Buddhist Temple Offers Hope for Vietnamese Enclave

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Buddhist Temple Offers Hope for Vietnamese Enclave

By Evelyn Nieves
The Washington Post"

BILOXI, Miss. — It took 30 years for Vietnamese refugees to turn a homely corner of Biloxi into a thriving neighborhood — and 13 hours of Katrina to send them back to the day they came here.

Much of the neighborhood is either leveled or broken beyond repair. The My Viet Supermarket is gone. The Chi-Kim-Lien fashion boutique — gone. Gone too is the marquee restaurant, Xuan Huong, which took up half a block of Division Street and brought tourists into the neighborhood from all over the Gulf Coast.

Xuan Muise, owner of the Xuan Huong restaurant, was also the neighborhood’s mayor and mother hen. Muise, a spry woman of 78, belonged to the first wave of Vietnamese immigrants to settle here, in 1975, after she escaped from Vietnam in 1969 and landed in Southern California. She had visited Biloxi, thought the weather reminded her of her home country (“not too hot, not too cold”) and helped the neighborhood grow up, taking people in and showing them the way to jobs and mortgages.
Her greatest pride was the Chau Van Duc Buddhist Temple. She spent 18 years helping to raise money for it and four years watching the temple go up. The temple, for many here, was the most significant symbol of the Vietnamese in east Biloxi, the sign that they belonged.

Chau Van Duc opened, unfinished, nearly a year ago. But the grand opening, with 53 visitors from around the country, 30 of them monks, was Aug. 28. More than 1,000 families arrived to join the celebration. A day later, the 53 out-of-town visitors survived Katrina’s blows by punching a hole in the ceiling of the temple’s storage closet and crouching in the crawl space under the roof.

Katrina beat up the temple, causing thousands of dollars in damage to a property that still owes the bank $100,000. But the temple is not destroyed. So Muise and other temple members invited people with nowhere else to go to stay there. While the sanctuary is mired in muck, about 15 families have been sleeping outside on the cool, stone patio. Others come by all day long, looking for food, water and hurricane news.

The people staying on the patio say they feel privileged to be here; they will stay put, even though there are beds at the shelter in the junior high school several blocks away.

Muise’s daughter, Kim Weatherly, surmised that none of the families want to be shuffled around like refugees for the second time in their lives.

“We’ve already been through that,” she said. “I believe people don’t want that to happen again.”

Nhan Tran, who is 30 and has lived here all his life, said he and his parents have no plans to leave the temple patio, no plans really at all. “We don’t have any family in other states,” said Tran, who worked at the Imperial Palace casino, one of the 10 Biloxi casinos now closed indefinitely. Despite being raised in Biloxi, he speaks with a Vietnamese accent, no doubt from having lived in a neighborhood where Vietnamese comes first. It is hard, Tran said, to think of living anywhere else.

“We have food and water and company,” he said, adding that the families spend their time chatting, trading stories and rumors about the plight of the Gulf Coast. They have not heard a radio or seen a television since the storm hit.

They are not the only members of this community cut off from the world. Families with houses barely standing are staying in or by them, with no radio or access to news. Thao and Thuyet Ngo and their three daughters, who live across the street from Muise’s restaurant, are staying in front of an empty building next door to their damaged house.

“This is like being in Vietnam now,” said Nga Pham, who is 15. Her father, Thao Ngo, fled Vietnam in 1976 and moved the family to Biloxi nine years ago. He said the family had no friends or relatives elsewhere in the United States. Nor did he know what was going on anywhere else on the Gulf Coast, he said. All he knew was that his family and friends were safe.

But others could not be sure what happened to those they know. Dunh Truong, a shrimper who came here from Vietnam in 1990, had weathered the hurricane in the ship he captains, the Blue Angel. It was docked with the rest of the Biloxi shrimp fleet in Back Bay, which Katrina did not spare. Truong saw sailboats fly through the sky and shrimp boats slam from one side of the bay to the other as he rode the hurricane “like a cowboy on a bull.”

