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Katrina's Vietnamese Victims
Vicky Nelson plays in a classroom-turned-living-quarters at the temple, where she is staying with her family.
(By Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)
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It draws its work almost exclusively from government agencies, such as those of Fairfax County and the U.S. government, including the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and the departments of Labor, Education and the Treasury.
Boat People offers cancer screenings and translation services, educates nail-salon employees on hazardous materials, sponsors after-school tutoring and teen abstinence education, and helps Vietnamese immigrants become U.S. citizens, among other services.
In Louisiana, the epicenter of its current efforts, is a small Buddhist temple in Orleans Parish, just over the border from Plaquemines. The area is home to thousands of Vietnamese immigrants who earn their livings plying the waters of the Gulf.
Katrina destroyed many of their homes and boats, and about 50 of them are now living at Bo De Temple while they await FEMA trailers or repairs to their homes. They live in the temple's fellowship hall and education center, sleeping on mattresses jammed into small classrooms and cooking in the center's kitchen. They have fashioned curtains out of aluminum foil and brown paper.
Some, uncomfortable with the crowded conditions, have retreated to tents on the muddy grounds. One 81-year-old man lives in his car, which he has outfitted with a sleeping bag and a television balanced on the rear seat.
The presence of the evacuees has put on hold the temple's plan to use the center, which was recently completed at a cost of $200,000, to offer English classes to adults and Vietnamese classes to children. The added expense has also strained the small temple's finances.
"It's very difficult for us in this situation," said the Rev. Thich-Thong Duc, the Buddhist monk who runs Bo De. Duc moved to the United States from Vietnam seven years ago. "But we are happy to help people."
Among Boat People's tasks is to help the Vietnamese negotiate their way through the formidable Katrina-assistance bureaucracy. Some evacuees were not aware they were eligible for assistance from FEMA and thus never applied, said case manager Alessandra Thomas. The organization believes that others' claims were inaccurately denied and plans to launch appeals on behalf of those clients.
Duc said the community is grateful for the assistance. "You come here, you help our community," he told Thomas over tea one recent morning. "We appreciate that. We are happy about that."
But Boat People has had to surmount some cultural differences.
For many Vietnamese, the stubborn American tradition of refusing to take no for an answer is an alien concept, said Ha Hoa Dang, a spokesman for Boat People.
"They'll accept that when the U.S. government has said no, that means no," Dang said.
