Hoang Yen

Hoang Yen is seventy-five years old and lives at the Hoa Van leprosy village. He has lost his fingers and toes to leprosy.

He spends his time writing poetry. "The poems take me where I wish to go," says this Poet of the Lepers. He has been published in Vietnam.

Yen describes the village as a family.

"We all share here. The poor help the poorer. We are safe here. When any of us need to go to a hospital, we are carried up the mountain to the road and are taken temporarily to a hospital in Danang. No one wants to do that because the other patients and visitors there are afraid of us. Outside Hoa Van we are homeless."

Yen is unable to walk and spends his days sitting on the mat that covers his plank bed. In 1999, his eyesight worsened. A foreign medical organization offered him eye surgery, and the operation was performed in Danang. Yen had no follow up care and is now blind. He seems full of life, but, as the months go by, he has become more tired.

Yen was diagnosed with leprosy in 1950. At the time, he lived about thirty miles south of Danang in the village of Dien Ban, Quang Nam Province. He was sent to a leper colony in the Central Highlands.

In 1968, the present leper village where he lives was opened. Hoa Van was first called The Garden of Hope and Happiness, an interesting name for a place where a dreadful disease that in all societies around the world has evoked revulsion in people and has resulted in the sick being banished and shunned. After the Liberation in 1975, the community was renamed Hoa Van Village. Until that year, the village received assistance from many foreigners.

The Liberation in 1975 resulted in all of Vietnam, including this leper colony, sharing the devastating results of the war. The people ate roots and a little rice for five years after the end of the war to stay alive. The Japanese sent them some medicine.

Yen recollects these times with painful memories of starvation but also as a time when the lepers came together as a family and helped each other. He is emphatic that the village is not a hospital but a community. Since those days, he says, there are occasional aid organizations that help the people. He wishes the assistance would be greater.

"There was a group of Americans who promised our children scholarships last year. They left and returned. The people were very excited. They quickly became very sad when the Americans told them they could not raise the money for promised scholarships. Then, the Americans left."

"One of our young people received a government scholarship for the university We were all very proud of him. He did quite well and earned a degree as an Electrician. However, nobody would hire him because he was from here. He returned and will live here forever with all of us."

The young man contacted the Administrator of the Danang/Quang Nam Fund, Nguyen Thi My Hoa, who has taken on the task of finding him employment in Danang. He might yet be able to live outside the leper colony.

Love and Reality

I have no idea who you are, my benefactors.
I get to know you through my poems.
Yes, the ocean is immense but has two edges.
Love, however, is boundless.
How incredible and miraculous love is!
Love has magic powers healing wounds,
Comforting broken hearts,
And bringing little spring to many unfortunate people.

Hoa Van a beautiful isolated village down the hill,
Suffering from bitterness, tiresome,
Writhing with abominable aftereffects of leprosy.
Old prejudice has strangled numerous hearts.

As human beings, we all have brains and hearts
With dreams, happiness, and sorrow.
Fate, however, has thrown us to an "adverse current":
How can we find a life preserver?

Hoang Yen - 1995