Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Vietnam: Profiles and Prospectives
Vietnam: A land of Contrasts.
Profiles & Perspectives
Eunice E. Valentine
March 2009
My first morning in Hanoi I wake early and wind my way down the narrow Hang Dau Street toward Hoan Kiem Lake just a few blocks from of our Hotel Serenade nestled in the Old Quarter. The small shops are already open for business but the shopkeepers sit around open woks fired up to cook the family breakfast on the sidewalk. I brazenly dash across the wide Dinh Tien Hoang Boulevard praying the speeding motorbikes, cyclists and cars won’t wipe me out on my first day. I feel absolutely gleeful as I stroll the mile around this picturesque lake situated in the heart of Hanoi. Snapping my camera lens to capture the scene: elderly men and women doing Tai Chi, young couples snuggled up on park benches, a women’s badminton game, joggers, policemen, street sweepers, gardeners pulling weeds, and tourist- like me-pointing their cameras at the bright red Huc Bridge and the ancient Ngoc son Temple in the middle of the lake.
Hanoi is a city of lakes and parks and a colorful history that goes back over a thousand years. For Americans perhaps the best known lake in Hanoi is the HoTay (West Lake) and Truc Bach Lake, where John McCain fell when his plane was shot down. There is a monument by these lakes that identifies it as the place where John Mc Cain and many American pilots were shot down. There is red paint that looks like blood dripped over some of the letters. It gave us the chills and we didn’t linger long.
On this my first visit back to Vietnam in 39 years, I am struck by the sharp contrasts: The luxury, designer clothes hung on racks just above the sidewalk cooking pots where the shop keeper’s family eat most their meals. The farmers till the rice fields with the family’s single water buffalo while jets from Hanoi International Airport zoom overhead. Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum swarms with guards directing visitors to line up, single file to walk past Uncle Ho lying under a glass dome (40 years after his death) and yet there are few guards standing watch in Hanoi’s Fine Art’s Museum or the Temple of Literature which house cultural artifacts thousands of years old. TV’s are a common site in rural Vietnamese homes, even though there is no indoor plumbing or stable electricity.
Young boys at the Nuoc Ngot Orphanage in Phu Loc between Hue and Danang entertained us with a mean impression of Michael Jackson’s break dancing and moon walk. Our guide, Song, explains that MTV is a hit in Vietnam when we ask how they learned this dance routine. This orphanage houses about 400 children with disabilities and yet has no clean or dependable water source. When we asked the young attentive nuns what the children need most she lists three priorities: a water system that is piped in and filtered, bikes for the kids who now have to walk two hours each direction to school and more beds so the kids don’t have to sleep two or three to a bed. Before we leave the orphanage that afternoon, our group has donated enough for four bikes and four beds. Spontaneous philanthropy we called it - to do what we could to make an immediate improvement in the life of these cheerful, enterprising children. Actually, that reflects the heart of our trip – to help the people of Vietnam and continue to heal the wounds from the war. We call our trip, “Humanitarian Adventures.”
I returned from my 2 week journey through Vietnam- from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, with a backpack overflowing with new stories. I’ll share just a glimpse of some of the people we met and their stories.
Lan is a 36 year single mother with 2 young boys. Until this past month, she has lived in a tin hut in a mountain hamlet outside Danang. Three generations of her family have lived in this hamlet where people still carry water from a well and cook their meals on an open fire pit in their huts. Electricity is a luxury- when it works. It was hard to believe that American civilians had not visited this hamlet before our group, the Humanitarian Adventurers, arrived to paint the front door of the new house we had sponsored for Lan and her family. Our little painting party combined with impromptu badmitten and soccer games with the children provided sufficient entertainment to attract the entire hamlet population. The climax of our visit was sharing lunch with the family in the largest room of the new two room cinder-block house. At the end of the meal, the 76 year old matriarch stood up and gave a heartwarming speech thanking us for changing the life of her daughter and grandchildren. We learned that her daughter was divorced (a victim of domestic violence) and earned a living by gathering firewood on the nearby mountain and selling it to earn four dollars a day, or by working as a day laborer.
Nguyen Xuan Tam is a young Vietnamese man who works for Global Community Services in Dong Ha, a village not far from the former DMZ in Quang Tri Province. He is a college graduate and has learned to speak the dialect of the Montagnard tribe, one of 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam. Tam loves literature and writes poetry and stories. We enjoyed a lively discussion of his favorite American writers- Faulkner is at the top of his list. I couldn’t believe he thought Faulkner easier to read than Hemingway! Tam is concerned that the Montagnard children don’t have access to many books and he is attempting to translate a few children’s adventure stories (Treasure Island and Prince and the Pauper) into their language.
