Hàng Ngày

I think I identified at least part of what makes me so ambivalent about the choice to stay here or not to stay here. This has been a theme ever since I came back from Vietnam the first time, and has only intensified in the past year here. It is this: the more time I spend here and the more connected I become, the more I realize that I have two completely different lives, to completely different worlds, that are not really connected to each other in any significant way. One of my lives is in the US, with my old friends, my family, my past, and the potential for so much more; the other life is here in Vietnam, with my new friends, my work, my students, and the potential for so much more.  I attempted to connect these two worlds by pursuing an undergraduate degree in East Asian related subjects. This attempt failed. It didn’t really make me feel like my two lives were any more connected, mostly because the most important things in these two lives are of course, the people. I want the people from both lives, but it feels like I can only build relationships in one place at a time. When I live in Vietnam, I am building relationships here, developing friendships, and simply maintaining relations with people in the US: there’s no growth in my relationships there. But when I’m in the US, I am building relationships with friends and family members there, and keeping shoddy communication lines open with people here: there’s no growth in my relationships here. How can I reconcile this? I don’t know. But I feel like until I figure out a way, going back and forth will continue to be a difficult and complicated decision: when is the right time for me to go back and build the relationships and life in the US? When I do go back, when will be the time for me to leave again and build relationships here, or elsewhere? So I have been avoiding making the decision: but I remember a wise saying that refusing to make a choice is in itself a choice, isn’t it? A choice to be complacent and accept the status quo, which is exactly what I’m trying to avoid.

As those of you who know me well have heard much about already, the gender relations and roles here are quite different than the US and this has been a theme that has really shaped my experience. For me, it has been hard to be a young single foreign woman in a culture where being young and single and female are all reasons to be meek, quiet, and passive. These are not my characteristics, but when all of my peers are acting in this manner it makes it difficult for the Barnard-ness in me to really shine. I’ve been feeling down about this a lot from time to time.

This week we were giving a speaking exam to the third year students. One of the questions was, “What is your greatest weakness, and how do you work to overcome it?” About 8 women drew this question, and only one man.  The young man said he was too cocky sometimes. That was his weakness. Fair enough. The 8 young women across the board said that they lacked confidence. This is their greatest weakness, and they hate it, but they don’t know how to overcome it. Looking at their faces as they talked about this topic nearly broke my heart. I wanted to tell them something that would instantly raise their self-esteems and self-worths, but I knew that just a few words would not really do the trick. It’s a long-term process of socialization that starts early on in life.

I thought all afternoon. I couldn’t get this out of my head. I thought all evening, through my class I was completely distracted, and when I got home I just started writing. Writing and writing and looking for information on the internet about confidence in women and at-risk youth, and mentoring. And writing a proposal, all of a sudden, for a research project to be conducted at the university involving middle-school girls and university women in one-on-one mentoring partnerships and group leadership building activities.  A proposal to create a little piece of Barnard here in Long Xuyen, Vietnam. The rector of the university thinks it’s a good idea. We’ll see where it goes.

I had been to Long My, Hau Giang province, twice before for Jeff’s and Kristi’s birthday parties, but had never actually gotten a chance to visit the countryside and see what the organization VN Plus does. VN Plus is the organization that Jeff and Kristi are working for as English resources and part-time teachers. It is a development organization headed by an extremely dynamic Belgian named Bernard. The organization works in several provinces in Vietnam to help poor farmers, students, and others through various community development programs. I got the privilege of being invited to take a day trip with one of the staff to visit some of their projects.

We headed out of Long My on a narrow paved road through rice paddies and eucalyptus trees. Long My is much less populated than An Giang, and so we went for long stretches seeing only nature, no people at all. We were apparently driving on roads that had been built by VN Plus. I realized after our first two visits to a school computer lab and a community library that the new roads were perhaps the most important contribution VN Plus could make to this area. It had rained the day before, and Mr. Tinh and I came to a “patch” of mud that was impassable by motorbike. We thought it would end quickly, but we were not so lucky, and had to push the motorbike through the thick and slippery mud for about a quarter of a mile. We were quite dirty, needless to say.

