“Em sinh o dau?” (Where were you born?) “Em sinh o Saigon.” (I was born in Saigon.) “Tieng Viet cua em hay qua!” (Your Vietnamese is so good!)And that was that. No hostile facial expressions that I was from the South; no condescending remarks that my father probably fought against their fathers; no indicator that I was anything else other than Vietnamese. The women I treated were not the ones that tormented my father. Their fathers may have been, but that fact didn’t really matter. These women are my sisters. We speak the same language, and we have the same blood running through our veins. We are all human beings—one and the same. In the Cam Pha District of Vietnam, there is now a cervical cancer screening and treatment clinic named in honor of my father and my family: The Dang Clinic. Tomorrow I will return to my home in the U.S However, in order to return to that home, I will have to leave my home here in beautiful Vietnam.
My name is Dang Thuy-Van Jacquelyn. I am CureCervicalCancer’s Senior Coordinator Intern and the Vietnam Program Leader. I left the country of Vietnam twenty years ago—the country that imprisoned my father for six years. He was brainwashed; he was battered; he never returned. I am the soldier’s daughter that chose to go back to help the people that once aimed their guns at him.
As I prepared for this medical mission, I was ambivalent about the fact that I would be traveling to the northern region of Vietnam. As I headed for the airport, I spoke with my father on the phone, who told me to “be safe.”
The very first day of clinic was hectic; loud Vietnamese chatter filled the room. I was reminded of my own family gatherings back in America, during which a family member would speak to another relative standing a foot away from him in volumes ten times louder than necessary. “Where am I?” I occasionally wondered. I then continued to answer my own question: in Vietnam. Not North Vietnam. Not South Vietnam. Just Vietnam. Our team treated a record number of people this entire week as compared to our missions in other countries—over 100 each day. I became friends with the doctors, the nurses, and the patients. They asked me about my background. They asked me about my family. We only spoke in Vietnamese and would tease one of my “doctor students” for spraying the examination bed with vinegar instead of bleach for sanitization.