Hàng Ngày

I have ridden a lot of public transportation in my life. Caltrain is one of the cleanest most efficient, most orderly public transportation systems I have seen in the United States. Trains run on schedule. There are always enough seats. You can take your bike on Caltrain and there is a designated car for bikes with orderly racks for bikers to line up according to where they are disembarking. You can drink on Caltrain.

But the best thing about Caltrain is the commuters.

Californians are friendly. I may express frustration at the superficiality of Californians, but I have to give them points for initial friendliness. This goes not only for native Californians but transplants as well. Every time I am on Caltrain someone is making a new friend. I wonder how many couples have met on the Caltrain. It seems that Caltrain should start a matchmaking service. But I digress…

I don’t ride the Caltrain very often but occasionally my work brings me to our closet of an office on Stanford’s campus and I find myself among the community of regular and irregular commuters. Today was just such an occasion: recruiting events at Stanford all day and a dinner date with an old friend from college put me on the Caltrain platform at Palo Alto at 9:01 pm, hoisting my bicycle over my shoulder and heaving myself into the bike car at the front of the train.

After strapping in my bicycle I moved to the last seat in the car and hunched myself down next to the window to stare out into the expansive California suburbia. Before I arrived the entertainment had already begun. Two seats away from me was a group of four Santa Clara University students, their eyelashes heavy with mascara and their cleavage spilling out of their skin-tight tank tops. The young women were rolling their eyes and mocking a group of teenage boys, no older than 15, sitting on the second tier of seats across from them. The hormones were apparently too much for these young gentlemen and they showed immense control in their ability to keep their pants on.

Across from the young women, out of sight of the taunting teenagers sat a middle-aged white woman with thick blue eye shadow and drooping leathery cheek skin giving unsolicited advice and commentary to the young women about when she was a young woman (born and raised in San Francisco). At Menlo Park a middle-aged black man with graying hair took the seat across from the middle-aged white woman and the fun really began. I don’t know how it came up, but somehow within the first 40 seconds of the conversation I heard the woman’s voice rise above the flirtatious taunting of the teenage boys with the claim, “George Bush is a disgrace to humanity. A disgrace. He disgusts me. He should be wiped clean away from this earth.”

The black man tried to lend a voice of reason to the woman’s vehement hatred, saying that the American people were in fact responsible for electing him, and we all had to take responsibility for the way our country has deteriorated over the past eight years, and let’s see what happens with this new president coming in who will listen to everyone. The debate continued and soon the young women from Santa Clara University joined the discussion with their nasal, breathy, valley-girl voices, ignoring for the time being the somewhat annoying but obviously flattering attentions of the 15 year old boys.

At Redwood City a middle-aged heavyset white man with gansta rap blasting from his headphones joined the party and sat one seat ahead, between me and the gaggle of giggling college students. I shrunk into my seat and stared out the window with a slight smile on my face at the fascinating and comical scene unfolding before my eyes and ears.

The middle-aged folks and the college-aged women continued speaking about politics, and race, and the state of humanity, with the black man making statements like:

“Obama, he’s different and we don’t know what will happen with his presidency, but you know what, he’s changing the game.”

And the middle-aged white woman: “Bush is a dictator.”

And one of the black man: “You know, we may be different colors on the outside, but we all bleed red. You know, in the end we’re all just human.”

And one of the young women: “Yeah, I mean, everyone in South Africa is white.”

And the middle-aged white woman: “I was born and raised in San Francisco. Born and bred.”

And another young woman: “We don’t want to just care about ourselves anymore.”

And the gangsta rap in the background and the train pulling to a stop at Hayward Park and the teenagers banging on the glass of the young women’s window and making obscene gestures as the scurried away to their mothers and the train moved out of the station and the black man asked:

“Where are you girls from?”

Southern California. Connecticut.

The young woman said, “You Californians don’t know what cold is!”

And the middle-aged woman: “But when you’re from California born and bred, you have to understand…”

Texas.

“What part of texas?”

And the middle-aged woman: “George Bush is from Texas. Did you ever meet George Bush? He should be wiped clean from the earth. If I met him I’d kill him myself. They only kill the good ones.”

San Antonio.

And the rap music paused for the middle-aged white man to lean forward around the seat in front of him and say “San Antonio? I have a good friend who just moved there. He wants me and my wife and our six-year old daughter to move there too. His daughter and my daughter are best friends.”

The talk shifted to people. California people, southern people, Texans, Northern California versus Southern, Portland, and the black man noted:

“This is Northern California right here. The commuters, we’re a little community right here,” and he chuckled and slapped his palm against his right knee.

And the middle-aged white woman: “I was born and raised in San Francisco. Lived here my whole life.”

The talk continued about San Antonio with the young women telling about the school system, the parks, it’s a great place to raise kids and people there are really friendly, just genuinely friendly. “Southern Hospitality,” they said. The middle-aged white man took mental notes and almost missed his stop with the thrilling dialogue.

“So what are you ladies going up to the city for?” A concert. Their friend is having a concert, and yes, they are skipping class tomorrow to attend, and can they catch a cab from the 22nd Street station, and the black man said: “I don’t know. You know, I never go to the 22nd Street station because of all those stairs. You ever climbed those stairs? No? Well, I have a bike and I just don’t like climbing all those stairs!” He chuckled and slapped his hand against his right knee.