Since I share Tam’s passion for books, it was not surprising that we connected on a level that overcame our language and cultural differences. Tam speaks fluent English and French. What really impressed me about Tam was the strength of his conviction that books and access to stories and ideas beyond ones own culture can and does improve the lives of children. He grew up in a small village that had no library or book store - as is still the situation for most villages in Vietnam. When the public library in Hue (about 2 hours south of his village) flooded a few years ago and they had to discard books, he traveled there on his motorbike to salvage old classics he had not read yet. To own his own copy of books gives him a thrill and his ambition is to see that hundreds of Vietnamese children gain access to books.
I shared my fondness for Tam with our tour guide, Song, over dinner that night. I inquired about the various projects underway to build more libraries in Vietnam. Song, who is also a bookworm, excitedly shared his vision to have buses filled with books that would travel from village to village in the rural provinces of Vietnam. “You mean a bookmobile?” I inquired. He didn’t seem familiar with this concept, so several of us explained how bookmobiles operate in American. “Yes,” he exclaimed brightly, “this is what we need here because children have to walk too far to the libraries, so the only books they have access to are the text books in their small schools.”
Five days into the journey as we traveled through Danang and Hoi An, I asked myself why I waited so long to return. Why was I so afraid of stepping foot on Vietnam soil again? When I stood at the gate of the former Hoa Khanh Children’s Hospital in Danang (that is now a mental hospital), the guard refused to let us enter without a permit from the local authorities. Our guide, Song, who is from Danang and knew about Hoa Khanh Hospital, tried to convince him I was a safe tourist who had worked at this hospital during the war. But the guard won’t budge. I had expected that my visit to the hospital would be a high point or at least a big emotional experience for me. While I was disappointed that I couldn’t get close to the original building, I realized as we drove away that the place where I served was almost immaterial and it was the people I had come to see.
The truth was I didn’t recognize anything in Danang except the mountains in the distance and the beaches. The city of Danang is about 4 times larger now and has developed the beach front with hotels, condos and housing projects. There are beautiful brick walking paths along the beaches both north and south of the city and it appears that the local residents make good use of these as well as the tourists. I was very grateful to our guide, Song, who graciously stopped the bus at China Beach so I could have my photo taken on this beach where we had spent many leisurely Sunday afternoons during the war.
I left Vietnam with many lasting impressions and excited about the promising future of a country that only a generation ago was almost destroyed by three successive wars. Considering that now 50% of the population is under 25 years of age and that the literacy rate is over 90%, I am convinced that the young, enterprising Vietnamese will propel their country into world-wide leadership on a number of fronts.
On my return flight, I shifted through my journal notes and realized that I cannot close the book on my personal involvement with Vietnam. There is a strong cord of connection I feel and now that my desire to foster this connection has been rekindled, I will look for more opportunities to return and even more important to be instrumental in fostering the progress of this country. Perhaps, of all the compelling needs and causes I learned about on this trip, my personal interests are drawn to support the literary advancement and the cultural exchange of American and Vietnamese youth. I’m not sure what form this might take, but I’ll be researching the opportunities.
Profiles & Perspectives
Eunice E. Valentine
March 2009
My first morning in Hanoi I wake early and wind my way down the narrow Hang Dau Street toward Hoan Kiem Lake just a few blocks from of our Hotel Serenade nestled in the Old Quarter. The small shops are already open for business but the shopkeepers sit around open woks fired up to cook the family breakfast on the sidewalk. I brazenly dash across the wide Dinh Tien Hoang Boulevard praying the speeding motorbikes, cyclists and cars won’t wipe me out on my first day. I feel absolutely gleeful as I stroll the mile around this picturesque lake situated in the heart of Hanoi. Snapping my camera lens to capture the scene: elderly men and women doing Tai Chi, young couples snuggled up on park benches, a women’s badminton game, joggers, policemen, street sweepers, gardeners pulling weeds, and tourist- like me-pointing their cameras at the bright red Huc Bridge and the ancient Ngoc son Temple in the middle of the lake.
