Survivor Stories

Le Quang Thanh and Ho Thi Gai met each other in the early 1980s when they attended a catechism class at Tri Buu church. One day in 1984, the teacher checked the class attendance and didn’t find Thanh. His students said: “Thanh had a bomb accident yesterday near the junction of Long Hung.” The 11-year-old boy lost his sight when a piece of ordnance exploded on the rice field where his father was plowing.

The two classmates hadn’t seen each other again for 12 years. In 1996, Gai was planting rice on a field near Thanh’s house. Despite his blindness, Thanh recognized his classmate immediately when people said to him that was Gai from An Don village. In the two years that followed, Thanh walked from his home in Quảng Tri Town taking the dirt road along Thach Han River to see Gai who lived in An Don. Their love deepened over time. Regardless of social prejudice, they married in 1998.

They had their first daughter two years later. A second boy was born in 2008. Thanh was among the first members of Quang Tri Blind Center which was established to help visually-impaired people in the town to earn independent income from making bamboo products for sale such as toothpicks, brooms, and incense.

With support from Project RENEW thanks to funding provided by the Irish Embassy in Vietnam, Thanh and Gai began crafting incense at home under the brand “Thanh Gai.” This venture, fueled by their unwavering spirit, earns this couple more than four million VND from incense, enough to cover their daily subsistence costs.

In An Don parish, people know this special couple. They go to church every Sunday morning and spend the rest of their week making incense for sale. You can buy their homemade incense branded Thanh Gai in An Don ward, next to An Don Parish Church.

On summer day of 1980, Do Thien Dang left his home in Bich Khe Village of Trieu Long Commune to collect wild thatch in hills near the La Vang Holy Land. Wild thatch was then a primary material that locals in Trieu Phong used to roof their houses. The area surrounding this Catholic church was almost uninhabited because the bloody fighting only ended five years earlier. Seeing a tall thatch bush, Dang approached to cut it. His foot stepped on a piece of wartime munition, and a terrible blast was heard throughout the area. Thatch collectors working nearby rushed to bring Dang to the local hospital. He was transferred to Hue Hospital on the same day. Doctors had to amputate both legs above the knees to save his life. Waking up in the hospital bed and realizing he no longer had his legs, Dang cried. The hope of a bright future for the 20-year-old man vanished.

Returning home from Hue hospital, Dang faced difficult challenges. But over time, thanks to the care from his mother and siblings, Dang regained his desire to live. He tried to do all the house chores he could in order to ease the burden for his aging mother. Nine years after the tragic accident, Dang married a girl in the same village and they soon had three daughters, born in 1990, 1994, and 1997. While Đăng and his wife were delighted, they had to face a harsh reality: making ends meet became more difficult than ever for the disabled father of three.

In 2003, RENEW experimented with a livelihoods initiative to generate income for bomb and mine survivors through mushroom growing, as this activity seemed particularly relevant for those who had lost limbs in postwar accidents. Dang participated enthusiastically in the mushroom-growing program supported by RENEW. The income from his mushroom production partly supported the livelihoods of his large family, which now included his wife, three children, and Dang’s mother.

Based on this victim assistance experience, in 2009, RENEW cooperated with the New York-based Humpty Dumpty Institute to implement a livelihood assistance program called ‘Mushrooms with a Mission’ with funding provided by the U.S. Department of State, the Japanese Embassy in Hanoi and the Taiwanese Embassy. The family of Do Thien Dang and many other families of bomb survivors were provided with tools, materials, training and grow houses to cultivate a variety of mushrooms. They grew oyster, wood ear, lingzhi, and other species of mushrooms. After five years, initial results showed that the program had created job opportunities and good incomes for these families.

In 2020, with support from Safelane Global, RENEW equipped this double amputee with an electric tool kit and renovated his old mushroom grow house into a production facility. Visitors to Dang’s house would see him skillfully using his new electric tools to cut, reshape, and fashion bamboo ordered by florist shops in Quang Tri Town. Dang stated that over the past two years, he has been able to earn about 2.5 million VND per month from selling these bamboo wreaths.