The young women put their four airhead-brains together to think of how to get a cab at the 22nd Street station and were rescued by an unseen voice from the second tier, “The number for Yellow Cab is 333-3333.” And they asked the area code for San Francisco and the black man told them “415” so they called a taxi to pick them up at the 22nd Street station.

At Bayshore the black man prepared to leave and bid farewell to his newfound friends and they said they enjoyed speaking with him and smiled and parted ways. The next stop was 22nd Street and the middle-aged white woman noted, “I never get off at 22nd Street. Too dark. That neighborhood is dangerous. I would never get off there and I was born and raised in San Francisco.” The young students mentioned the taxi and that they felt confident they could make it with a group of four.

When we arrived at the station they said goodbye and it was me and the woman who was born and raised in San Francisco sitting catty-corner to each other alone in the bike car of the northbound 9:01 Caltrain to 4th and King. She smiled at me and I smiled back and I yawned and she yawned and we smiled again and then I turned away and looked out the window at the approaching lights of the final station, the last stop.

We pulled in at 9:56 PM and I hitched my bike up onto my shoulder one more time and carefully maneuvered myself down the metal stairs with controlled leg muscles and lowered the bike to the ground, wheeled it out to the sidewalk and pushed away from the curb to feel the cold San Francisco night rush into my nostrils and suck the tears out of my eyes blinding me for a moment in the relative blackness of the deserted street beyond the Caltrain Station.

Tonight I smiled and remembered fondly my fifth grade teacher Linda Churchill while I listened to the third verse of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” spoken by Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery on the occasion of America’s first ever black president being sworn into office.  I hummed along the tune while the reverend recited the familiar words that I was asked to memorize and perform as an eleven year old. Tonight I will go to sleep with these words ringing in my ears:

“Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.
Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.

For the past week I have been distracted. On Thursday and Friday I attended the US-Vietnam Conference on Higher Education Partnerships in Vietnam. The conference, jointly sponsored by the US Embassy and the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training, was held at the five-star Sheraton Hotel in the heart of Saigon.  Over 400 representatives from universities, non-profits and businesses in the US, Vietnam, and other countries enjoyed two days of exchanging business cards, nibbling hors d’ouvres, and debating how to best fix the education system of Vietnam. I had the privilege of meeting the US Ambassador to Vietnam, the founder of a revolutionary private university set to launch next year, and the heads of several multi-million dollar corporations doing business in Vietnam.

While listening to the intricacies of Vietnamese monetary policy with respect to donations from foreign individuals and corporations, my eyes fell to the desk and instead of the half-scribbled-upon notepad in front of me I saw only the pale green tips of rice stalks glistening in the early morning sunlight. Beyond the field of spring rice plants a stretch of rounded mountains cast a dark shadow over the bustle of early morning activity in the one-road town.

Five days ago I spent the evening sitting in a folding chair on a dusty island in the middle of a small pond overlooking the main road in town. The full moon rose slowly over the mountains and lit the faces of my new friends smiling and teasing each other as we sipped warm coffee laden with sweetened condensed milk.
Five days ago I spent the day speaking with a woman who makes decorative coasters, bowls, and plates out of bamboo cut into thin strips and curled into tight coils before being sanded, stained, and dried in the sun. She smiled to reveal two missing teeth on the right side of her mouth as she told me about her family and how the two dollars per day she makes from the handicraft workshop gives her the extra money she needs to ensure that her children stay in school and her livestock are adequately cared for. On the way back to the project office I spoke with one of my new friends about his reasons for choosing to work for a small community development organization in the middle of nowhere, and his answer articulated the feeling I have not been able to shake from my mind and my soul.

Tonight I arrived in Bangkok: tired, hungry and overwhelmed by the immense disparity of what I have seen this week. As the cab sped down the superhighway between Bangkok’s International Airport and the city center, the image of pale green rice stalks etched in my brain bled into the dark shadows of forty-story buildings. I thought of the one-lane half-paved road from Lac Tanh town to Vietnam’s own “superhighway.”

Driving under an overpass I noticed a stand of ramshackle shanties with corrugated iron roofs and tarps for walls. An old man with no shoes limped along the side of the highway in the darkness. I turned my head 45 degrees and saw a skyscraper with rows of blue-tinted oval windows lining the highest stories and wondered briefly what Vietnam is doing to itself. Doi moi. The WTO. KFC. Saigon South.

For a brief moment I thought of my new friends at the handicraft factory and office in Lac Tanh town and wanted to flee back to the countryside with a warning of the impending difficulty that economic development will undoubtedly bring to the poorest regions of Vietnam. A moment later I had to laugh at myself for thinking that 1) I could actually shelter an entire community from the massive hands of globalization and 2) It was my place to do so.

What would my new friends in Lac Tanh think of these paved six-lane overpasses and semi-truck-sized billboard advertisements?

For a moment my mind flashed into the future and imagined that I was an old woman returning to Vietnam for a workshop, conference, or something of the like, my taxi speeding down a superhighway bound for Ho Chi Minh City. Newly built skyscrapers tower on the horizon and an old hunched-over woman with betel nut juice seeping from the corner of her mouth limps barefoot toward her corrugated-iron house under an overpass. The lights of the city cast a warm orange glow into the sky and mix with the vision of pale-green rice stalks still etched in my mind.