The rest of the morning and afternoon was spent visiting farmers. We went with a local “collaborator” who oversees the programs for 20 families. He introduced us to one family that was full of old people, and very poor. VN Plus had provided them with a loan to buy pigs for production, and also with a deeply dug well for clean water. There was an old woman who just laid on one of the wooden beds for the entire visit, and I didn’t even really know what to say or ask of these people. The poverty was striking, and they seemed depressed both physically and mentally. The other farms were not nearly as poor, and I got to see different agricultural practices such as pommelo orchards and eel fisheries. It was again interesting to get to see what is really going on in the countryside here, which I often feel I don’t get to see in my little box in Long Xuyen.

I also got to visit Kristi’s and Jeff’s classes which was very interesting. Kristi has a great manner with her VERY beginner students: patience that I simply don’t have. It was fun to watch her contorting her face into all sorts of positions to teach them proper pronunciation. Jeff’s class was also interesting and I learned something new about the timing and rhythm of the English language from this linguistics major.

Returned to LX feeling ready to move on. I love and will miss dearly my students, but as for the town, I’m not such a fan, I’m now realizing. It’s a small city without the benefits of the city, and also feels quite inaccessible to the real countryside that makes Vietnam, well, Vietnam.  I hope that in my short time left here I will have more opportunities to travel outside of the city to see what is really going on with the people who live here.

Since I officially only teach two periods a week now (children’s class, CFL, Tuesday nights) I have a LOT of free time, and nothing to do…so I’ve been helping a guy named Phu in the Agriculture Faculty with editing some grant proposals and scholarship applications. In return, I to to participate in possibly the most interesting and memorable experience during my time here in Vietnam. Mr. Phu invited me to come with him and his colleagues to Kien Luong district, Kien Giang province, for a “field trip.” I had the schedule saying we would visit various agricultural sites, farms, orchards, etc. I did not know what I was in for.

We began Thursday morning at 9 am when I met Mr. Phu and the 12 others–all men–in front of the school gates. One of the participants was a Dr. Garcia from the Philippines whose organization SEARCA has funded some of the research projects that the agriculture department is working on. I sat in the front of the rented van next to Mr. Trieu, the head of the department. I have seen Mr. Trieu around before, but never really talked to him. It turns out Mr.Trieu is one of the smartest people I’ve met at AGU. He’s also hilarious. He spent the entire 3 hour ride to Kien Luong telling me different slang words in Vietnamese, teaching me “noi lai” (a method of reversing tones and syllables to make a play on words…hard to explain), and insisting that I only speak Vietnamese, while he spoke English. He taught me various words specific to their science (acidic soil is dat phen, for example), and also a lot about the local vegetation and farming methodologies.

When we arrived in Kien Luong district, our first stop was a mangrove orchard where they were also growing grouper fish. The mangrove acts as a buffer between the salty ocean water and the grouper that need water with a bit less salinity in order to grow. The farm was right along the ocean, with beautiful “mountains” in the background. There were little huts in the mangrove orchards where we sat down to have some lemonade and discuss the rest of the afternoon’s plans.

The second stop was the most interesting. We went to visit another mangrove farm, this one a bit farther afield, so we had to walk for about twenty minutes in the blazing 2 pm sun to get there. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel lethargic at all, only excited to see all of these new things! Mr. Phu was apparently in charge of this project and instructed the farmers in how to take a soil sample using a long metal rod to dig into the soil under the water, twist, and bring to the surface in order to test the soil for pH. The pH of the soil in this area was very acidic, about 4 pH at the first stop and 2 at the second stop. Apparently this is not so good for the mangrove trees, and this is why the farmers were having trouble with the crops. At this second stop we took a short rest under the shaded front stoop of one of the farmers’ homes. There are about 50 households in this backroad subdivision only accessible by foot or motorbike. The farmers, although they have little, offered us cold water to drink, a big deal for some of them, I was told.

After another toasty hike back to the van, we drove about half an hour to a small village with mainly ethnic Chinese and Khmer families. The Chinese families had beautiful character sequences surrounding their doorways, although besides these ornaments I couldn’t really see much difference. The soil here is red limestone, very dry and arid, and much different than Long Xuyen. There are also mountains that sort of pop up out of nowhere (small mountains) and when I asked the scientists why they were there, no one had an answer for me. The third stop was a farm that is practicing an innovative method of joint rice-shrimp farming. The farmers plant rice in the summer, it grows, they harvest it, then they prepare the fields (which are deeper around the edges than in the center) for shrimp growing, and this occurs from about January until May. The shrimp are more profitable than the rice, although harder to grow, I was told, and from what I gathered this farmer’s success hadn’t been very high: small shrimp, many shrimp dying, and no explanation. The ag-folks asked a lot of questions to try to figure out what had gone wrong. Meanwhile the man’s wife and seven children gathered around and stared (mostly at me, the strange foreigner). The family was quite poor, and the children appeared to not be in school, which I noticed one of the ag-guys asking about as we were leaving. It was important for me to see these circumstances, I think, because Long Xuyen, and especially AGU, tends to be a bubble, an oasis of relative wealth and success in an area where there is still extreme poverty. Seeing it for real reminded me again why I’m here as a volunteer (sort of).

