Organizational Structure of HAD: Sports club and Women’s Issues

             While making the promotional video for HAD I had the chance to learn a lot more about how HAD functions and what it does. I started off by Interviewing Le Van Anh, the head of the deaf association. I asked him what the main activities of the organization were and was shocked to realize that I had only understood about half of what the association does. It turns out there are five sub groups within HAD. There is a sports league, a youth group, a women’s group, a deaf education group and a middle aged group. I had the opportunity to interview the head of the sports league and the women’s issues today and I think these two groups really highlight what HAD cares about and the problems the deaf face.

Sports club:

The sports club is headed by Khanh and receives a small amount of funding from HAD. The rest of the money is supplied by individual members who want to participate in sports. Therefore the sports club kind of runs on an on-and-off basis. There are about 70-80 members in the HAD sports club. The main sport is soccer, but occasionally they get enough money for track and field, swimming, bowling etc. While the sports league may just seem like a fun thing historically deaf sports leagues have been crucial in forming bonds between deaf people in other regions and increasing the political clout of the deaf.

The sports league in HAD is no different. One of the major goals of the group is to set up competitions with other deaf sports teams so that they have the chance to meet and socialize. There are around 6-8 other deaf sports teams in northern Vietnam that they compete with when they have the money. The bonds with these sports teams have extended to the point where many of those deaf organizations came to visit for HAD’s 10 year anniversary. The sports club also wants to compete with deaf associations in southern Vietnam but doesn’t have the money to travel there. There was one competition in Hue in 2003 or 4 where the team won a metal but since then there haven’t been many major competitions with deaf people from throughout Vietnam. I think this sort of national deaf sports competition would be particularly beneficial because in general there are few opportunities for deaf people from southern and northern Vietnam to interact.

issues today and I think these two groups really highlight what HAD cares about and the problems the deaf face.

Sports club:

The sports club is headed by Khanh and receives a small amount of funding from HAD. The rest of the money is supplied by individual members who want to participate in sports. Therefore the sports club kind of runs on an on-and-off basis. There are about 70-80 members in the HAD sports club. The main sport is soccer, but occasionally they get enough money for track and field, swimming, bowling etc. While the sports league may just seem like a fun thing historically deaf sports leagues have been crucial in forming bonds between deaf people in other regions and increasing the political clout of the deaf.

The sports league in HAD is no different. One of the major goals of the group is to set up competitions with other deaf sports teams so that they have the chance to meet and socialize. There are around 6-8 other deaf sports teams in northern Vietnam that they compete with when they have the money. The bonds with these sports teams have extended to the point where many of those deaf organizations came to visit for HAD’s 10 year anniversary. The sports club also wants to compete with deaf associations in southern Vietnam but doesn’t have the money to travel there. There was one competition in Hue in 2003 or 4 where the team won a metal but since then there haven’t been many major competitions with deaf people from throughout Vietnam. I think this sort of national deaf sports competition would be particularly beneficial because in general there are few opportunities for deaf people from southern and northern Vietnam to interact.

Women’s Issues:

There are currently three women on the board of HAD who are all involved in advocating for woman's issues in some way. However the person who is officially in charge of women's issues is Linh. In her interview she talked about many of the problems deaf women in vietnam face. She talked about their comparatively low pay, lack of job opportunities and mental health issues. She also talked about about some problems that are particular to Vietnam like women being expected to stay at their inlaw's houses to work and therefore not being able to actively participate in the deaf association.  One thing that was particularly interesting is that she said there are many single deaf women because many parents of deaf boys choose a hearing girl for their son to mary. While she aims to set up a women's group and a parents group she has had significant difficulties because women's participation in HAD is not consistent. Whenever there is a problem at home women are expected to take care of it, forcing them to miss HAD meetings. 

Self and Identity: Are the deaf in Vietnam “disabled”?

One debate about the deaf community is weather the deaf should be considered “disabled” or not. This discussion is both an issue of personal identity and a political discussion that has real consequences. While I’ve studied this issue in class before, this week I got to see it debated by people it actually effects.

            According to Vietnamese law people with disabilities are supposed to receive discounts on transportations costs as well as subsidies and other forms of support. However as the deaf are considered able bodied they are not included in these special provisions. This week HAD decided to discuss the merits and costs of lobbying the government to include the deaf in the definition of disabled.

            On one side of the debate various leaders of HAD talked about how they were different from the disabled. In contrast to many disabled people in Vietnam the deaf have a full body, mobility and marketable skills. The deaf can drive motorbikes, find decent work, and are part of a larger community. This puts them in a distinctly different position than many people with disabilities. For example my VSL teacher Thai Anh (also a leader of HAD) has a younger sister who is disabled and house ridden so he has to support her by teaching sign language classes.

The leaders also focused on how labeling themselves as disabled could effect their chances at getting VSL recognized and gaining proper respect.

            On the other hand Thanh and some of the other board members discussed how the deaf were cut off from information and access to education. Thanh argued “until the government provides us with proper education and the deaf can enter universities they should give us the same discounts that they give people with disabilities.” This group pointed out that the deaf received discounts in other countries like Australia and the US while still getting their sign languages recognized and respected.

            They also debated who they would send to advocate for the law to be changed if they decided to identify as “disabled”. Tuan was considered because he is considered the most well educated board member in written Vietnamese and Vietnamese law, so he would be able to argue their case well. However several of the bard members were worried that he would be perceived as too skilled and therefore would not be successful in getting discounts for the deaf. Therefore they suggested that one of the older deaf people who hadn’t gone to school should go so the government could understand some of the real problems facing the deaf. However the problem with this plan was that older deaf individuals who aren't educated would have a very hard time understanding Vietnamese law and therefore would not be able to advocate well for the deaf community.

