Dat, as we have mentioned is an amazing young man, we’ve also discovered that he comes from an amazing family.
We have delightful chats, as Dat is, in his own words ‘a talkative man’. He is hugely proud of his parents, he will often tell us how wonderful they are, any time he receives good news his first response is: I will share this with my father. When he won a prize of 150,000vnd in the Braille writing competition, he spent 120,000vnd on a bouquet of flowers for his mother. He’s devoted alright.
Dat’s parents are a very humble and delightful couple, along with the rest of the family they were very welcoming when we went to visit. Dat is the youngest of five children, and he has eleven nieces and nephews, so there’s quite a bunch. Dat went blind at just one year of age after contracting measles, the rest of his family are sighted.
Dat is a very good student, his English is excellent and he works very hard at university, he takes it all very seriously. The interesting thing is, NONE of his teachers can understand Braille, how can this work? How did he get through high school? When I asked him, he explained with a smile. ‘My father’ ….
From when he was a young boy at school, each evening Dats father would sit with him and read through the text book so that Dat could produce the entire chapters for the next day in Braille. Then he would head off to school with the other children, and his very own home produced Braille text books.
It paid off, Dat is now at university, majoring in English. Which lead me to another question – “Dat, can your father read English?” , Dat smiled
“Oh, no Alison, he can’t read English, but he can read the alphabet – for example, he couldn’t read Alison…. But he can read A.l.i.s.o.n., so for my English subjects the night before university my father will spell the text out for me so that I can prepare the Braille notes for my study.
....................... Letter by letter
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