The fourth stop of the day was another place to take soil samples. This soil, as mentioned before was extremely acidic, and when Mr. Phu tested it the pH strip was pushed off of the soil sample by the bubbling chemical reaction. We hung around for a while to try to see the rare red-headed cranes (seu dau do) which are in the area, but were unlucky on this front. At this point the sun was setting and we were just sitting in this empty field looking around at the mountains and prairie. It was very peaceful.

The last stop, as it was getting quite dark, was a reservoir in Binh An commune, where we would spend the night. The water was not very high, as it is just the beginning of the rainy season. I stood by the edge of the water with Mr. Hieu, one of my former students (an IFP fellow) and talked about how the lake, and especially the sound of the cicadas in the background (con re) reminded me of summers past working at summer camps. He told me it reminded me of his hometown as well, and we shared a quiet moment of homesickness together before heading to our hotel for the night.

The hotel was right across the street from the beach! And the beach was lovely, gentle waves from the Gulf of Thailand, warm, and fairly clean. Most of the litter was pieces of broken pottery that had been smoothed over by the tumbling sand and waves, similar to sea glass. I collected a bunch of this stuff as my souvenir and headed for the shower. We had dinner at a restaurant on the water while it poured rain around us, and hit the sack early to prepare for the next big day.

In the morning I took a long walk by myself to Chua Hang, the cave pagoda, which is literally dug into a cave and decorated with all kinds of kitchy ornaments and trinquets. The cave exits onto a beach with a great view of Dao Phu Tu,  “Father-son Island.” It is so called because there used to be two giant rocks sticking out of the sea into the air, like a father and a son, I was told. However, the father rock recently collapsed into the sea leaving the poor orphan alone in the water. It is still a great tourist attraction in Kien Luong, apparently, and they are busily trying to figure out what to do with the father: do they resurrect him, or let him RIP forever? Definitely worth a few people’s committee meetings, in my opinion.
Friday was the big “workshop” with farmers, government reps, and presentations using powerpoint and microphones. I put “workshop” in quotation marks because there wasn’t really any work going on at all. In fact it was all powerpoint presentations by the university professors listened to by the farmers, with little two-way knowledge exchange. The times allotted for discussion were cut short because the presentations went overtime…mostly because people were reading directly from their very wordy powerpoints…painful for me. I tried to listen and understand at first (this is all in Vietnamese) but eventually gave up and just kind of doodled on my paper. My head hurt from trying to concentrate so hard.

After the morning’s seminar was over we enjoyed a meal of amazing seafood together before packing up to leave. I was supposed to teach class Friday night…but apparently that was not going to happen because the guys wanted to go to Ha Tien to look around and buy souvenirs. OK, so I called and canceled my class, later finding out that it was canceled completely: I will not be teaching it at all. That’s right, I officially had one class one night a week now. So, anyway, we went to Ha Tien where we looked at the wharf where there were rowing teams from Can Tho university in colorful boats and costumes practicing for some competition. We bought some mangoes and some souvenirs and eventually were on the road back to Long Xuyen.

We stopped in Rach Gia on the way back to drop off one of the workshop participants, a Mr. Niem who is a member of the Agriculture and Natural Resources Department of Kien Giang province. We stopped at his house for about an hour where we enjoyed yet more beer and snacks (thank goodness they were not insistent upon me drinking with them). Mr. Niem’s wife is an obstetrician and his house was quite large and tastefully decorated (for Vietnamese). We finally arrived home in LX about 8:30 PM. I was exhausted.

The work continued Saturday morning when all of the recipients of Dr. Garcia’s seed fund money, one from AGU, one from Can Tho, and one from Tay Nguyen University in the Central Highlands, presented their research to a small group of students and teachers. The research was interesting, and the whole experience made me realize how confining it’s been to just be stuck in the English Department all this time. They don’t really go outside of the classroom, and when they do the purpose seems to be purely entertainment with no learning in mind. It makes me think about how this position at AGU could really change in the future: there is so much demand for English everywhere, it feels like us foreigners should be spread out a little more.