Hanoi is a city of lakes and parks and a colorful history that goes back over a thousand years. For Americans perhaps the best known lake in Hanoi is the HoTay (West Lake) and Truc Bach Lake, where John McCain fell when his plane was shot down. There is a monument by these lakes that identifies it as the place where John Mc Cain and many American pilots were shot down. There is red paint that looks like blood dripped over some of the letters. It gave us the chills and we didn’t linger long.
On this my first visit back to Vietnam in 39 years, I am struck by the sharp contrasts: The luxury, designer clothes hung on racks just above the sidewalk cooking pots where the shop keeper’s family eat most their meals. The farmers till the rice fields with the family’s single water buffalo while jets from Hanoi International Airport zoom overhead. Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum swarms with guards directing visitors to line up, single file to walk past Uncle Ho lying under a glass dome (40 years after his death) and yet there are few guards standing watch in Hanoi’s Fine Art’s Museum or the Temple of Literature which house cultural artifacts thousands of years old. TV’s are a common site in rural Vietnamese homes, even though there is no indoor plumbing or stable electricity.
Young boys at the Nuoc Ngot Orphanage in Phu Loc between Hue and Danang entertained us with a mean impression of Michael Jackson’s break dancing and moon walk. Our guide, Song, explains that MTV is a hit in Vietnam when we ask how they learned this dance routine. This orphanage houses about 400 children with disabilities and yet has no clean or dependable water source. When we asked the young attentive nuns what the children need most she lists three priorities: a water system that is piped in and filtered, bikes for the kids who now have to walk two hours each direction to school and more beds so the kids don’t have to sleep two or three to a bed. Before we leave the orphanage that afternoon, our group has donated enough for four bikes and four beds. Spontaneous philanthropy we called it - to do what we could to make an immediate improvement in the life of these cheerful, enterprising children. Actually, that reflects the heart of our trip – to help the people of Vietnam and continue to heal the wounds from the war. We call our trip, “Humanitarian Adventures.”
I returned from my 2 week journey through Vietnam- from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, with a backpack overflowing with new stories. I’ll share just a glimpse of some of the people we met and their stories.
Lan is a 36 year single mother with 2 young boys. Until this past month, she has lived in a tin hut in a mountain hamlet outside Danang. Three generations of her family have lived in this hamlet where people still carry water from a well and cook their meals on an open fire pit in their huts. Electricity is a luxury- when it works. It was hard to believe that American civilians had not visited this hamlet before our group, the Humanitarian Adventurers, arrived to paint the front door of the new house we had sponsored for Lan and her family. Our little painting party combined with impromptu badmitten and soccer games with the children provided sufficient entertainment to attract the entire hamlet population. The climax of our visit was sharing lunch with the family in the largest room of the new two room cinder-block house. At the end of the meal, the 76 year old matriarch stood up and gave a heartwarming speech thanking us for changing the life of her daughter and grandchildren. We learned that her daughter was divorced (a victim of domestic violence) and earned a living by gathering firewood on the nearby mountain and selling it to earn four dollars a day, or by working as a day laborer.
Nguyen Xuan Tam is a young Vietnamese man who works for Global Community Services in Dong Ha, a village not far from the former DMZ in Quang Tri Province. He is a college graduate and has learned to speak the dialect of the Montagnard tribe, one of 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam. Tam loves literature and writes poetry and stories. We enjoyed a lively discussion of his favorite American writers- Faulkner is at the top of his list. I couldn’t believe he thought Faulkner easier to read than Hemingway! Tam is concerned that the Montagnard children don’t have access to many books and he is attempting to translate a few children’s adventure stories (Treasure Island and Prince and the Pauper) into their language.
Since I share Tam’s passion for books, it was not surprising that we connected on a level that overcame our language and cultural differences. Tam speaks fluent English and French. What really impressed me about Tam was the strength of his conviction that books and access to stories and ideas beyond ones own culture can and does improve the lives of children. He grew up in a small village that had no library or book store - as is still the situation for most villages in Vietnam. When the public library in Hue (about 2 hours south of his village) flooded a few years ago and they had to discard books, he traveled there on his motorbike to salvage old classics he had not read yet. To own his own copy of books gives him a thrill and his ambition is to see that hundreds of Vietnamese children gain access to books.
I shared my fondness for Tam with our tour guide, Song, over dinner that night. I inquired about the various projects underway to build more libraries in Vietnam. Song, who is also a bookworm, excitedly shared his vision to have buses filled with books that would travel from village to village in the rural provinces of Vietnam. “You mean a bookmobile?” I inquired. He didn’t seem familiar with this concept, so several of us explained how bookmobiles operate in American. “Yes,” he exclaimed brightly, “this is what we need here because children have to walk too far to the libraries, so the only books they have access to are the text books in their small schools.”
