VietNamNet Bridge – Wriggling over several long, narrow and winding alleys of Doan Van Bo Road, Ward 16, District 4, Ho Chi Minh City, we arrived at a dead-end alley.
Mr. Bui Van Oanh.
It was 8pm and it was raining. On a small room of about 12m2 on the second floor, a middle-aged man was completely wrapped up in making a coffin. There were several coffins in the rooms, both big and small ones.
Neighbors said that sometime this man, named Bui Van Oanh, keep up to 20 coffins in his home. Each time coffins were carried in and out the house, the small alley was stuck. But local residents have never complained about it because these coffins are for charity.
Mr. Oanh is the leader of the Oanh Lap charity burial team, which offers burial services for disadvantaged people for free. Oanh buys raw coffins home to decorate them.
Entering the room, we saw Oanh was decorating a small coffin. The room was too narrow. Every inch was used to contain items serving funeral services. The altar had a censer and the statues of Buddha and Jesu.
Seeing us, Oanh stopped his hand and said: “I’ve just finished decorating an adult coffin and I’m decorating a baby coffin.”
Oanh, 66, is a poor man who earns his living by riding a tricycle. He set up the Oanh Lap funeral service team for charity. The team helps bury the dead who are homeless or in special circumstances.
Doing this charity job for over 31 years, Oanh is very familiar with all morgues in the city. He has also gone to many provinces to help burry unlucky people, including single elderly, poor people, drug addicts who die at parks, the unclaimed bodies … He has buried thousands of people so far.
Seeing us in the coffin room, Oanh said: “My family has been living in District 4 for several generations. We live among poor laborers. My father worked as a tricycle driver and I also do this job. My father died in 1977. I tried my best to seek money to hold the funeral for my father but I could not find enough money. Finally, I had to buy a coffin from a coffin shop at the price of VND200, promising to pay them after the funeral. But I could earn only VND150. I paid off the debt three years after the funeral. Since then I have been always thought of the dead of disadvantaged people.”
He established a burial team with 21 members. Most of them are his relatives and the rest are poor laborers. In more than 30 years, Oanh and his group have buried more than 1,000 people.
This work continues, because as Oanh said: “Only the poor can understand the extremely poverty and deprivation. We are not rich but by all we have, we only hope to bring peace to the soul of bad luck people.”
Tran Chanh Nghia