But he did not know what happened to his neighbors. Right after the hurricane, he climbed an embankment, got in his car and drove to Biloxi, to the temple.

[LaiSteve66]

[raacluse]

September 12, 2005, Monday

Language barrier nearly a fatal obstacle for Vietnamese man

By Beth Musgrave / Knight-Ridder

GULFPORT, Miss. _ A Vietnamese man who spent five days in a wrecked fishing boat before being saved told rescuers he did not understand the evacuation orders issued before Hurricane Katrina.

And not knowing how to get help nearly killed him and another man, rescuers said.

Many fear that without translated information the area's largest non-English speakers _ the Vietnamese and Latino communities _ could be more at risk than their English-speaking neighbors to a litany of health problems, from carbon-monoxide poisoning from generators to skin rashes and gastrointestinal problems from drinking unclean water.

"It's disconcerting that there isn't any infrastructure to offer Vietnamese/English translation to reassure these Vietnamese people," said Tuyet A. Ngoc Tran, an editor at Viettouch.com, a Web site based in New York and San Jose, Calif., which has been following the coverage of the Vietnamese community affected by Katrina. "Someone should pay attention to these people because they have no advocates."

The Vietnamese man was found with a second Vietnamese man in the Lakeshore community in Hancock County. The two men _ severely dehydrated and malnourished _ had sought refuge in the boat after the storm, rescuers said.

The identities of both men were not released by authorities. One was 38 and had recently moved to the area from Kansas City and spoke English.

The other, between 35 and 40, did not seem to understand English and was in a catatonic state.

"They had made no attempt to seek medical attention," said Dr. David Jaslow, an emergency room doctor attached to the Pennsylvania rescue unit which found the two men. Jaslow said the man from Kansas City told him that he did not understand the evacuation orders and never expected to be saved or treated.

Jaslow said the man was surprised that he was given medical attention.

Tran said that many poorer Vietnamese are hesitant to go to a doctor because they cannot afford it.

Adam Nguyen had not heard about the two Vietnamese men but he had heard that a second hurricane was brewing in the Gulf of Mexico and heading to Biloxi.

Nguyen, a 13-year-old seventh-grade student, was struggling to translate information for his grandparents and other Vietnamese adults living at the Chua Van Duc Buddhist temple on a debris-littered East Biloxi street. Aid in the form of water, food and clothes has pored in.

But information has not.

After being reassured that there was no hurricane, Nguyen issued a plea: "Please send out information in Vietnamese. Send it really soon."

Nguyen is living at the temple with his grandparents. He and his grandmother evacuated to Florida. But his 69-year-old grandfather did not. He escaped the storm by emptying a 5-gallon water jug, stuffing it into his shirt and using it as a flotation device after his First Street home collapsed. The jug now rests on the side of the temple's porch.

So far, only local and international media outlets have provided information in Vietnamese and Spanish.

WLOX-TV has translated and broadcast some information updates and stories in Spanish and Vietnamese, said Renee Johnson, the station's Internet producer.

One of the station's reporters _ Trang Pham Bui _ speaks Vietnamese and has been translating some news reports since the storm began, Johnson said. The station has also issued some public service announcements in Spanish, Johnson said.

But more information could be available in both Spanish and Vietnamese soon.

Vincent Creel, the spokesman for the city of Biloxi, said the city had not issued evacuation orders in any language but English, but said the city was going to start issuing new releases in Spanish and Vietnamese.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will have Vietnamese and Spanish-speaking community support workers in the area soon, said Tom Hegele, spokesman for FEMA.

"We've got some fliers and brochures that are in Spanish and we're trying to distribute them now," Hegele said. Hegele said they're trying to get the same information translated into Vietnamese. But Hegele said there are people who are from Vietnam who speak other languages than Vietnamese, which complicates the translation process, he said.

"They'll hopefully be in the area in the next several days," Hegele said, of the community support staff.

Nguyen, 13, and Tuong Do, 10, who is also living at the shelter, were also hungry for other information _ such as when school will be back in session.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I want to go back to school," Ho said. "I'm bored here. I'd rather be doing homework."