By the way, I now have another class that I’ve taken for Tyler: business English. Ahhh!!! This is the course that everyone hates: Wednesday night, Friday afternoon and (gulp) Saturday morning. I guess I shouldn’t have asked for more work…

Now that I’ve decided not to resign a contract with the university, I feel like I am “rediscovering” LX, so to speak. Or maybe it’s just a little pre-nostalgia for the experience here? A fellow volunteer, Kristi, came to visit yesterday, and we just had a blast together. Kristi is 50, unmarried, and a world traveler beyond my own abilities. She’s been to so many interesting places, and alone, and just walks into people’s gardens and asks them questions, which is something I’m getting better at but is still a challenge. In any case, she’s a great travel companion, and we’ve shared a lot of similar experiences at our respective posts in the Mekong Delta, so we have a lot to discuss.

This morning I took her to Tiger Island, my third time to the Island, but the first time as a tour guide. We went to Ton Duc Thang’s memorial again and discussed the fact that none of the signs or museum items were translated into English or French, and wouldn’t it be amazing if they could translate it all so that they can attract more foreign tourists? And this idea/conversation then turned into action on our way out when I decided I should stop at the management office and talk to someone about the situation. We sat down to tea with Mr. Nguyen, the vice director of the museum and historical site, who spoke a bit of English, but we mostly conversed in Vietnamese. I proposed the idea of translating things into English, and he said that they don’t have the means (meaning financial) to do so at the museum. I offered my services, as well as the services of the other volunteers here and the other English teachers at AGU. I’ll propose the idea to them later…he said they not only needed translation of the exhibits, but also English training for the staff so that they could give tours in English. So, we’re in touch now, and hopefully something will work out between AGU and the museum, or at least between me and the museum in my remaining six weeks here with not much work to do.

Next we just rode around the island again. I forgot how quiet and peaceful and absolutely beautiful this place is. I would take everyone who visits Long Xuyen to Tiger Island, because it’s the “real Vietnam experience.” Let me clarify a bit: there are many Vietnams. This I have learned all to well in my time here. Ho Chi Minh City with its expanses of neon lights, Vespa motorbikes, stylish alternative youth, dance clubs and tall buildings is Vietnam. Dalat, with it’s winding European-style streets and architecture, and cool dry climate is Vietnam. Hanoi, with its historical temples and markets as well as soviet-style cement block party buildings is Vietnam. But Tiger Island is the Vietnam you see in movies, the Vietnam you imagine from stories, the countryside with rice fields stretching as far as the eye can see.

About halfway back to the ferry we stopped at a weaving shop on the side of the road where they were making some sort of silk screens that are used to make pig pens. Kristi just walked into the house, and I took the opportunity to also be a little more bold and take some pictures. I asked the woman where we could find an orchard to pick fruit, and she said just up ahead there was a mango orchard. We went on our way and I was beginning to think she didn’t know what she was talking about when…lo and behold, there’s a mango orchard on the right side. No sign saying they were selling mangoes, but we went into the driveway anyway and I asked the woman if they were selling mangoes, or could we pick some. She said the ones on the trees weren’t ripe, but sold us a bunch of fresh ones at 8,000 VND a kilo, a pretty good deal for giant mangoes like these. Her husband, who knew a little bit of English, and more Cambodian because he works at the border in Tinh Bien district, took us around the orchard and to look at the rice paddies behind. Then he invited us to sit down and talk for a while in the shade while we enjoyed a few mangoes “mien phi” and engaged in some interesting small talk about the island, the border with Cambodia, etc. We left reluctantly, because it was so pleasant there, but we had to return the bicycle we’d borrowed from our housekeeper’s son…and made our way back on the ferry about 2 pm, where we then met Thay Dat (my Vietnamese teacher) in the street randomly and sat down to a nice cup of coffee.

It was a day that made me realize how much I’ve learned here, why I love being here, and what I will remember forever about being here. A bit sad, knowing I’ll soon be gone, but this is a good way to feel about a place when you’re leaving: like there’s something to come back to in the future, and something happening when you’re gone that you will get to find out about through various friends who are still here.

In other news, I’m becoming a sap for Vietnamese pop music. Check this one out (sounds very Mariah Carey-ish, which I must say I’m a closet fan of…) http://www.musicwebtown.com/luv24hrap/playlists/7201/57574.mp3