Creators of an Alternate Universe

Watching survivors create works of art that are solely theirs is a joy beyond words. The most unlikely individuals have emerged as genius artists. During art class about 10 of the 40 people here quietly get into the zone and before I know it I'm staring at an intricate dragon, a tree with delicate carvings and detail, a colorful animated monkey, a blooming flower breathing life and color onto a blank paper, a vibrant map of Vietnam. It's unbelievable to me that folks walk around with these images in their heads, this ability in their hands. How is it that they have been deemed by employers here as only good for hard manual labor or servitude? No, these folks are Creativity Warriors...graphic designers, artists, architects, computer engineers, geographers, writers, cartographers, creators.

Fate, destiny make such seemingly random choices for how our lives pan out.

I hope my excitement, enthusiasm, and pure joy is felt by my students through my yelps of surprise, ooing, aahing, and facial gestures mixed with the 3 descriptive Vietnamese phrases I know: extremely beautiful, very good, this is excellent and interesting.

Painting done by a man who is blind in one eye due to an accident that lacerated him clear across his hairline and wounded one of his legs severely. He says that because the bones in his calf didn't heal properly, when it rains outside he feels intense pain in that leg.