Suzanne’s love and hugs build Vietnam orphanage
‘It’s important for the children to have everything I never had in my childhood’
It’s a long way from Maidstone to Vietnam, but it’s a journey one woman has been making after setting up an orphanage.
Suzanne Hook spent the past five years creating Allambie orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, where she spent the first three years of her life in an orphanage.
The 47-year-old, who works at Audley Mote House retirement village in Bearsted, even sold her house to make her dream a reality.
Asked to describe the last five years, Ms Hook said: “It’s been the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life, but it’s also been the most rewarding.”
In 1969, during the height of the Vietnam War, Ms Hook was found under a bush by a policeman in Saigon when just a few hours old and taken to the nearby Hoi Duc-Anh orphanage.
Many of the nurses in orphanages didn’t agree with the American intervention and children like Ms Hook, whose father was a black American GI, often bore the brunt of this and were usually the last to receive food or treatment.
When a group of English nurses visited the orphanage they were shocked by the conditions and soon realised that mixed-raced orphans especially suffered and were malnourished.
Several of the children, including Ms Hook, who grew up in Hayes, Middlesex, were adopted by English families.
“It’s really important for the Allambie children to have everything I never had in my childhood,” she said.
“I tell these children how beautiful they are, how important they are. I hug them all the time.
“With Allambie they have a family and they have a family home.”
There are seven children and young people living at Allambie, while the orphanage also supports an additional two who don’t live there.
Ms Hook, who lives off London Road, Maidstone, said: “When I first got them they were thin, sad, unhappy, undernourished children, but with Allambie help and support they have gone from strength to strength.”