Five days into the journey as we traveled through Danang and Hoi An, I asked myself why I waited so long to return. Why was I so afraid of stepping foot on Vietnam soil again? When I stood at the gate of the former Hoa Khanh Children’s Hospital in Danang (that is now a mental hospital), the guard refused to let us enter without a permit from the local authorities. Our guide, Song, who is from Danang and knew about Hoa Khanh Hospital, tried to convince him I was a safe tourist who had worked at this hospital during the war. But the guard won’t budge. I had expected that my visit to the hospital would be a high point or at least a big emotional experience for me. While I was disappointed that I couldn’t get close to the original building, I realized as we drove away that the place where I served was almost immaterial and it was the people I had come to see.
The truth was I didn’t recognize anything in Danang except the mountains in the distance and the beaches. The city of Danang is about 4 times larger now and has developed the beach front with hotels, condos and housing projects. There are beautiful brick walking paths along the beaches both north and south of the city and it appears that the local residents make good use of these as well as the tourists. I was very grateful to our guide, Song, who graciously stopped the bus at China Beach so I could have my photo taken on this beach where we had spent many leisurely Sunday afternoons during the war.
I left Vietnam with many lasting impressions and excited about the promising future of a country that only a generation ago was almost destroyed by three successive wars. Considering that now 50% of the population is under 25 years of age and that the literacy rate is over 90%, I am convinced that the young, enterprising Vietnamese will propel their country into world-wide leadership on a number of fronts.
On my return flight, I shifted through my journal notes and realized that I cannot close the book on my personal involvement with Vietnam. There is a strong cord of connection I feel and now that my desire to foster this connection has been rekindled, I will look for more opportunities to return and even more important to be instrumental in fostering the progress of this country. Perhaps, of all the compelling needs and causes I learned about on this trip, my personal interests are drawn to support the literary advancement and the cultural exchange of American and Vietnamese youth. I’m not sure what form this might take, but I’ll be researching the opportunities.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Let By-Gones be By- Gones
Let By-Gones be By-Gones
A Vietnam perspective
E.E. Valentine
Hue, Vietnam, February 25, 2009
“Let by-gones be by-gones.” An official with the Veteran Association of Vietnam (VAVN) stated bluntly during our meeting with him in Hanoi. Earlier the same morning our group of 11 Americans was honored with a private meeting with the former Vietnamese Ambassador to the U.S., Nguyen Tam Chien, and he told us that Vietnam believes in shaking hands with their enemy after the battles. All the Vietnamese we have met during this humanitarian adventure have repeated this sentiment. From the Foreign Affairs officer, to the young men and women leaders of the NGO’s, the Vietnamese perspective when it comes to the Americans is; we have moved on. The War is history and we welcome your American innovations, investment, tourists and friendship.
While the war is never far from our minds as we travel the spine of this beautiful country, it is not the topic of interest to the Vietnamese. In fact, a young college woman, who stopped us to practice her English while we were walking along the Perfume River this evening, said she had not heard of the American/Vietnamese War. (Somehow we think either she didn’t understand, or she was demonstrating extreme politeness.) The youthful exuberant energy is evident throughout Vietnam and it isn’t surprising when you realize that over 50% of the population is under the age of 25!
Our last official meeting in Hanoi took me to the breaking point as we encountered 3 generations of victims of Agent Orange at Friendship Village, a vocational school and health facility for children and veterans who exhibit physical and developmental disabilities due to Agent Orange. The children surrounded us with cheerful greetings in English, “Hello”, Hello!” The children proudly displayed their crafts and of course we couldn’t resist buying a few.
Yesterday and today we have toured NGO’s in Quang Tri Province. This area of central Vietnam had some of the heaviest fighting of the war. At Project Renew, (their mission is:”Restoring the Environment and Neutralizing of the Effects of the War.”) We visited 2 families who have received micro-loans to buy a water buffalo and cows or pigs to restore the family farm after the father was killed or seriously injured by explosions of UXO (unexploded ordinances) left buried in the fields. These families make an average of $40.00 a month or less. Many of them earn a living by selling scrap metal they discover in the fields. Using homemade metal detectors the men go directly into the areas the farmers know have buried unexplored mortars. It might seem foolhardy to us, but the families who have no water buffalo or other livestock to plow the fields have few options. One family was so excited because their water buffalo had a baby this year, so now they can rent out the buffalo to other farmers and make more.
