The littlest student in Vietnam
He’s surrounded by big-hearted teachers and friends who help make his life a little better.
IT’S 6am. As usual, head teacher Dang Van Cuong wakes up and begins his day.
His first job is not checking his telephone or enjoying breakfast but waking his student, Dinh Van K’Re, and getting him ready for school. Teacher and student go to Son Ba Primary Boarding School, a small school in remote Son Ha District in the central province of Quang Ngai, Vietnam.
The small boy, still sleepy, rolls back and forth on the bed. The teacher gently carries him in his arms to wash his face before making him breakfast and getting him dressed.
“You must be quick or else you will be punished by the teacher for being late,” he tells K’Re.
The boy responds to his teacher’s warning and rushes to class. Though he lives just 10m away, only after seeing K’Re enter the classroom can Cuong put his mind to rest.
Seeing K’Re struggling to reach his seat, a classmate offers help, lifting him onto his chair just minutes before the teacher enters the room. Giving his friend a big smile as thanks, the pint-sized boy folds his arms to salute his teacher like the other students.
K’Re should be considered an “elder brother” of class 1B because he has been studying grade one for three years. But to other students, he is always their younger brother. Even though he is 10 years old, K’Re weighs just 3.9kg and stands 60cm tall. He suffers from Seckel syndrome, a genetic disorder characterised by growth retardation and microcephaly, or a small head. Only around 10 cases of the syndrome have been recorded worldwide.
K’Re is the son of 30-year-old Dinh Van An and 28-year-old Dinh Thi Pia, living in Go Da Village. An and Pia are close relatives and married in 2006. Their first son, Dinh Van Sieng, K’Re’s elder brother, was born healthy one year later.
Pia gave birth to K’Re after eight months of pregnancy in 2009. At birth, K’Re weighed just 600g and was the length of a hand. They thought his small size was due to being born prematurely. However, at the age of seven, K’Re weighed 3kg and measured 50cm in height. He was unable to speak or walk normally.
Due to his strange appearance, the villagers spread rumours that he was possessed by the devil and prevented other children from playing with him. K’Re played alone or slept in a baby sling while his parents worked on the farm.
In 2013, during one of his trips to the village, Cuong met K’Re by chance when his father was taking him to work. Moved by his tiny appearance, he encouraged the parents to enroll him at school when he was old enough, saying that he would help them do so.
Keeping his word, two years later, when K’Re was seven, Cuong travelled over 3km through the forest to persuade his parents to let him go to school.
“Our son was too small, so we were afraid that he could not integrate with other pupils. However, teacher Cuong convinced us so we took the risk to let him go,” K’Re’s father, An, says.
During the first days living far from home, K’Re was shy and afraid of everything. He had to learn everything from scratch, including personal hygiene.
To help him get used to the new environment, Cuong patiently spent time instructing him in the smallest things. He also moved his office to the pupils’ accommodation area so he could better look after the boy.
Seckel syndrome affects K’Re’s speech and memory, therefore teachers focus on teaching him life skills instead of academic knowledge in their effort to make him more confident.
After three years, he has integrated well with other classmates and shows much improvement. From a shy boy, he has become happy, agile and more courageous; he can write numbers on the blackboard and manage some personal activities on his own.
More importantly, instead of being passive, K’Re is actively observing, listening to and understanding his surroundings, and therefore can now express his own opinions on being bullied or respond to the teacher’s questions.
“Despite his short attention span and mischievousness, K’Re attends all the classes,” says the teacher of Class 1B, Pham Thi Khanh. “He is very good at giving signs and in understanding what others say. Now he can feed himself, put on his own shoes, and climb to his place in class.”
Cuong now takes the little boy to his home every weekend where he’s treated as a member of the family.
“I consider him my own child. My wife and children also consider him a part of the family. Though he can’t speak, he is very active and full of affection.
“My biggest wish and also that of other teachers is to provide him with life skills so he can integrate with society and make other friends,” the head teacher says, boasting that K’Re has gained nearly 100g in weight.
On top of giving hope to K’Re, Cuong has also sponsored many other H’Re ethnic children in this remote mountainous area. Seeing their difficult journey through the forest to school, Cuong and other teachers travelled to each family home and persuaded the parents to allow their children to stay in the boarding school in 2009.
To prepare the accommodation for the students, they had to rearrange three rooms that served as teachers’ rooms while the money for meals came from their own small salaries.
“I encouraged everyone to take care of the pupils’ lives by all means. If we had given up, we would have lost the parents’ trust, and it also means that they would have left the school for good,” Cuong recalls.
To improve the students’ lives, the head teacher continues to trek through the forest to ask for financial support from local authorities as well as pick up rice and food donations from benefactors.
From the initial 15, the number of pupils at the Son Ba Primary Boarding School has increased to 117. Since 2013, the school has received state support.
“Thanks to the care of the state, my dream of having enough classrooms has been realised. Recently, my school sold a pig we had raised and made 12mil Vietnamese dong (RM2,000), which will be saved in case any pupils are taken ill,” Cuong says. – Viet Nam News/Asia News Network