This year, he has received fewer orders from local florist shops due to an economic recession. However, Dang—now a grandfather with disabilities—remains busy as usual. Every morning, he wakes up, takes his granddaughter to school on his motorbike, and then returns home to help his wife prepare food for their three sows and tend to the potato garden.

In the village of Bich Khe, where he lives, Dang has earned much respect for the tender care he gave to his invalid, bedridden mother, despite his own disabilities. Since his mother passed away in March 2020, Dang and his wife have been living with the child of their eldest daughter—a fourth grader—who moved in with them to be closer to her school.

“I feel happy with my current life,” said the 63-year-old grandfather. “From my experience, I know it is important for donor countries to continue supporting Vietnam in addressing the explosives left from the war and to assist those affected, like me, in integrating into society and finding jobs to earn income for their families.”

Thanks to the funding provided by the Irish government through the Irish Embassy in Vietnam and Friends of Project RENEW, RENEW has helped hundreds of people with disabilities caused by unexploded ordnance rebuild their lives and create better futures for their families.

In July 1968 the battle at Khe Sanh in western Quang Tri Province came to a quiet close when the fighting stopped, the guns fell silent, and the large toll of casualties among American, North Vietnamese, and South Vietnamese troops mercifully came to an end.

But 45 years later, for 18-year-old Ho Van Y, the battle at Khe Sanh had not ended. An explosion at his family’s coffee plot near the former Ta Con Airstrip in 2012 ripped away Y’s right leg and made him a new casualty of the war. At his Van Kieu minority village in Huong Tan Commune, Y had always been a big help to his parents with the family’s coffee production. Now Y considers himself a burden for them because of his disability.

This week Project RENEW’s mobile Prosthetic and Orthotic (P&O) Outreach team, on one of their field visits to Khe Sanh, visited Y’s family and examined his stump. The P&O team determined that Ho Van Y is now a high priority to receive a new state-of-the-art prosthetic device that will allow him to walk smoothly, independently, and with confidence.

Since the tragic accident, Project RENEW has received thousands of messages from around the world and throughout Vietnam, offering condolences, sympathy, and understanding to the family of the deceased and to the entire RENEW staff.

On 20 May, U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius sent a letter of condolence, which was read at Khiet’s funeral. “Khiet was a highly trained professional, devoting his energy and expertise toward making Quang Tri a safer place. His efforts will not be forgotten,” Osius said in his letter.

“Khiet was a great colleague,” wrote Per Nergaard, Acting Secretary-General of NPA, in his 20 May letter of condolences. “The NPA team in Vietnam, and the organization as a whole, will sorely miss him.”

One year after a tragic accident took the life of our most experienced team leader, Ngo Thien Khiet, his eldest son, Ngo Thien Hoang, now works as a non-technical surveyor for Project RENEW and Norwegian People’s Aid. Here Hoang shares his feelings about following in his father’s footsteps.

On the road that leads to Ai Tu Village of Trieu Ai Commune, a man is hurrying home on his three-wheel bike. He has finished tending to his cows, and now he’s coming home to have lunch with his family. He’s bringing fruit he just bought at the market.

As his wife prepares lunch, 44-year-old Hoang Than talks with his two children, 9-year-old son Hoang Anh and 6-year-old daughter Hoang Thi Dieu Anh, about their first day at school. The kids have just started school after their summer break. The photo above is a picture of happiness, with father and children together.

However, it was not always this way. Than has overcome much tragedy in his life.

In 1991, Than lost one hand and both legs below the knee in an explosion of wartime ordnance. Than was searching for scrap metal when the tragic accident happened. Although he survived the blast and managed to stay alive, Than was permanently disabled at the young age of 20.

Three years later, Than’s life changed. He had already met a girl, Le Thi Hiep, who lived in the same village of Ai Tu. They had fallen in love. Hiep said she had loved Than before his accident, and her love for him was so great that she could not turn him down just because he was now a triple amputee, facing severe disabilities for the rest of his life. They got married.

After several years of living with Than’s parents, the couple moved out to try to build their own life. Their first child, a son, was born in 2000. Two years later, they managed to construct a small wooden house with their limited savings. A second son was born in 2006, but the couple’s joy was short-lived when the older son died in a traffic accident that same year.