It was shocking to me to learn that 92% of the land over the 1000 square miles of this province in central Vietnam still has unexploded war ordinances and land mines. This morning we met a young woman who works now for Clear Path International who lost her leg 5 years ago when she stepped on a mine in her family’s rice patty. Through assistance from Clear Path, she has not only received more education, and assistance with rehabilitation, she has also become a runner and won gold medals at national competitions. Clear Path’s brochure says it all: “When Wars End.landmines and bombs remain.”
Our road trip today took us into the mountain area close to the former DMZ, the line that separated North and South Vietnam. This area is breathtakingly beautiful, with lush green hillsides, coffee crops, rivers, streams and quiet country lanes that lead to the Montagnard people with their colorful homes on stilts. I think all of us were relieved to get out of the congested city traffic and breath the mountain air and clear our heads. A real treat was visiting a new community center and preschool built by Global Community Services Foundation. We sat in a circle on straw mats with the elders of this ethnic people and heard them talk about why the community center is important in preserving their culture. The leader said they had trouble keeping the young people interested in their customs and if they had a TV or cassette recorder for movies and music, their youth might come to the center. The first obstacle was that they needed about $60.00 to bring in electric meters. On the spot, one woman in our group took out her wallet and gave the village leader enough for the electricity and the T.V.
The real highlight of our tour so far has been meeting the impressive young leaders in Vietnamese government and NGO’s. They are well educated, eager to learn, innovate and demonstrate incredible ambition and determination to succeed. I really enjoyed talking about American Literature with one young man who guided us today and shared lunch with us in Khe Shanh. He told me he is trying to translate several children’s books and get more books for children in small villages where they don’t have libraries or bookstores. I asked him if he had heard of Amazon, of course, he replied, but I don’t have a bank account for that.
Tonight we enjoyed a luxurious dinner in the courtyard of the Saigon Morin Hotel on the Perfume River in Hue. This old French Colonial Hotel takes us into a different world than the one we experienced just a few hours earlier. It is almost easy to forget the war happened here and that thousands of Vietnamese are still living with the consequences every day when they risk stepping into their fields.
Tomorrow we’ll step back in time as we visit the ancient citadel here in Hue.
A Vietnam perspective
E.E. Valentine
Hue, Vietnam, February 25, 2009
“Let by-gones be by-gones.” An official with the Veteran Association of Vietnam (VAVN) stated bluntly during our meeting with him in Hanoi. Earlier the same morning our group of 11 Americans was honored with a private meeting with the former Vietnamese Ambassador to the U.S., Nguyen Tam Chien, and he told us that Vietnam believes in shaking hands with their enemy after the battles. All the Vietnamese we have met during this humanitarian adventure have repeated this sentiment. From the Foreign Affairs officer, to the young men and women leaders of the NGO’s, the Vietnamese perspective when it comes to the Americans is; we have moved on. The War is history and we welcome your American innovations, investment, tourists and friendship.
While the war is never far from our minds as we travel the spine of this beautiful country, it is not the topic of interest to the Vietnamese. In fact, a young college woman, who stopped us to practice her English while we were walking along the Perfume River this evening, said she had not heard of the American/Vietnamese War. (Somehow we think either she didn’t understand, or she was demonstrating extreme politeness.) The youthful exuberant energy is evident throughout Vietnam and it isn’t surprising when you realize that over 50% of the population is under the age of 25!
Our last official meeting in Hanoi took me to the breaking point as we encountered 3 generations of victims of Agent Orange at Friendship Village, a vocational school and health facility for children and veterans who exhibit physical and developmental disabilities due to Agent Orange. The children surrounded us with cheerful greetings in English, “Hello”, Hello!” The children proudly displayed their crafts and of course we couldn’t resist buying a few.
Yesterday and today we have toured NGO’s in Quang Tri Province. This area of central Vietnam had some of the heaviest fighting of the war. At Project Renew, (their mission is:”Restoring the Environment and Neutralizing of the Effects of the War.”) We visited 2 families who have received micro-loans to buy a water buffalo and cows or pigs to restore the family farm after the father was killed or seriously injured by explosions of UXO (unexploded ordinances) left buried in the fields. These families make an average of $40.00 a month or less. Many of them earn a living by selling scrap metal they discover in the fields. Using homemade metal detectors the men go directly into the areas the farmers know have buried unexplored mortars. It might seem foolhardy to us, but the families who have no water buffalo or other livestock to plow the fields have few options. One family was so excited because their water buffalo had a baby this year, so now they can rent out the buffalo to other farmers and make more.
