Touching stories illuminate young minds

by Le Huong

It’s a typical riotous scene in the play-ground of Nguyen Dinh Chieu Grade School. But Nguyen Minh Duc, a third grade blind pupil, isn’t enjoying his special game of football as usual. He’s lost in a bundle of papers in the corridor. His fingers fly over the dots on the paper, devouring all the words and sometimes smiling suddenly as he catches an interesting thought. He is surrounded by other small hands, groping for words as quickly as possible. From time to time, his fellow students look with their vision-impaired eyes towards the light and seem to be thinking hard.

“There is a story about a silly man who built himself a house without any windows,” the paper says.

“So, till the last gasp of his life, he never viewed the beauty of the surrounding world.

“He never knew life was so wonderful.

“But we are not like him, are we? Let him be. Together we will build a window... Our Hoa Nang (Flower of Sunlight) magazine will be a window through which you can look upon our wonderful world.”

Those are the opening words of Hoa Nang, a simple monthly magazine written and edited by Duc’s blind friends. For the past five months, Duc and nearly 100 other blind boarding pupils here have gazed with wonder through their very own cultural window.

“The magazine stems from a collection of poems and pieces of prose written by the school’s pupils as a gift to teachers on last year’s Teacher’s Day,” Pham Dinh Thang, a teacher at Nguyen Dinh Chieu, said.

“We printed the collected articles in Braille and text and it attracted much interest among the pupils,” he said.

Since 1992, the school has harboured ideas for a special edition for blind students who desperately need reading materials to widen their knowledge and express their thoughts.

“But we didn’t get organized because there was no one to help us in editing or writing,” Thang, who is in charge of the school’s boarding students, said.

“The compositions for Teacher’s Day were an abundant source of creativity. The pupils could express their feelings, their views on life and take control of editing and publishing the finished product.”

At first, the magazine was for boarding students only. But now it has emerged as a forum for vision-impaired and sighted students to exchange ideas and knowledge. The magazine has its own editor-in-chief, a managing editor, layout and printing team. Most of the team are vision-impaired students, but some of their fellow sighted students and enthusiastic volunteers from universities also pitch in.

Dang Quang Thuong, an economic journalist from the Radio Voice of Viet Nam, gives advice and guidance in his role as managing editor. Completing a 25-page edition requires a lot of work: the entire editorial board has to arrange time to edit the paper and structure it around their classes. Recent editions have made use of cute pictures as well as poetry, prose, news and interesting stories about cultural and historical figures.

“The most time-consuming task is changing the written copy into Braille. Some 30 pages of text become 100 pages in Braille and it takes four people - two to read and another two to type - two days to complete it,” said Le Na, a ninth-grade blind pupil who is also a member of the editorial board. Filling the pages takes all the creativity of the editors and readers.

“I wrote many poems before the magazine was established,” Na said. “I like listening to the rain and whenever I miss my homeland of Quang Binh it’s almost as if I sense a call.

“I can feel the gust of the wind and the sound of the Nhat Le River and I want to transform these feelings into verse.”

But Na admits she had never thought of publishing her work until the magazine came along. Now she is one of its major contributors. She has gained confidence and feels that writing is not just her passion, but a responsibility she is happy to bear for the magazine. And there is nothing better than positive feedback from readers to reinforce the sense of purpose.

“Some of my blind friends, who had never composed anything before, started to send small poems and stories about everyday things,” said Dao Thu Huong, another member of the editorial board.

“Many of the works are poorly written, so we talk with the writers, listen to them to find out what they want to discuss and help them communicate this better.

This certainly helps them enhance their writing skills.”

Pham Anh Dung, the school’s head master, understands his students’ passion but cannot help worrying about the future of the magazine.

“The edition has created a playground for our pupils. But we need money to keep it going.”

Each edition takes just a few hundred thousand dong to produce, but there is no stable source of funds. The money comes from charity organizations or individuals, allowing the school to produce three Braille copies and a few dozen in normal script. Teachers and pupils hope to establish a website to improve their access to vision-impaired people across the nation and throughout the world.

After the very first edition, Albornoz Pellecer, a blind reader from Guatemala who heard of the edition from the Spanish edition of Radio VOV, wrote to the board.

“I would like to contact with blind girls like me in Viet Nam to understand more about your country and let you know about my own as well,” Pellecer, who is a member of the Guatemalan Writers’ Association, wrote.

Hoa Nang really is a bridge connecting blind pupils at the school to the outside world. And their creations sparkle like dappled sunshine through the leaves of trees, nurturing blind students’ dreams of seeing the intellectual light and leading creative and useful lives. - VNS