Catholic faith guided Vietnamese woman

The big smile on Mieu Nguyen’s face while manning a food booth at the recent New Year’s Tet celebration at Mary Queen of Vietnam belied some tough circumstances she endured while escaping Communism in Vietnam.  But involvement in her Catholic church and researching mosquitos to save lives has been her new life for nearly 30 years, a life she feels fortunate to have through the grace of God.
“Everything is a gift to me,” Nguyen said. “God gave me work, and through work, I honor him.”

Rolled with the punches
    The 68-year-old, now living in New Orleans East a block from her church, grew up in North Vietnam in the Hai Duong Province. In 1954 at 8 years old, Nguyen experienced upheaval after Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh Communist forces defeated the French who had originally colonized the area with the Catholic faith. Nguyen’s family, along with hundreds of thousands of others, fled to South Vietnam with little more than the clothes on their backs.
  
    “A lot of people tried to stay away from the Communists,” Nguyen said.
  
    Her father’s search for work to support his family of seven children had them move a lot. They had a rice farm in Cáy Sán, and Nguyen remembers digging trenches in Tuc Trung to plant jute from which rice bags were made.
  
    “I don’t know why he let me do that with my brother,” she said, recalling how other siblings didn’t have to do that kind of work. “It was a lot of hard work for a little girl.”

    She attended a year of college, studying biology, but returned to a furniture business her family owned in the Lam Dong Province.

    Nguyen met her husband, Giai Ngo, through his uncle who lived in the same town just as conflict was starting in Vietnam. They married when she was 25, and he was 28 and had two children. But her husband was a South Vietnamese Naval officer and was imprisoned in a re-education camp for nearly six years. He still bears the pain of spending nearly 12 hours a day performing menial labor.

    “Until this day, it still hurts,” Ngo said, showing damage to his hand.

    Released from the camp for good behavior, Ngo said Communist police tracked his every move, making it impossible to work.
 
    “After three years in Saigon, I was still under arrest because they watched me,” he said. “There was no freedom. I had no family and no relatives nearby and was just waiting to escape.”
 
   Nguyen’s family sent money and food when they could, but he knew he had to get out; his family had already resettled in the United States. In 1984, after nine years apart from his family, he escaped Vietnam and made it to the United States.

New life in U.S.
    Nguyen’s family began leaving Vietnam in 1975 after the fall of Saigon. Five of her brothers and her parents traveled by U.S. Navy ships to the United States and went to the Fort Chaffee refugee camp in Arkansas, eventually settling in different states.

    With her husband imprisoned, Nguyen said she never really considered leaving Vietnam. But, in 1980, her sister My Nguyen had arranged to flee with her five daughters. At the last minute, she bailed and Nguyen replaced her and her two youngest daughters, first traveling on a canoe to Can-Tho with her daughters and three nieces.

    “I was not scared at the time, only afraid that if the Communists caught us we would be put in jail,” Nguyen said. “I thanked God that he gave us the strength to make it. If I had to do it a second time, I don’t think I would have made it.”

    Nguyen later boarded a small fishing boat crammed with 130 people and spent days at sea, with no fresh water or food, capturing rainwater with clothing to survive.

    “We didn’t have any place to sit, and I got seasick. So I lay down with my daughters stacked on top of me. It took a long time.”

    Eventually, they encountered a Thailand fishing boat.  The crew, considered pirates, stole whatever possessions the refugees had. They did provide fresh water and tugged Nguyen’s boat further near an oil rig where they were rescued by an oil rig vessel and brought to Thailand. Nguyen spent nine months in the Songkhla refugee camp living with the children in a tent.

    “We were very desperate,” she said. “I had to trust in God.”

     Her family in the United States worked with Catholic Charities to gain transportation to America by plane from Bangkok in 1981.

    “I thanked God we were safe,” she said. She said she knew nothing about Bangkok, but God guided her to a post office where she could call her brother in Oregon to tell him she was okay.
 
   “God made a lot of things visible to me. God made it for me, I didn’t know anything.”

    Her brother in Oregon sponsored her in the U.S., and Nguyen stayed with him for two years. By this time, her sister also came to the United States, settling in Oregon with her daughters. Because Oregon was cold, her father relocated to the warmer climate of New Orleans, and Nguyen followed with her girls, since her husband was still in Vietnam.

She adjusted, flourished

    It wasn’t always easy here, but Nguyen began forging a new life, securing jobs with an electronics company, as a seamstress and grocery store cashier, eventually renting an apartment in eastern New Orleans alongside other refugees who had settled in the area.

    Catholic Charities aided her family again in 1988, helping her husband get a job interview with the City of New Orleans Mosquito, Termite and Rodent Control. Ngo realized Nguyen’s year of biology made her more qualified for the job than he and talked her into taking it. She has worked there ever since, while he worked at Avondale. She even gained an associate degree in electrical engineering.

    “I am a hard worker,” Nguyen said. “I like to work and stay busy.”

    Faith remains strong to her family. She’s taught catechism, sung in the choir, coordinated Mass lectors, was involved in the Cursillo Movement and worked the parish’s Tet festival and earned the archdiocese’s St. Louis Medallion for her work.  A daughter and son-in-law also now sing in the choir.

    “Mary Queen of Vietnam is a place where people help each other,” she said. “In our choir, we share what we have. When one has fish, she shares some. When I grow vegetables I give my share. It is very friendly.”