TINH BIEN, Vietnam – When her husband fell ill with AIDS, doctors at the
hospital turned him away, fearing they would catch the virus.

"They told him, 'There's nothing we can do for you. Just go home and wait to
die,'" said Do Thi Phuong. So when she too got AIDS, she didn't seek help,
fearing that she would also be shunned. Instead, like her husband, she went home
to die.

Then she heard about a little AIDS clinic in the Mekong Delta, in a place where
the Americans used to train South Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War.

Now, on a regimen of AIDS drugs provided by the U.S., she is getting her
strength back.

The clinic at Tinh Bien is one of 55 across Vietnam funded by the President's
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, the initiative that President
George W. Bush made a centerpiece of his administration.

As memories of the eight-year war fade, the America that older Vietnamese
remember, of bombers, guns and Agent Orange, is now represented to many by
places such as Tinh Bien, where 340 HIV patients are getting treatment.

The U.S. has spent more than $300 million fighting AIDS in Vietnam, and is now
providing AIDS drugs to more than two-thirds of the 32,000 Vietnamese receiving
treatment. At $85 million this year alone, PEPFAR accounts for 80 percent of
U.S. humanitarian spending in the country.

The funding pays for treatment, support for patients' families, prevention
programs and dispelling the AIDS stigma, which is entrenched in Vietnam.

Just how entrenched was demonstrated recently when a group of HIV-positive
schoolchildren living at a PEPFAR-supported compound near Ho Chi Minh City were
enrolled at a neighborhood school. They were expelled the next day because
parents of other students objected.

"The other kids refused to play with me," said Huyen, 13, who wouldn't give her
last name. "They pointed at me and said, 'She has AIDS.'"

Phuong feared the stigma too. She said that for a long time she didn't dare tell
anyone she had HIV.

"In the countryside, the only thing people know about AIDS is that it's the
'Disease of the Century.' They're afraid they'll get infected, so they shun
you," she said.

Then she saw a report on TV that life-extending AIDs drugs were available in
Vietnam. But the doctors she asked didn't know where to find them.

Finally, outreach workers learned from a friend of hers that she was ill and
invited her to the Tinh Bien clinic.

"The doctors and staff here treat me like I'm just another patient," said
Phuong, 30.

At the Mai Hoa Center, home to the children who were turned away from school, a
memorial display at the center holds rows of urns with remains of former
residents.

Until the U.S. began providing AIDS drugs, "We used to have one or two funerals
a day. Now we only have one a month," said Tran Van Nhan, a center volunteer.

PEPFAR has been criticized for its paperwork, which is regarded as onerous, and
for the U.S. ban on spending the money to dispense clean needles and syringes,
on the grounds that they might foster drug abuse. Infected needles are the main
transmitter of HIV nationally in Vietnam.

Under the Obama administration, PEPFAR is reconsidering this approach, according
to Steve Mills, who directs the Vietnam operations of Family Health
International. The North Carolina-based nonprofit organization runs the Tinh
Bien clinic and other programs in Vietnam and Cambodia, funded through USAID,
the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Some question why Vietnam, whose 0.51 percent AIDS prevalence falls short of a
generalized epidemic, was chosen. Most of the 15 PEPFAR countries are in Africa,
and Vietnam is the only Asian one.

But for Mills, working in Vietnam is special.

"I'm continually amazed that the places we are working in used to be
battlegrounds," he said.

Mills has lived in Hanoi for five years and has adopted a Vietnamese boy.

"As an American who remembers the war, I'm awed that Vietnamese are so welcoming
of us, and I'm happy we're back now supporting the development of their health
system," he said.

Tinh Bien is in An Giang, a poor province where some women supplement their
income as prostitutes in the casinos and brothels just across the frontier in
Cambodia. That makes commercial sex, rather than needles, the main transmitter
of AIDS in the province.

"These drugs are making a very big difference," said Mai Hoang Anh, the top AIDS
official in An Giang province.