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[Faithless]

Vietnamese-American Katrina Victims Pull Together

By Deborah Block * Baton Rouge * 26 September 2005

It's estimated that 250,000 evacuees from New Orleans, Louisiana are now living in nearby Baton Rouge. Many of them hope to go back home. Among them is a sizeable Vietnamese-American population, who lost their homes and businesses from Hurricane Katrina.

At this former elementary school, which is part of St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Baton Rouge, some 250 Vietnamese evacuees have a place stay. Kayla Tran says her house is damaged and the small grocery store she and her husband own was destroyed by flooding. The shelter has been a welcome relief.

"It's more like a family get-together. It's more like everybody helping each other," she said.

Donations of food, clothing and medical supplies keep the shelter going. People sleep in former classrooms and take turns cooking. They keep themselves occupied by playing games. Three-quarters of them are Catholic. Father Tam Pham is a Catholic priest and also a medical doctor who is helping the people at the shelter.

"People are struggling a lot and are very delicate now," he said. "Some people cry easily. Some people are very emotional. And so we understand what people are going through. They have lost a lot and they feel very concerned about their future."

Many among the hurricane victims have lost everything. A number of store or restaurant owners say their buildings will have to be torn down. Others are fishermen whose boats and houses were destroyed.

The elderly are especially hard-hit. Hien Ho left his country with nothing after the Vietnam War ended 30 years ago. Once again, he has nothing except his optimism.

"It can be sad for some time," he said.

But he is lucky he can start over again.

About 700 people have come to the shelter, including Catholic Sister Hong Tran, an evacuee who has been there for three weeks. She tries to raise their spirits, especially those who came from Vietnam many years ago.

"I would tell them maybe it will be better now, at least you know English. Or [for] some men who ran away from Vietnam who were single, now they have a family, children, who are ok, a wife who is ok. So I help them look for the positive," she said.

Most of these people hope they can return to New Orleans. Dr. Luu Pham and other health workers are giving them vaccinations to protect them from contaminated water.

"There's a lot of waste, sewage, dead bodies, and that gets the water supply contaminated," he said. "With water contamination Hepatitis-A can be rampant. So getting that vaccination is the best way to prevent that from happening."

Officials at the shelter say it will remain open for as long as it's needed, which could stretch into months.

To that end, there will be a -

(Thurs, Sep 29) Congressional Briefing:: "Katrina and the Asian American Community"

Tue Sep 27, 10:12 AM (NAVASA News)

“Katrina and the Asian American Community” Congressional Briefing

Hosted by Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus
National Council of Asian Pacific Americans
National Alliance of Vietnamese American Service Agencies

When: Thursday, September 29, 2005
Where: Rayburn Building, Room 2105
Time: 3:00 – 4:30 PM

For more information, contact Tong Lee (NCAPA) at (202) 296-2300 x. 123, Linda Hoang (NAVASA) at (301) 587-2781, or Victoria Tung (CAPAC) at (202) 225-2631.

The briefing will feature speakers who have been in the region helping to provide relief and provide access to policy experts working on responses. The discussion will highlight the current challenges faced by Asian Americans hit by Hurricane Katrina.

Louisiana was home to over 50,000 Asian Americans, of which more than half were Vietnamese. Most of them lived in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. An estimated 10,000 Vietnamese evacuees relocated to Houston. Southern Mississippi was also home to about 7,000 Vietnamese and other Asian residents, many of them now displaced. The hurricane also hurt Chinese, Filipino, Bangladeshi and Korean Americans who also have been affected.

Many of the Asian Americans in the Gulf coast region hit by Katrina are refugees and immigrants, some are undocumented. Asian Americans helping to provide relief and victims of the hurricane are reporting that they have been unable to secure information and timely help due to language difficulties. With Asian American community infrastructure and resources limited in places like Bayou La Batre, Alabama, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Gulfport, Mississippi, many Asian American faith based organizations have stepped in to help but are overwhelmed by the need. In cities like Houston, extended relatives and community based organizations are providing direct assistance to the Asian American evacuees, but are running out of resources and need help.