In the late afternoon, in the yard of Bo De pagoda in Gia Lam district, Hanoi, a group of children were playing. Some small babies wearing brown clothes were toddling. They are orphans seeking shelter.
These children live in an old house at the back of the pagoda. Inside, there is around 40sq.m and camp beds are arranged in a row, leaving a small path. The furniture in the room is very old. The room is littered with clothes and napkins.
Dozens of orphans who had just returned home from class watch cartoons. An infant cries, asking for milk. The baby, five-days old, is a new member of the house, abandoned by her mother at the pagoda gate.
In a dark corner, three newborn babies from 2-4 months old sleep, despite the new comer’s relentless sobs. Kieu Thu Huong, 18, the eldest child in the house, hurriedly washes her hands to make formula for the baby.
“This baby was left at the pagoda’s gate last night and she was named Kieu Anh by our senior monk,” Huong said.
Huong is very skilled at taking care of babies. She is now the “mother” of the smallest baby in the house. Huong has lived in this pagoda for 18 years, since the day she was abandoned by her mother.
“I cried many nights. My parents have not returned to meet me,” Huong said.
Most of the orphans living in Bo De pagoda don’t know where they come from. Many of them were left at the pagoda gate when they were several days old. Some of them have parents who divorced or are drug addicts.
Senior monk Thich Dam Lan said that recently, on a cold night, a woman holding a baby stood at the pagoda gate waiting for the senior monk. She told him that she had the baby with a man in the same village; she asked the senior monk to bring up her child.
Over two years ago, a 16-year-old girl in Hung Yen who got pregnant and was exiled from home was discovered standing at the pagoda gate crying. Monk Thich Dam Lan let here and took care of the girl and her child.
Orphans living in Bo De PagodaWatching TV, when monk Thich Dam Lam pointed at them, Nam Anh, Khanh, Bao and Thinh shyly acknowledged his introduction.
“I was brought here by a woman. Now I don’t remember my hometown or my parents,” Nam Anh said.
According to monk Thich Dam Lan, Nam Anh was brought to the pagoda at the age of 5. Every night he cried for his mother. It took him a long time to get used to life in the pagoda.
Another boy, Hoang, has lived in this pagoda for two years. His father died of cancer. His mother couldn’t afford to nurture the child, so she brought Hoang to the pagoda and visits the child once a week.
Whenever receiving a new child, the pagoda carefully keeps related things like clothes, blanket, socks, hoping they can be used to help parents recognize their children. “In nearly 20 years, only one mother has come to take back her child,” monk Thich Dam Lan said.
The dinner of monks and orphans at Bo De pagoda is frugal. Living in the pagoda, orphans have followed a vegetarian diet for a long time. Their dinner consisted of vegetables, pickles and braised bananas. Sometimes they have roasted peanuts and boiled pork during the fifteenth or the first day of lunar months, donated by Buddhists.
During winter, many children huddle together against the frigid wind. Secondhand clothes donated from benefactors are not enough for the nearly 50 children here. The pagoda can’t afford to buy new clothes for the children because besides buying milk for infant babies, rice and food for others, etc. it pays school fees for them and doesn’t have a stable source of income, except for money raised from Buddhist followers.
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