- She loves dogs more than herself, because living in this bustling city, no one plays with her except her two dogs.
Pain to the end
All those years in the city, no one knew her real name, they just called her “the junk collector who raises dogs”. She didn’t care, people could call her whatever they wanted because she had no status in this society.
She showed me the only black and white photo of her when she was a girl, with her full name, Tran Thi Sinh, from Tra Vinh. Before she died, her parents told her to keep this photo with her so that if anyone asked, she would know what to say.
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| Every morning Mrs. Sinh takes her two dogs out to find food. |
Mrs. Sinh’s parents gave birth to 7 children but all died young, the oldest only lived to 3 years old. Mrs. Sinh was also sick for a long time but probably because of her high fate, she did not die. During the war, her parents took Mrs. Sinh to Saigon to live, after a while they returned to Tra Vinh to work in the fields and then both grandparents got sick and died.
At that time, Sinh was only 15 years old, not knowing who to rely on, so she followed her relatives back to Saigon. At 18, Tran Thi Sinh got married. Her husband’s family gave her a small house in District 4 as a place to live.
That year, the government encouraged unemployed households to move to Phuoc Long (Binh Phuoc) to start a new economic zone. Sinh and his wife sold their house to get some capital and eagerly set off. In a new and unfamiliar place, the husband suffered from malaria.
She took her husband to the city for treatment but he did not survive. That year she had just turned 30, with a 6-month-old daughter. Her husband died, leaving her with no home or property, so she took her child to the streets and began to earn a living by collecting scrap metal.
During her wandering days, crawling on the sidewalks, there was a man selling lottery tickets who wanted to “tie the knot” with her, but she refused. She replied: “I am so poor and ragged, I cannot be with you. I want to settle down and raise my children.”
The 16-year-old daughter met a construction worker from Ben Tre. They fell in love, so she married him off. Didn’t their family think she was poor? She clicked her tongue: “Well, their family doesn’t have much, just a boat drifting on the river.”
Her daughter gave birth to three children in a row, then worked hard to feed and clothe them, no longer had the energy to pay attention to her husband. Her husband was addicted to drugs, living in a world of disease and death. One day, he dragged his emaciated, exhausted body home to depend on his wife.
No matter how much she took care of her husband, he became more and more emaciated and haggard. It turned out that the “AIDS” had already seeped into him. The husband died in the midst of his bewildered children, his wife’s eyes were startled and bewildered. Feeling something was wrong, Mrs. Sinh urged her daughter to get tested to see if she had contracted “AIDS”?
Holding the HIV positive test result, the wife collapsed in the middle of the street, her children cried out in fear. Sad, worried, panicked, Ms. Sinh’s daughter “passed away” at the age of 36.
Mrs. Sinh “inherited” a group of grandchildren, the youngest of whom had just been weaned. The first thing she did was to immediately get her three grandchildren tested for HIV, and she breathed a sigh of relief when they all tested negative.
Well, even if they are poor and miserable, there is still a future, but if they are unlucky enough to contract the disease of the century like their parents, then what is life? That is the only motivation for Mrs. Sinh to overcome the years of eating leftovers and sleeping on the street to raise her grandchildren.
At the corner of Vo Thi Sau and Nguyen Thong streets (District 3, Ho Chi Minh City), right near the Eye Hospital, from motorbike taxi drivers to water sellers, all are her benefactors, helping her raise her grandchildren. They share with her every piece of dry rice, every withered loaf of bread, every sip of leftover water.
The guards at the Eye Hospital often ignored her as she ran to the restroom to take a shower and wash away the dust and dirt from many days of rolling around on the roadside. A kind-hearted person saw the poor grandmother and grandchild and helped to send the youngest child to a charity home to raise and educate him.
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| The junk car is her entire property. |
As for the daughter who just turned 16, she fell in love and agreed to let them live together separately on the condition that if they were hungry, they would not come back to her and make a fuss. The eldest grandson also “escaped” to follow a friend and I don’t know why, but he hasn’t been seen for almost a year now.
Left alone, Mrs. Sinh works alone with the scrap cart. Every day, she collects about 30 thousand, enough to buy a kilo of white rice to eat all day. Some kind people want to take her to the temple to live, but she has not agreed, because she is still worried about her youngest grandson finishing school.
Her dark skin and dirty living conditions made Mrs. Sinh’s face even darker and poorer. In recent years, people often chased her away, saying she was too ugly and “dirty” the city. So every time she was chased away, she pushed her cart around the alleys, and some people took pity on her and opened the door for her to hide in their house until the situation calmed down. Eventually, she got used to it, and became callous to this situation.
Love dog more than yourself
One October night three years ago, while she was curled up on the sidewalk of a junk yard near Hoa Hung train station, she was startled by the sound of a dog crying. The dog next door refused to eat, and kept meowing all night, preventing anyone from sleeping, so the owner beat it.
So that whole night she could not sleep, occasionally she would peek over to look at the dog groaning, her heart aching with pity.
The next morning, she boldly asked the owner: “If you don’t want to keep it, sell it to me.” The owner looked at her skeptically and then said indifferently: “Do you have money to buy it? Two hundred thousand.”
She told the boss to wait for a day. That whole day, she fasted, focused on collecting scrap metal, sold the knife, the bathtub, and with the money she had saved, she had just enough for two hundred thousand. She handed over the money and received the dog.
For the first time in her life, she bought a dog. She was so happy that she couldn’t describe it. People gave her leftover rice, she only ate the rice, and saved the meat and fish for the dog. She never dared to drink milk, but she was willing to spend money to buy milk for the dog.
Her love for the dog was like that of a mother and child, full of pain and loss. Since having the dog by her side, she could sleep soundly and deeply every night.
Next to the junk car, the dog followed closely, clinging to its owner. Last month, the restaurant owner on Nguyen Thong Street called her and asked: “Do you still have the strength to raise another dog? I will give it to you.” She opened her mouth and smiled, with no teeth left on her gums: “If you give it to me, I will accept it. Only when I die will I no longer have the strength.” So she had another “child”, her dog had another “brother”.
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| Since having a dog, Mrs. Sinh smiles more and is happier. |
Two dogs, two mouths to feed, one day they fought over all her food, leaving only a little white rice with salt for her to eat. The restaurant dog was used to eating meat and refused to eat rice, so raising it was very difficult and expensive. All the scrap metal collected was just enough to buy meat for it.
Many people advised her to sell one of her dogs, but she refused. She said: “I only have two dogs as friends in my life. If I sell them, who will I hang out with? In this bustling city, many rich people look at me as worse than a dog.”
She spoke with tears welling up in her eyes. The two dogs jumped up and licked them clean, and then they also shed tears. It was unbelievable. How could she train dogs so well? She waved her hand and explained, “I don’t know how to train them. They have lived with me for so long, and whenever they see me cry, they cry too.”
On rainy and windy days in the city, Mrs. Sinh wore a thin shirt, black pants with torn hems, and half-worn slippers, shivering and hiding under the eaves of a high-rise building. Next to her, two plump, golden-haired dogs continuously licked the rainwater that splashed on their faces. People say that in this world, there are few friendships as deep and pure as Mrs. Sinh and her two dogs.
For more than 30 years, living on the street and sleeping in scrap yards has become a habit. Now at 71 years old, Ms. Sinh no longer feels ashamed when her honor and dignity are trampled and despised, because she simply does not care about the flashy world around her. To her, her two dogs are her friends, her joy, her reason for living. She hugs the dogs to her chest, happily laughing, her teeth shaking.