"They allow people to stay active for many years, just like Magic Johnson," the
American basketball ace who announced 18 years ago that he had AIDS and is still
looking healthy at age 50.

On a recent day, Chau Thi Anh Loan, 23, sat on a bench outside the clinic,
holding a one-month-old baby bundled in a green blanket. She caught the virus
from her husband, a heroin user who shared needles with friends and is now dead.

Staffers at Tinh Bien make sure she takes her medicine on schedule and feeds her
baby with formula milk.

"This will prevent me from passing HIV to my son," said Loan, who received
medicine that helps prevent mother-to-child transmission. "The doctors tell me
he's healthy."

We hope that You and Yours have a blessed Thanksgiving.
from,
The Tressiders

Brothers of the Nam ... sisters, friends, Happy turkey day!  Hallelujah!!! Poke your heads up out of your foxholes, it's here! Really!! Thanksgiving is coming.  Oh, I can taste that Turkey now. I feel the warmth of family abiding strong with the love and fellowship of good friends gathered round the board to count our blessings. Their love warms me even through tough times of hardship, great trial, through fetid memories and tribulation too. But let us remember the real reason for the season. Let us give thanks with all our hearts! Come, celebrate with me this Thanksgiving. Let us prepare the way for Christmas love, by giving thanks for what we have been given ... for indeed, we have been given much!

 

Playing here is beautiful music by pianist Margie Harrell:

"Give Thanks"

Read the rest of the poem here with more combat pictures and music

http://namtour.com/thanksgivinginafoxhole.html

Thanksgiving in a Foxhole
by Gary Jacobson © November 2006

 

Well, here it is, Thanksgiving in a foxhole...
I’m trying to fathom what thankful presentments fill my soul.
You know, it could be a whole hell of a lot worse
I could be pushin’ up posies ‘stead a here spoutin’ verse.
So I guess most of all, I’m thankful I ain’t yet dead
Laced with bullet holes oozing red
Here in Vietnam, ten thousand miles from home
Sent forth the rotting jungle to roam.

War has reduced my passionate patriotism to stone
Still so abandoned ... still so alone
Still bearing pains born in this land of egregious hurt.
To survive it this grunt just keeps on poundin’ dirt.
So pardon me for wish’n for family, hearth and home
‘Stead of walkin’ this park from dawn till dark
Just a might cumbersome...
Just a might adventuresome...
This blithesome war chuck full o’ shock and awesome.

I guess I’d like to say I’m truly thankful
Heaps more thankful than regretful
Sent where ham and choker C-rats take an awful toll
Leaving spirits kinda sick ... kinda droll.
I’d give my left, uh, you know, manhood, the Nam to quicken
Fer a bucket o’ golden Kentucky Fried Chicken.
U’um, I’d like some of that bird finger lick’n good
You better know I would.
 

In my foxhole, visions of drumsticks float in my head
Remembering feeling good and overfed
Thanksgiving feasts with heaping turkey back in the world
The parties, the girls, the cruising, the girls unfurled
My car, the girls, my mother and apple pie, the girls, my family.
That’s why I’m here, just an armed turkey
Mired in Nam’s fickle state of perplexity
Surviving eternal “move ‘em outs” with a grunt’s dexterity.

I’m most thankful for rare nights of relative calm
I laugh and joke with brothers, peace on weary minds a balm
When there’s no bloodshed, no firefight
No Charlie’s comin’ through the wire tonight
Just the routine clamor of interdictive artillery overhead
Reassuring I can snuggle into Nam’s warm ground, my bed
Though in my foxhole repressive fears always abound
Senses acutely attuned to every little sound
Tight so nothing escapes you, in or out-bound.

You see, I’m fighting here for freedom’s bright ray
And they can’t take that away
Though war’s full of conundrums, in this dirty little fray
Where I clearly see man’s hypocrisy and greed
Vile corruption in hatred’s evil seed
For which my brothers for the good fight bleed
So I’m here for them, my brothers, my fellow man
Laboring alongside surviving in the heart of Vietnam.

