Lawyer Doan Trong Nghia - Ho Chi Minh City State Legal Aid Center, a companion of Mrs. Tam in many legal support cases, making personal documents, confirming personal identity, intervening in property rights for the poor, after hearing me, suddenly laughed out loud: "Yeah, 'gossip' is really not gossipy! Each task is done properly, whoever helps, help to the right place!".
Mrs. Tam Ha (left cover) took Mrs. Le Ngoc Lan - Bi's mother to Long Hung Commune Police Station, Phu Rieng District, Binh Phuoc to find her identity.
This year, Mrs. Tam Ha is 84 years old, the age when she should be enjoying her old age, but those who know her see her busy every day.
Just last October, she had to take a motorbike taxi to a newspaper office in District 3 to support a young man named Nguyen Van Thang (Tu Bi, with epilepsy and mental disorder) to receive charity money that people donated for his mother, Le Ngoc Lan, to treat her illness. She said that Bi could have gone alone, but she was not comfortable leaving this young man who fainted and had convulsions to run more than ten kilometers like that.
Talking about Bi's mother and daughter, it would take days to tell. Nearly 4 years ago, Bi's mother came to Mrs. Tam to beg her to help find her American-mixed daughter who had been lost for nearly 40 years after the war. Hearing the story, feeling sorry for the mother, Mrs. Tam took action. Unfortunately for her, at that time, the program As if there had never been a separation on Vietnam Television had just ended, so she could not ask the station to help her find her. So she relied on other channels on social media, and asked her siblings and grandchildren to spread the news. Unexpectedly, her small message was read by Mrs. Lan's daughter, who returned to Vietnam. She said that after returning to the US, her father sent many letters looking for her mother, but to no avail. He died early and his will was for his daughter to find her mother.
When Lan and her son hugged each other, both happy and sad, Tam Ha could not hide her tears of joy. She said that this was truly a miracle. The daughter invited her mother to visit her daughter in the US. After meeting her daughter, Lan told Tam another of her hardships: having to flee from the beatings and violent pursuit of her husband at the Phu Rieng rubber plantation since the 1990s, both Lan and her son (Bi) currently have no identification papers. So Tam Ha was busy on a journey to find the identity of Le Ngoc Lan and her son.
Ms. Tam Ha (left) prepares documents to help mentally ill scrap collector Nguyen Thi Lan get a health insurance card after 40 years of living without identification papers.
With more than a dozen years of experience with dozens of miserable lives, going back and forth to find their identities, Ms. Tam Ha started to help Ms. Lan and her children very methodically. She asked for Ms. Lan's place of birth and permanent residence before she went to work as a worker at the Phu Rieng rubber plantation. Then she took a motorbike taxi back and forth dozens of times to Go Vap, Binh Thanh, and even to Phu Rieng to extract the original records. After Ms. Lan's part, it was Bi's part. Unfortunately for Ms. Lan, when she had just determined the identification codes for the mother and child, Ms. Lan discovered late-stage liver cancer. When she held the health insurance card in her hand, dying on the hospital bed, Ms. Lan choked up: "Thank you, Ms. Tam, for giving me back my life and giving Bi a future. The luckiest thing in my life was meeting you. What I regret is that I met you too late and could not continue living, doing charity work with you, and repaying life."
Mrs. Lan passed away, but thanks to Mrs. Tam Ha, Mr. Bi got a health insurance card, completed his personal papers and had a small amount of money for medical treatment.
Mrs. Lan's story ended when she asked Mrs. Tam Ha if she was happy. She said: "My heart is heavy, not as light as I thought. There is also Binh, an orphan, 35 years old and still not daring to get married because he has no family, and the son of the first chairman of this ward after the liberation is 50 years old and cannot take care of himself, and the very poor members of the Association of Agent Orange Victims where she works, struggling to take care of their poisoned children and grandchildren... oh my child!".
Indeed, many people around are still waiting, hoping and asking for help from this 84-year-old woman. Because people know that she can save them. There are many situations that seem "difficult" but Mrs. Ha has stepped in and finally solved them. Like the story of Mr. Duong Phach, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in a traffic accident and has no money to buy a health insurance card; the old woman collecting scrap metal Nguyen Thi Lan, who has been mentally ill and has lived without identification for more than 40 years; and the children without birth certificates because their parents are lost and have not registered their marriage.
Roughly counting, there must be more than 20 such lives that Mrs. Tam Ha has helped. Not just for a day or a couple of meals, but for each person, each matter, she ran back and forth, sometimes dozens of times, drafting petitions, making authorization papers, and representing the elderly, the sick, and lonely children to go back and forth to the districts to extract documents. Once, she was "tortured" by a judicial officer in Go Vap district, who made her run from District 12 to Go Vap for 9 rounds in 3 months to change the acute accent on the name of a nearly 90-year-old woman to a grave accent to match her sons' identity papers. She did not complain of being tired, but only said to the officer: "What you are doing is a crime against the people!"
Mrs. Tam Ha and family
Whenever someone complimented her, after a while of silence, Mrs. Tam Ha would often softly say: "I am a student of Uncle Ho, my child."
Perhaps no one can say that they learn from Uncle Ho, follow his example naturally, calmly and sincerely like Mrs. Tam Ha. Learning from Uncle Ho, Mrs. Tam Ha loves and helps everyone with all her heart and soul.
Mrs. Tam Ha said that when she was only 7 years old, her father sent her and her younger brother to the Military Academy of Zone 9. At that time, little Tam refused, her mother had to give her a red Uncle Ho coin and persuade her: "Going to school means following Uncle Ho", then she and her younger brother agreed to go to school. At 13 years old, she gathered in the North and was sent to school for 10 years.
After graduating from the University of Education, she was assigned to Tan Yen High School, Ha Bac as a teacher. In 1965, Ms. Tam Ha and her comrades crossed Truong Son, went to the Southwest region to work in the resistance zone. After the country was reunified, she became a teacher and received the title of Excellent Teacher when she was Vice Principal of Tien Giang College of Education. In 1990, she retired and moved to District 12, Ho Chi Minh City to live and started taking care of the poor. She said that she did so to follow Uncle Ho's words, to fight against foreign invaders, to eradicate ignorance, and now to fight against poverty...
Telling stories about Mrs. Tam Ha helping people and life, we probably can't finish telling them because she has done so many good deeds for life. We have passed by so many houses "thanks to Tam's help to build", so many roads "thanks to Tam's people's work to open", and encountered so many situations of life "thanks to Tam for giving scholarships", "giving insurance cards", "birth certificates", "making ID cards"... that our children have today. Many people say that they are indebted to Mrs. Tam Ha for the rest of their lives...
We, the people who knew, accompanied and loved her, were waiting for "Tam Ha's Memoirs". The woman had lived a life worth living. Waiting - because we had heard her say that she was writing a little for herself every day, waiting - because we knew that whatever she promised, she would surely get.
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