01:00 AM EST on Friday, October 31, 2003

People who had been to Vietnam before me told me that I would get sick at least once. The food is just too different from standard American fare. There would be some rejection.

But during the two weeks I spent traveling from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City in February, I probably ate better than I do at home. A driver, an interpreter and I would settle into some very open places where the breeze blew through and an occasional dog wandered in. And the table would be covered with vegetables, fish, noodles, chicken, wonderful soups, sticky rice and lots of Tiger beer.

And I never felt better.

Which brings me to Mai Donohue and the dinner she is planning at Barrington High School on Nov. 18.

"I will use the ingredients of Vietnam," she says, "and the luxuries of America."

It is a chance to sit down to all the good things that sustain a very lean Southeast Asian country. It is a chance to help some kids who live in a dark place without much to hope for. And it is a chance to meet a woman whose story reflects so much of the conflict and the coming together of two very different cultures.

Donohue and her husband, Brian, live in Barrington, which Mai says has been a wonderfully welcoming and supporting place. They met in 1968 on her home ground. He was a U.S. Navy officer. She was a woman trying to survive.

Her mother had taken her out of school and married her off to a stranger when she was 13. She told her husband right from the start "I will not be a good Vietnamese wife."

She had a child. Her husband beat her. She took her child and fled. Her husband found her and beat her.

"Vietnamese women do not leave their husbands," she says.

She fled again. She was in hiding for a year. She supported herself and her son by, among other things, weaving conical straw hats.

She finally got to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, where she fell in love with an American. She and Brian were married in Vietnam. He had to leave the service but stayed in country to work for the Navy. They came to the United States in 1970 and started a life that has included raising seven children. It has also included Mai's 11-year effort to get a college education. She started at CCRI and finished up last year at URI, where she earned her bachelor's degree in human development.

"I really want to be educated," says Mai.

She has been back to Vietnam five times and on one of her trips she visited the orphanage in the village of Dalat. She remembers it as a dark place where children doubled up in bunk beds that were crammed close together. The children are all deaf and some suffer from other disabilities.

She asked a government official what she could do. He suggested computers and hearing aids.

So on Nov. 18, she will cook to raise money for that orphanage.

"I cannot change the whole thing," she says. "But I can help to introduce them to the outside world."

She will work with members of the Interact Club at Barrington High School, a service and social club which develops local and international service projects.

Food, says Mai, is love.

"At home, I make anything. I make the best pizza."

But on the evening of Nov. 18, the food will be decidedly Vietnamese -- spring rolls, chicken with lemongrass, a light salad, stir-fried noodles. . . .

Do yourself a favor. Call Barrington High School and make a reservation. It's just $15 and you'll get more than just a great meal.

And you'll be healthier for it.

Bob Kerr can be reached by e-mail at bkerr@projo.com