In 2008, Project RENEW’s Victim Assistance program reached out to Than’s family and gave them a breeding cow to raise, which could generate extra income. A daughter was born in 2009, and their neighbors, along with the local community, contributed support to rebuild their house. Then in 2013, Than was provided with a pair of artificial limbs by Project RENEW’s Prosthetics and Orthotics (P&O) Mobile Outreach Team. The P&O technicians examined his stumps and fabricated a set of custom prostheses for Than in 2013. He can now walk independently.

“I sometimes feel sad because of my disability, because I can no longer work full-time to support my family,” Than said. “However, my two growing children are a strong motivation for me, so I keep on going. And the local community and Project RENEW have supported us. I want to thank them for giving help to my family.”

“I keep telling my kids not to touch any strange objects they might encounter. I ask them to report their sightings of UXO immediately to their teachers or to me.”

While his wife raises pigs and chickens at home, Than tends the family’s three cows – the offspring of the first cow donated by RENEW in 2008. The couple also cultivates a small field that yields enough rice for the family to eat. Though the family’s brick house has not yet been plastered – a project that will come later – the home provides them with shelter from the rain and heat, as well as security and happiness.

When he was 10 years old, Ho Van Lai was like many other children in Quang Tri Province in central Viet Nam, attending Gio Viet primary school in Gio Linh District, which is located astride the former demilitarized zone (DMZ) during the war. Lai’s small family home was next to what was a U.S. military base occupied by American soldiers, weapons, and equipment from 1966 to 1972.

One hot afternoon in June of 2000, Lai and three of his cousins went out to play on the sand dunes a few hundred meters from Lai’s house, near the beach. The boys stumbled across some strange objects in the sand, about the size of tennis balls. Curious, and not knowing that they were dangerous cluster bombs, Lai picked up several and began to knock them against each other as his cousins looked on. There was a violent explosion.

The blast killed two of Lai’s cousins and severely wounded the other. Lai lost both legs, his right arm was severed, the left hand was mauled by the blast, and Lai was blinded in one eye. The high-velocity detonation exploded hundreds of pieces of shrapnel in all directions, ripping into 86% of Lai’s body. He was not expected to live.

Miraculously, Lai survived. And then he began the slow, painful journey of medical surgeries, post-op treatment, and rehabilitation regimens to try to recover some function after the tragic accident. He worked hard in the years following the accident, learning to compensate for his loss and adjusting to massive alterations in his body. He tried very hard to get back to normal, attending a specialized school for disabled children until he was finally able to return to public schools. Eventually, Lai passed his entrance exams and enrolled at the Da Nang Polytechnic University.

However, his severe disabilities seriously limited what Lai could do. His health improvements slowed, his vision got weaker. Reading with one squinted eye, and writing with a few fingers on his remaining hand, were laborious. He had great difficulty keeping up with his lessons at the university. Finally, Lai asked to be suspended indefinitely from his university education, thus keeping his academic record intact from 2014.

Despite these severe hardships, Lai never gave up. He was determined to overcome barriers caused by his disability, to reject and fight against social prejudices, to stand up for himself and other persons with disabilities. He never abandoned his dream that one day he would stand up, and walk on his own again.

In 2015 and 2018, Lai was fitted with locally made, low-cost double prostheses—two artificial legs—fabricated by a Prosthetics and Orthotics program run by Project RENEW, with funding from Irish Aid and Friends of Project RENEW. Since 2001, Project RENEW has worked to make Quang Tri Province safe from bombs and mines. In addition to fielding teams to clean up explosive ordnance (EO) scattered throughout Quang Tri Province, Project RENEW has also given over 2,000 amputees a new start in life with artificial legs and arms to replace limbs lost to bomb and mine explosions. With Lai’s two custom-made prosthetic legs, he began practicing every day, with great effort, to walk on his own with the assistance of one crutch for balance. It was not an easy challenge, but Lai succeeded.

