just like I am doing now. Currently she teaches at a university about special education. She has two classes, one teaching sign language and one teaching oral methods of communication for the deaf. This is wild to me because in the US those two things are never taught in the same school... there is a deep ideological divide between the two.
The meting itself on Tuesday was fascinating. With only minimal help from Phoung I was able to understand the basic concept of the meeting. I got that they were discussing how to prioritize what to do with a new grant... if they managed to get one. They were debating spending the money on designing a website (they don't currently have one), funding more classes to teach VSL, buying a small laptop and something else I couldn't understand. It was so cool because the grammatical structure was similar enough that I could tell when they were talking about money, when they were ordering/prioritizing things and when they were asking questions/ debating things. I also really liked watching just how intense the conversation was... the same way conversations with large numbers of people signing can get at home. Only one person can really be "heard" at a time so a lot of time was spent shifting people's attention to new speakers in the conversation. I almost laughed when one guy was saying "LOOK-AT-ME, LOOK-AT-ME because it felt so similar to some of my deaf friends back home.
On the other hand there was a ton I couldn't understand and a ton of signs that have different meanings in the two languages. My head was spinning by the end of the conversation because I kept on getting strings of gibberish of what the signs would mean if they were in ASL. DIALOGUE... ASK... SAME ...DIMINISH... RAIN... L,L,L etc. kept on going through my head. Later I found out that the sign I was seeing as DIALOGUE meant LEADER and the sign I was seeing as ASK was club, RAIN was GRANT, LLL was STREETS and so on. I feel like as I learn more my headaches will decrease and I will cease getting such strings of gibberish running through my head.
I'm so excited. I'll also get to attend their weekly general body meetings which are intended to serve as a social group and a way to teach the deaf new vocabulary. It sounds like many of the deaf people in Hanoi only find out about VSL later in their lives so one of the main goals of the organization is improving language skills of its members.
The one thing I'm a little uncomfortable with ethically is that the Vice-President of the association asked me to teach him some ASL in exchange for help learning VSL. I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of teaching ASL because I'm not a native speaker, and in some ways it feels like cultural imperialism. Furthermore there have been alot of problems in the US with people who don't really know sign language teaching it and mangling the language. However I like the idea of being able to contribute something, especially given just how welcoming and accommodating the organization has been to me. I also really respected the reasons the Vice President wanted to learn ASL. First he often runs into deaf people from the states and would like to be able to communicate with them and show them around Ha Noi. Second he wants to be able to access the wealth of information about deaf rights in ASL. Deaf rights here (and rights for disabled people in general) are very different then in the states and he would like to be able to learn from the experience of the deaf community in the US.
I'm got to thinking however after the Tuesday meeting that there could be another less ethically uncomfortable way for me to give back to HDA. When they were discussing creating a website their major concern was that hiring a website designer would use up all of their money. I was thinking that maybe I could use blogger to at least create a rudimentary website for them. I could create two interlinked blogs, one in VSL/Vietnamese and one in ASL/English. I could video them signing the information they wanted on their website and then translate it into ASL/English for the other blog. The blog would give them a way to increase awareness of Deaf issues both here and in the US and allow new members to find them. Then when they start an actual website they could simply borrow the material from the blog and place it on their new website.
One other thing that I realized during the week was the stark difference between Disabled People of Hanoi and the Hanoi Deaf Association. DP Hanoi has a nice fancy office and while it claims to receive little government funding, it still receives some. HDA on the other hand has a tiny office that could barley fit the board members and me. DP Hanoi had three permanent computers and laptop. HAD had one computer and the Vice President brought his own laptop to the meeting. DP Hanoi had a website and wifi... HAD didn't etc. etc. Really interesting contrast... I'll be curious to learn more about why in the weeks to come.
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