This whole discussion really reminded me of how issues of self and identity can be manipulated to achieve political goals. The government was excluding the deaf from the category of disabled to save money on benefits and services. Likewise the board members were discussing manipulating their own group identity to try to win discounts that they saw as rightfully theirs. By identifying (or not identifying) as “disabled” and choosing which members of the community to send they were redefining themselves in a way that would fit their political goals.

Deaf Society: It’s a small world.

Today I was sitting at a DP Hanoi meeting filming the Vietnamese lesson for my video when all of a sudden a group of German deaf tourist burst through a door in the blind school and joined the meeting to huge applause. For a second I thought this might have been a planed meeting that I simply didn’t know about. However after a few seconds it was clear that this was a surprise visit.

Introductions were quickly made and Le Van Anh explained the structure of the organization in international signs (IS), which were translated to the rest of the Germans by one deaf German who knew both languages. AQ and A session spontaneously started with both sides asking questions about deaf society in the two countries. The Germans asked about laws, weather the deaf could drive in Vietnam, deaf schools etc. The Vietnamese asked about sports organizations weather Swedish and German sign language were the same as well as questions about the number of deaf organizations in Germany.

While the two groups came from completely different societies and spoke two different languages it was surprising how much they shared. Communication was far easier than it would have been between a group of hearing Germans and Hearing Vietnamese because IS and linguistic similarities facilitated communication. There was also a sense of a common bond between the two groups. I have never seen such a spontaneous welcoming of a group of complete strangers. The deaf association immediately burst into a round of applause when the Germans entered the room and another round of applause when the question “you deaf” was answered with an affirmation.

I guess this event makes the point that deaf society is not necessarily constrained by borders. While these two groups came from two different cultures they were able to bond over their deafness and quickly start asking meaningful questions about the quality of deaf life in the two countries. The Germans knew to ask about the state of deaf education, the amount of interpreters, weather or not sign language was recognized by the government, weather deaf people could drive etc. They the proceeded to suggest various resources HAD could connect with for support in changing some of these things. Obviously there were many nuances of life in Hanoi that the Germans missed in their hour-long visit. However because they shared some common background they knew where to start asking questions and therefore were able to gain information quickly. I guess it really is a small (deaf) world after all.

VSL Lessons: Interest

This last week of service learning was my first week of Vietnamese Sign Language lessons. My class is run by the Sign Language Training Center http://ngonngukyhieu.org/ and is taught by Thai Anh.

What’s interesting is that there are roughly four different classes going on at the same time with many different types of learning in the same classroom: intermediate and advanced VSL classes and intermediate and advanced interpreting classes. Within these classes there are a huge variety of students who are interested in taking the classes for different reasons.

• Beginning hearing students-interested in improving their memory (one girl told me this), becoming interpreters, possibly other reasons…
• Intermediate hearing students-interested in becoming interpreters, polishing language skills
• Deaf students-interested in improving their Vietnamese
• Hoa’s(the interpreter who teaches some classes) boyfriend-interested in communicating with his girlfriend more/ learning more about the deaf community
• Me-interested in learning a different sign language, analyzing the differences between ASL and VSL and learning what deaf culture looks like in Vietnam

I’ve now been told by several people that my reasons for being interested in VSL are unusual. Hien, one of the girls in my class told me that I was “weird in a good way” for being interested in pursuing a career related to sign language. Likewise Hoa seemed somewhat confused that I didn’t want to become an interpreter. I think a lot of this comes from the differences between education systems in the two countries. In Vietnam VSL isn’t taught in universities, so the concept of being a sign language researcher is relatively foreign. Furthermore there is such a pressing need for interpreters that any hearing person who starts to learn VSL is automatically encouraged to take up that role. I have faced some of this attitude in the US “why are you learning ASL if you don’t want to be an interpreter?” (UCSD is somewhat unique in offering ASL classes not aimed at interpreting), but not to the same degree. The only people who really seem to understand what I want to do with sign language here are leaders of HAD. This is probably because they have learned a lot about the power of linguistic research to help sign languages gain acceptance and therefore understand what I mean by “sign language researcher”.

Furthermore there are a huge variety of learning needs in the same classroom. The majority of the students are hearing and are fluent in Vietnamese and therefore are having to adjust to the vocabulary and the grammar that is unique to sign languages. They also have to learn how to perceive language visually; how to look not just at a person’s hands but their face as well to see facial grammar and how to distinguish meaningful differences from acceptable variations of a sign.  The class is mainly catered towards this learning group. Lessons are written on the board in Vietnamese and then Thai Anh translates it into VSL and explains the grammatical differences. For deaf students he basically reverses the process signing and explaining how the signs are related to the written words.

I on the other hand already have the tools in place to learn a signed language, but don’t know Vietnamese. Therefore I get the lessons printed in advance and translate them into English so that I can understand the topic of the lesson. However this didn’t happen the first few days so Thai Anh spent most of the time explaining things to me in International Signs, classifiers or ASL. The problem is that I get confused when a sign has a different meaning in ASL and VSL… way too many false cognates! (DONT and FIANCE being a hilarious example). Overall though I’ve been able to learn a lot pretty fast, certainly faster than I’ve been learning Vietnamese, and am really enjoying the class. Despite the huge number of learning needs in one classroom it seems to be an effective learning environment and a great way to get more people interested in VSL.