One evening, before a member of the Philippine staff stole my camera, I was returning from the forest where I had been camping when I walked past the billet where the woman on the right, Luc Quiet Binh lived with her sister, the woman on the left.

Binh had volunteered to translate some letters she had received from a friend in the United States. Binh was unique in that everything she translated never needed any editing. As I walked by, she indicated that I was welcome to sit down for a few minutes. The sun was just setting when I took this picture. Everyone was relaxed.

Binh asked me if I could knew any American folk songs. I said that of course I did and that I would be happy to teach her and her sister one just now. They thought this was a good idea, so I proceeded to teach them this song:

I scream, you scream,
We all scream
For ice cream.

They seemed to think that it was, as songs go, as good as any other.

It was moments like that that made living in the camp so worthwhile.

Years later, when I worked in Thailand, the US State Department decided to properly print as a paper-back book, with my name on the cover, the annotated letters that people like her had translated. A few years after that , in the mid-ninties I telephoned the family that Binh had said were her "relatives" in the US. I told them that I was an old friend of Binh's from the refugee camp. They were suspicious and hostile. They had left the refugee experience behind them and were dubious of my motives. I had to convince them of the innocence of my intentions.

Months later Luc wrote me a letter and told me that after a long struggle she had become a registered nurse. Good for her.