Today, Lai walks on his own; he catches the bus to travel longer distances; he contributes to chores and other work at home, and he helps his neighbors and younger children. He is now a key staff member, a salaried employee, at Project RENEW’s EO Risk Education program, which is funded by Irish Aid. As a collaborator, an experienced teacher, and a powerfully symbolic speaker, Lai conducts risk education sessions organized by RENEW in the Mine Action Visitor Center. He travels to local schools to raise awareness of explosive ordnance risks, joins village events and other community functions, and shares safe behavior guidance with local people—especially children. Youngsters listen in rapt attention as Lai tells them about his accident and what life became for him as a cluster bomb survivor. He warns them never to touch an item of unexploded ordnance or any strange object and to report their suspicions to parents and teachers. The children give Lai their complete attention.

Lai’s efforts and his contributions go beyond story telling. Lai is a living lesson, an inspiration, a powerful communicator who raises risk education and disability awareness education to new levels.

“My life has improved tremendously since I got my new artificial limbs from Project RENEW,” Lai said. “Before that, when my old prosthetic devices broke or wore out, my parents and I faced worries because we did not have much money to cover the costs of travel to the Da Nang Rehabilitation Hospital to get replacements. Now Project RENEW and the provincial hospital provide this service locally, and at no charge to me and my family.”

Lai is one of around 2,000 amputees who have received support from Project RENEW’s mobile Prosthetics and Orthotics outreach program in recent years. The prosthetic devices enable Lai to participate actively in social and cultural events in town and around the district, Lai explained. “For people with disabilities, this kind of service is really practical and meaningful. Along with income generation and Viet Nam’s comprehensive law on disabilities, these are important ways to sustain the lives of people with disabilities, to create favorable conditions and opportunities for persons with disability to integrate into cultural and social activities.”

A day in the life of Ho Van Lai usually starts at 5:00 a.m. After breakfast, Lai boards a bus from his rural home into Dong Ha City to work at the Mine Action Visitor Center. Visitors start to arrive early. Some are tourists, some are veterans, frequent visitors are schoolchildren from distant rural areas in Quang Tri Province. Sometimes Lai speaks to foreign exchange students, or Vietnamese and American veterans, media, and some professional groups who stop at the Mine Action Visitor Center. Lai says he practices his English with visitors so he can speak confidently with people without being embarrassed. “I used to think that a university education was the only way to make my life better,” Lai noted. “However, my thinking has changed since the day I started working at the Mine Action Visitor Center.”

The job not only allows Lai to earn adequate income to cover his basic expenses and daily activities, but regular employment and being part of the RENEW team provide him with daily encouragement and help to heal the terrible physical and mental scars caused by the cluster bomb blast 21 years ago.

“This position is rewarding for me,” Lai said. “I am more fortunate than many other persons with disabilities. I am able to work and dedicate my efforts to something good. I get much encouragement, care, and support from everybody. Even while riding on the bus, school children give me candy and cakes. And at the Visitor Center, I receive many kind words of encouragement from visiting members of delegations,” Lai said.

“All of these things help me overcome the challenges I face from my disabilities, so I can dedicate myself to my work.”

Lai summed up: “For me, happiness is being an EO risk education teacher, communicator, working alongside children, and interacting with those, especially, who live in EO at-risk communities in Quang Tri Province. I’m helping to keep them safe from the EO threat.”

“And now, being able to walk on my own feet, thanks to good artificial limbs, I can participate in social and cultural events around town.”

Lai says his ultimate wish is that everyone will adopt a respectful attitude toward persons with disabilities, recognize who they are, and share their acceptance—from family members, community residents, to local authorities. That will lead to more favorable conditions “so that we can live with our full dignity and ability, and contribute to the social development of the community and the nation,” Lai explained.

The story of Ho Van Lai, and the experiences of many other persons with disabilities in Quang Tri Province, are both challenging and inspiring. They provide hope and confidence that friends and family, who are faced with terrible accidents and other misfortunes, can overcome their tragic circumstances. They can resume productive activities in the community and face the future with confidence—raising awareness, contributing to changing community attitudes and behavior toward EO safety, and raising their voices to encourage full lives and active participation of persons with disabilities in the affairs of their families, the community, and the nation.