 

I’m thankful for good things in this park that abound
Deep dank dark depths of hell in the devil’s compound
True brotherhood forged in this gory battleground
Where men to duty bound, astonish and astound,
Men honor bound, war’s complexities bewilder and confound
In Vietnam, where I lost the boy, but found the man
Mid contentious toil and strife
Roiling, boiling hatreds brewing his carnal life.

I’m thankful to know I’m living
To pay sorrowful homage to the dead and dying
I survived this war’s inhumanity unfurled
Surviving back to this knock down ornery world,
From war’s pack of lies to rise to kiss the skies
Grateful to live through what I’ve seen
That from wars bestial carousel careen
Living with ghosts of brothers and enemies unseen.

Though by the Nam heart-stricken
This ‘ol home-boy can take a lickin‘n keep on tickin’
Held in the service of our country
That sent me so far to march with hell’s infantry
Carrying in every deed His ever righteous sword
In the service of our Lord...
Gone for the world to save
Risen from a most foul grave.

I’m grateful for my PTSD
Given with a worlds sweet pain to comfort me
Guiding me back to war’s malignant melee
Once again down in the valley of the shadow reverie
Forever riding bestial iron horses of the infantry
War’s ogres dancing betimes with me
Do-si-doing in and out of the maw of death
Welcome back ... grateful to take a peaceful breath...

So chow down on your turkey with humble thanks giving
Grunt, be ever grateful for your living
Grasp your family to your bosom dearly
Know there are men out there, who this night do not rest easy
Who yet hear brave voices whispering in hot war winds breezy
Daily contending with wrong and right
Men, women, this very Thanksgiving night
Valiantly pursuing for the land they love, the eternal fight.

I would appreciate your vote for "Vietnam Picture Tour!" as a "Top Military Site," at "Veterans Topsites." Just Click this link to vote: http://www.worldwidetopsites.com/php/in.php?id=knights
Vietnam Picture Tour is presently in 2nd place on "Military Topsites" thanks to your efforts ... so whether you vote once, every day, or now and then...

 Thank You!

Just A Walk In The Park

Introducing my novel, a book of beaucoup memoirs blended with facts happening to myself, or soldiers just over the hill ... creative nonfiction/fiction, with over 150 color pictures I took of combat in the Nam.

     These were indeed times that defined men's souls; times that set the foundation and tenor for all life to come, eternally affecting your FOREVER, as well as generations of lives surrounding your life. Vietnam was my delineating moment, after which, in Shakespeare's words, "Life is but a walking shadow."

This book will thrill you with heart-stopping action, fear and danger ... specters of death floating in the sweet-and-sour air ...

but then, you don't want to live forever, do you?

 

My Thousand Yard Stare

You've asked for a book of my poems ... well, here it is! There are over two hundred full color pictures and graphics in this book of my comrades-in-arms in times of batle, to remind us of the sweet-and-sour times that influenced our lives so indelibly, with some of my most popular poetry. 

 

I find bringing the PTSD demons haunting us out into the open helps us deal with them. Talking, writing and reading about the Nam's days that so impacted our lives, sheds light upon the relentless monsters haunting our souls ... renewing honorable memories of those brothers whe served alongside us, by paying loving tribute to those who paid the extreme sacrifice. Talking about the Nam disarms the evil thoughts and deeds of times that have so impacted our lives which inhabit our very being, coming to often in the dead of night unleashing horrible fears unbidden to further torment our innocent soul. Talking it out is healing, helping to restore a patriotic pride.

 

Buy either of the two books instantly at, http://namtour.com/marketplace.html with the security and ease of PayPal or your choice of credit cards.  Or order direct:

Gary Jacobson

6325 south Old Hwy 191

Malad, Idaho 83252

http://www.freedomteamsalute.com/news/salute-2009/salute-2009-v05-p05.aspx