After another 'oplet' for breakfast at the restaurant (read here two eggs + bread roll), we hit the road in our mini-van for the Huong Phung commune, which is about 25km from our hotel. This is a commune high in the mountains and takes about 30 minutes to drive there. I was going to interview some teachers at the primary school and then do some 'school observation'.

It is summer holidays in Vietnam so it is very quiet at the school, but there were some kids brought by their mothers for a workshop with Thurza. As the rest of the school was locked up, I went with the vice principal (VP) and another teacher to the coffee shop on the corner for the interview. I learnt some really interesting things while speaking with her. In this commune there are five schools with the furthest one being 12km away from the central area. Now 12km may not sound like much, but it is so remote that you can only get access on foot. Given it is so hard to get to, every 2-3 years, the teachers need to change around and those teachers that have been at the central school, now need to start to teach at the schools a bit further away. This makes it fairer for all the teachers, but this can cause a problem for CWD as their teachers may change regularly.

Teachers here have been trained in inclusive education methodology, but the practicality of this in the classroom is challenging. The Education Ministry has a policy that if a class has a CWD, then the total class size must reduce by 5 children. But in practice, this doesn't necessarily work and one teacher has 2 CWD in her class but is also teaching 75 others! The teacher's ability to ensure she is including everyone is difficult.

After meeting with these teachers, the VP proudly showed me the ramp they had built at the school for children in wheelchairs. But, all other rooms were locked so we couldn't really do the whole 'school observation' part.

Next we went to visit the home of a child who had learning difficulties, the home was a short walk from the school. All the kids from neighbouring houses came to see us and the parents welcomed us into their home. They have 6 children and this family was very poor. We walked up a small ladder to their house and sat down. The father poured some not so healthy looking water and Julie whispers "just sip". I opted for not picking up the glass at all!!

This house had a small kitchen to the right of me and a little sitting area where we were, plus another room that was filled three-quarters full with rice. And, the whole house was probably as big as my bedroom. The rice is only enough to sustain them for about 7-8 months of the year then they must go out to work. Many of the children in this family are going to school though, which was great to see.

After about half an hour, we start to head back towards our hotel, picking up Thurza along the way who was interviewing a parent of a CWD. We went and had some lunch and had about 20 mins spare afterwards. I took advantage and had a quick 15 min powernap in my room, before we got in the car again and left to interview more teachers in a commune closer to our hotel. Very similar themes came out in the interview here.

Once finished the interviews, then we had a 4km motorbike ride to visit a family at home. The family I visited (the blog photo is of their home - the back house belongs to the child's grandfather and the front home is the child's home). Only the father was home today, the mother was working in the rice fields. They have two children, two boys. One is 12 years old and he attends school but has a vision impairment. He drew me a picture and you could see by how close he got to the paper that his eyes were not good and it hurt him to concentrate on the paper for too long. The father also works in the rice fields, but stays home when his wife is working to look after their youngest boy who is 2 years old. This family had access to water and was also growing coffee and had chickens to help with an income, which was wonderful to see. What wasn't wonderful to see was this poor boy with a sight impairment using a very big knife to cut open some sort of fruit/veg which they dry in the sun and sell. I was so worried given he can't see very well that he'd cut one of his fingers off!

We spent about an hour here and met some of the neighbours including the grandfather. We said our goodbyes and then rode the motorbike back to the main street where the car picked us up.

Back at the hotel, we have our debrief meeting and then Thurza, Julie and I have some dinner and I head back to my room at about 8pm. I am so exhausted that I can't even fathom typing my interview notes, so will need to catch up on that tomorrow. It's 8.30pm and I'm turning out the light. Another busy day tomorrow!