It was shocking to me to learn that 92% of the land over the 1000 square miles of this province in central Vietnam still has unexploded war ordinances and land mines. This morning we met a young woman who works now for Clear Path International who lost her leg 5 years ago when she stepped on a mine in her family’s rice patty. Through assistance from Clear Path, she has not only received more education, and assistance with rehabilitation, she has also become a runner and won gold medals at national competitions. Clear Path’s brochure says it all: “When Wars End.landmines and bombs remain.”
Our road trip today took us into the mountain area close to the former DMZ, the line that separated North and South Vietnam. This area is breathtakingly beautiful, with lush green hillsides, coffee crops, rivers, streams and quiet country lanes that lead to the Montagnard people with their colorful homes on stilts. I think all of us were relieved to get out of the congested city traffic and breath the mountain air and clear our heads. A real treat was visiting a new community center and preschool built by Global Community Services Foundation. We sat in a circle on straw mats with the elders of this ethnic people and heard them talk about why the community center is important in preserving their culture. The leader said they had trouble keeping the young people interested in their customs and if they had a TV or cassette recorder for movies and music, their youth might come to the center. The first obstacle was that they needed about $60.00 to bring in electric meters. On the spot, one woman in our group took out her wallet and gave the village leader enough for the electricity and the T.V.
The real highlight of our tour so far has been meeting the impressive young leaders in Vietnamese government and NGO’s. They are well educated, eager to learn, innovate and demonstrate incredible ambition and determination to succeed. I really enjoyed talking about American Literature with one young man who guided us today and shared lunch with us in Khe Shanh. He told me he is trying to translate several children’s books and get more books for children in small villages where they don’t have libraries or bookstores. I asked him if he had heard of Amazon, of course, he replied, but I don’t have a bank account for that.
Tonight we enjoyed a luxurious dinner in the courtyard of the Saigon Morin Hotel on the Perfume River in Hue. This old French Colonial Hotel takes us into a different world than the one we experienced just a few hours earlier. It is almost easy to forget the war happened here and that thousands of Vietnamese are still living with the consequences every day when they risk stepping into their fields.
Tomorrow we’ll step back in time as we visit the ancient citadel here in Hue.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Some Thoughts on Returning to Vietnam
Some Thoughts on returning to Vietnam
eevalentine-pearlfishing.blogspot.com
February 2009
I stepped foot on Vietnamese soil just a week after Ho Chi Minh died in September 1969. Two months prior to this I had stayed up all night to witness Neil Armstrong’s one giant step for mankind on the moon. During the ride from Tan Son Nhut Airport through Saigon’s mad-cap traffic to the missionary guest house where my young husband and I along with 8 other freshly recruited volunteer relief workers would stay during our orientation, I felt as though I had indeed landed in a place as foreign as the moon. Those first glimpses of the extreme poverty; refugees crowded into make-shift shanties, military trucks and jeeps overpowering the ubiquitous motorbikes and tri-shaws, the steam rising out of sidewalk food vendors pots and men openly relieving themselves on the side of the road. All these street scenes filled me with the overwhelming realization that I was clueless about this civilization, this country called Vietnam.
Over the years, I have fed my obsession with Vietnam by filling my home library with dozens of books written by Vietnamese, French and American writers. I sat through every movie made about Vietnam, allowing the tears to flow hoping, I suppose, for some cleansing ritual. Now as I eagerly anticipate my first visit to Vietnam since I departed in August 1971, I wonder how my experience of present-day Vietnam will compare with my jumbled web of memories and the volumes of books and articles I’ve read over the years.
I’m one more American returning with a backpack spilling over with memories and stories that no doubt over time have blurred the actual facts. I’ve protected certain memories of those two years that I served as a volunteer administrative and fund raising assistant at Hoa Khanh Children’s Hospital, located 10 miles north of Da Nang. The stories I have written and that have shaped my personal history contrast with the other Americans who I worked with at Hoa Khanh. The one consistency in all our stories is the black cloud of fear that shadowed us every single day. The hospital had been built as a joint humanitarian project by the Navy’s Seabees and the Marine for refugee children whose families had poured into the hamlets surrounding DaNang. The hospital stood just inside the entrance to Camp Books, Force Logistic Command Base of the Marine Corp. This served as the largest supply base for I Corp, the northern sector of South Vietnam. “Rocket Alley” the nick-name for our new ‘home’ got shelled almost every night the first few months of our in country adventure. We learned to hear the distinct difference in the whistling sirens of in coming versus out going rockets. Between the constant sounds of war and seeing the broken and burned little bodies of the children lying in the hospital, death seemed to close in around us. At the ripe age of 21 I doubted that I would make it out in one piece. On the worst nights, I believed I would die on Vietnamese soil.
