“Medical and Scientific Aid for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (MSAVLC), is a registered charity that was originally established in 1965. Since then it has been providing aid to some of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in South-East Asia. The aim of the charity is to promote good health and relieve sickness, by providing aid”
What is forgiveness? After war or trauma, how do people people heal and take the journey to forgiveness?
Journey to Forgiveness in Vietnam seeks to explore and understand the journey to forgiveness and reconciliation both by Vietnamese, Americans, and others affected by the war. Namaya, a US Veteran with the B4 Peace Art Team needs your support to continue their work of educating people and facilitating healing after war, so that there can be a peaceful future.
Vietnam: I am the generation of witness and fire
1. Shroud of War: Invocation
I am the Vietnam generation.
I am the generation
of witness and fire.
I was a hospital corpsman during the Vietnam War
and, though far from combat,
the war haunts
me and my generation.
This war of decades ago,
and unending wars
of the American war machine
shrouds my waking hours.
Agent Orange: Do Not Forget Me, a sculpture created by Namaya, will be installed at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in late 2021. At the beginning of 2020, Namaya and Zoe Kopp began the Journey to Forgiveness art residency project and traveled throughout Vietnam.
“In our two-month journey from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, we discovered an extraordinarily kind and generous people and a beautiful country; however, a landscape and people still scarred by the War of Independence (the Vietnam War). We quickly discarded old assumptions and come to see this extraordinary and complex country with a fresh perspective. Our goal was to listen and to understand the impact of the war more than fifty years ago. In particular, the devastating effects of Agent Orange, a deadly herbicide sprayed by the American military, that has caused over 400,000 deaths and millions of people who are still affected by this.”
From this journey, Namaya and the B4 Peace team are now creating the project Agent Orange: Do Not Forget Me. This work is part of the multiyear art project Pornography of War by Namaya, which educates people about the cost and ongoing horrors of war.
