PROUD

Proud

Since I am sufficiently removed from the country of Viet Nam I feel it is now appropriate to begin some heavy introspection. I began this process in the taxi to the Sai Gon airport, in fact, but it was a bit muddled and nonlinear due to the onrush of emotion and my constant flow of tears. Here goes something.

I lived as a minority and engaged with some of the 52 different ethnic minorities in Viet Nam. I taught my first language and learned a second. I occasionally wear the traditional dress and constantly crave fetal ducks, hard-boiled and still nestled in their eggs. I was a regular on the Ha Noi buses and got my bánh mì trúng from the same teenage daughter/grandfather team. I played simple games of baseball and soccer with my students and then went inside the school building and taught them English. I became a part of the lives of those locals around me as they became a part of mine. I was able to give as much as I took. I have had a Sai Gon city bus touch my foot as I sat on the back of a friend’s bicycle during heavy traffic. I have had a full meal of snake and have enjoyed snake wine, which tastes like a mix of iron and rice wine, on more than one occasion. I have stoically shuffled past the embalmed body of Viet Nam’s beloved former leader, Ho Chi Minh. I have cried out “Xin chao, dong chi!” to the uniformed and armed guards standing watch outside the American and French consulates. The Secretary General of Viet Nam’s Communist Party, Nong Duc Manh, nodded a silent thanks to me during a ceremony at my school. I can haggle in Vietnamese for anything, simply because it’s the principle of being white and being charged more for daily services and food. On the other hand, an old man has asked me if I was Vietnamese American.
I have fraternized with the “other side.” I have visited the rice paddies that became battlefields, crawled through the dank and scorpion-ridden tunnels of Cu Chi, more than 30 meters under the ground. Because of this, I have firsthand knowledge and experience when it comes to beating a world superpower at their own game.
I have avoided all types of birds in order to prevent bird flu and did not eat uncooked fruits and vegetables during a large Cholera outbreak in Ha Noi. I have the utmost respect for the courage and strength of the Vietnamese people as I have visited many of their war museums and discovered exactly how many times they defended themselves from foreign invasion on their own soil. I have carved oddly shaped, Vietnamese pumpkins with my supervisor, students, and their parents. I have ridden my own bike and have sat on the back of another person’s bike during tire-to-tire rush hour traffic in both Sai Gon and Ha Noi. While taking photographs around Hoan Kiem Lake, I was told of the parallels between the American War and the Iraq War by an older man who was sporting an old Communist pith helmet and huge aviators. I sang a Vietnamese children’s song with some small kids in Sapa. I was attacked by a leech while walking through the Hoa An Biodiversity Center in the Mekong Delta. DiDi and I enjoyed pedaling around on tandem bikes in more than one city. Since I consumed at least one kilogram of fruit per day, I had a standing deal with the older women who sold fruit right outside our dorm gate. I can immediately recognize the difference between the Vietnamese accent of the northerns and the southerners and I can joke about it. I have observed, absorbed, and marveled at the absolute grace, poise, beauty, and pride of the Vietnamese people. I have seen a famous Vietnamese singer, Thu Minh, perform in Ha Noi. I visited the marketplaces and made old, toothless women smile by confirming what they already knew-that their grandchild is beautiful. I helped to plan and throw a Halloween party for over 200 students and their families. I have watched people of all ages making rice paper, candy, bricks, and pottery in the Mekong Delta. I met DiDi, cuddled constantly, and made a new best friend. I visited pagodas, spoke with Buddhist monks as young as my teenaged brother, and cried as I experienced their religion in practice. I surfed, jumped from cliffs, dove off boats, and snorkeled in the clear waters of Sapa, Ha Long Bay, and the Pacific Ocean. I have stopped catcalling men in their tracks with my Vietnamese. (This never made the situation any better, though). Water buffaloes are better to ride than horses. In Mai Chau, an extremely small village in Northern Viet Nam, I got in on a game of marbles with some small children whose laughter filled the dirt roads around us. I saw the legendary and gigantic turtle in Hoan Kiem Lake. I ran into a Vietnamese person I knew on the bus one day. I know when the Vietnamese are talking about other Americans or Caucasians around us. I befriended a small street boy and constantly provided him with fruit and a bit of money with which he bought himself meals. An older man legitimately asked me to marry his eldest son as a result of my English and Vietnamese skills. I have surprised many motorbike taxi drivers by directing them to my dorm using Vietnamese. I have slept in a house on stilts in the middle of a river and was woken up by a passing boat and its’ foghorn. I was taught to make Vietnamese spring rolls by my friends and then showed them how to make an American meal of minestrone soup, grilled cheese, and macaroni and cheese. Squatting on the sidewalk while waiting for the bus was seen as low class but i did it almost daily anyways. I have been stopped in the hallway of my guest house by the cleaning lady, only to have per pantomime that my heart and cross has alerted her to the fact that we are sisters in Christ. I have praised God (Chua) in another language, having attended a Protestant church in Da Lat. I have spent house searched for shells in caves in Ha Long Bay. Pictionary and charades have been perfected during the first half of the semester and are now my games of choice. I was the goalie for a game of “kick the empty water bottle” which was held by some little boys at the Sai Gon horse racing track on one sunny Sunday afternoon. I have watched motorbike crashes that end with a space cleared on the street and a bucket hat brimming with blood. I have visited an orphanage in Nha Trang and surprised the children when I was able to speak to them in Vietnamese. I made it a point to joke around with the little boys who sit on the corners and pump up my bicycle tires. An elderly woman silently invited me to pray with her during the noonday festival at the Cao Dai Holy See. I visited a flag store and was greeted by four generations of one family, working and living under one roof together. I have seen the sun rise over the mountains that protrude from the water in Ha Long. I have seen the end of the day at rice paddies, the fading light framing the small children riding on water buffaloes and their mothers still stooping to farm rice, their conical hats shielding their face from the setting sun. I noticed that you can do quite well by saying less. I was taught to live simply and with pride.
I am proud to have spent three months in a new country. This country is, thankfully, nothing like the country of which I am a citizen. I learned a new language, fought my own battles, utilized this language to fight these battles, and became part of a new culture. This culture, which was at one time very new and foreign to me, has managed to nestle itself into my heart and, in light of the current holiday season, my heart grew three sizes these past few months. I fell in love with a nation: its language, its land, and most importantly, its people.


Thank you for reading/looking at the pictures, whatever time you invested to keep updated on my crazy adventures in Viet Nam. I'll be going back after I graduate from Hobart in 2009...