For years after my safe return home, I tried to put Vietnam behind me and get on with my life. When I stepped off the plane in San Francisco and fell into the hugs of my sisters, I fully expected that it would be possible to just dust myself off and pick up life where we left it after college graduation and our wedding. I was determined to guide my life script, like a well crafted story: launch my career, get a graduate degree, have children and settle into a happy marriage. After all, none of my worst fears had come true: I was not injured, not captured and force marched up the Ho Chi Minh Trail to a prison (which was my worst nightmare) and I even escaped contacting tropical diseases. The fear with a capital F had wormed its way deep into my unconscious and over time manifested in the usual forms, nightmares, jumping at loud popping sounds, and a suspicion that if I ever returned to Vietnam, death would hunt me down and get me the second time around.
I carry a load of disappointments and guilt from those years; disappointed that I curled into the fear, allowed the ‘foreignness’ of Vietnam to scare me enough so I shrank into the false protection of the U.S. military and never really allowed my curiosity and love of adventure to open up to the vast and wondrous Vietnamese history and culture. I ventured only superficially beyond the American dominated universe at Hoa Khanh Children’s Hospital. The Vietnamese nurses and other staff seemed in awe of American ways and adapted to the requirements to be employed on an American military base. They were even given American names which they readily assumed in deference to the overpowering western influence. There seemed to be no doubt in their minds who would win the war and they were preparing themselves, I think, for another long period of western dominance.
I was disturbed by how brazenly we pushed aside thousands of years of customs and insisted that the Vietnamese adopt our faith, our food, our language and our form of democracy. I argued with our superiors that we demeaned the Vietnamese by replacing their given names with American names. I regret that I didn’t take time to learn the language, or to understand much about the people and their customs. I found myself in the middle of my childhood fantasy; to experience life in a foreign country and yet, fear gradually displaced my childhood fascination with the Far East.
My daily interaction with the Vietnamese people and their culture was contained to occasional drives out the villages and hamlets, the street markets of DaNang, Tet celebrations in the homes of the Vietnamese staff and the occasional grand feasts in the home of our head nurse and my dear friend, Nguyen Thi Khang, known as Gwen. I deeply regret that I could not summon the courage to gaze beyond the barbed wire barriers into the heart and soul of Vietnam. I remember one remarkable adventure when we were thrown into a rare cultural exchange. We were driving on the outskirts of Hue, having just toured the remains of the Hue Citadel: ancient Vietnamese Imperial City. This area had suffered enormous damage and hundreds of military and civilians were killed during the Tet Offensive in 1968. It was still considered an ‘unstable’ area. Our driver, an American who claimed to know his way around the countryside, had lost his way and our apprehension grew when the road dead-ended at a Buddhist Temple. Instead of coming to face to face with Viet Cong we were greeted warmly by the nuns and monks and invited to participate in a feast. As I recall it was the celebration day honoring Buddha’s Birth. They ushered us into this lovely hall and insisted we sit at a long banquet table while they served us heaps of tasty, Vietnamese food. There was every reason to bask in the warmth of their hospitality. I am ashamed to say that I sat silently picking at the food placed in my bowl, worried that I was eating dog meat or worse and convinced that I would get ill, or that this was a ruse and the V.C. were waiting in ambush for us the minute we piled back in the jeep. I missed so many opportunities like this to really see and learn from our Vietnamese hosts.
Perhaps it is these missed opportunities to connect with the Vietnamese beyond the barbed wire that now pulls me back to the place that altered my life and changed my world view. The summation of an essay I published in 1994, “A Woman in ‘Nam: 1969” I stated that “I had gone to Vietnam to help change the world, but I was the one who had changed.”
Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “The worst things in my life never happened,” so too, I admit that my worst fears didn’t happen. What did happen was loss of my faith and confidence in my core beliefs. I returned to a world out of kilter, no longer knowing what I could believe. I was dizzy with doubts and questions about who and what to trust. On the other hand, I felt a fierce kind of patriotism and desperately wanted the assurance that everything I was taught in school and church was rock solid. Perhaps it is karmic power that led me to find some spiritual peace and solace through Buddhist meditation practice. I recently came across something that resonated with my longing to return to Vietnam. The German mystic, Meister Eckhart wrote that, “You must look for God exactly there where you lost him.” I will be on the look out for God in the beauty of the land, the art, the literature, the epicurean delights, the ancient temples, the colorful silk, the fierce strength of the women and the quick laughter of the children.
Shortly after Saigon fell, the news carried heavy stories of the plight of the Amerasian children left behind. Nothing hit me harder than thinking of thousands of orphaned children who would never be accepted into Vietnamese society. Even though I was recently divorced, I seriously considered adopting 2 of these children. My initial hope fell through for various reasons, but I have a lingering feeling of obligation and desire to make a difference in the lives of Vietnamese children. It was impossible not to fall in love with the Vietnamese children. While we cowered in fear, the children in the hospital put us all to shame with the brave stoic acceptance of their pain. Their laughter and eagerness to learn brightened every day. Now, when I think of Vietnam I remember their faces and I feel ready to finally return.
Fun isn’t a word I’ve associated with Vietnam. I’d like to change that and enter the country this time with a lightness of heart. I want to hear the echo of the kid’s belly laughs, and enjoy the sport of haggling over prices in the open marketplaces. I want to run on the white sandy beaches and let the wind blow through my hair. Can I open my eyes, ears and heart to the breathtaking beauty, the lush green rice fields, the mountains, and fully appreciate the rich complexity of their ancient history and culture? I want to absorb those priceless moments and encounters I missed before. I hope to be able to separate Vietnam, the country and the people, from the war.
I feel fortunate to be sharing this journey with a small group called “Humanitarian Adventurers.” Our adventure begins in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, where we will meet with the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organizations (VUFO), Vietnam government officials, plus Friendship village( Agent Orange affected children and veterans.) I am also eager to visit the Temple of Literature and other museums. Our next stop is Hue, the ancient capital and imperial city that was modeled after the Forbidden City in China. The projects we’ll visit in Hue and Quang Tri include Project Renew and a micro-loan agriculture project.
One of the highlights of this trip for me is the chance to drive from Hue to Da Nang through the mountains and over Hai Van Pass, (hill of the clouds). During the war we couldn’t drive beyond the Pass for security reasons, but I have a photo of the lush green rice paddies and beaches taken from the Pass and it is spectacular. Half way between Hue and Da Nang we’ll visit Phu Loc Orphanage. (My good friend, Faith, who served as a nurse in the Hoa Khanh Children’s Hospital with me told me that children from that orphanage were sent to our hospital regularly.) I hope to visit the former Hoa Khanh Children’s Hospital. I’ve heard that it is now a mental hospital. I’ll hold my remarks until after I’ve seen it.
The project closest to my heart on this journey is the Danang Kid Project: sponsoring a house for a family who are living in the city’s garbage dump. I have photos of that dump from 1970. We drove by it every time we traveled from the hospital to Da Nang. If you’ve seen the recent movie, “Slumdog Millionaire”- you’ll get the picture
A rich cultural treat is in store for us in the little seaside village of Hoi An. This ancient port for the Champa civilization is now a World Heritage Site. It is also known for a plethora of restaurants and shops. We’ll even get a cooking lesson from one of the local chefs.
Ho Chi Minh City, still commonly referred to as Saigon, will be our last stop. I’m pleased that we’ll be staying at the famous Rex hotel. During the war, this hotel was the journalists hangout and where the military officers gave the daily 5 pm press briefings that became known as the “Five’0’clock Follies.” From the hotel’s famous rooftop bar, I plan to toast the brave journalists who sought to report the truth of the war.
I will share my travel experiences along the way on my blog site:
eevalentine-pearlfishing.blogspot.com
eevalentine-pearlfishing.blogspot.com
February 2009
I stepped foot on Vietnamese soil just a week after Ho Chi Minh died in September 1969. Two months prior to this I had stayed up all night to witness Neil Armstrong’s one giant step for mankind on the moon. During the ride from Tan Son Nhut Airport through Saigon’s mad-cap traffic to the missionary guest house where my young husband and I along with 8 other freshly recruited volunteer relief workers would stay during our orientation, I felt as though I had indeed landed in a place as foreign as the moon. Those first glimpses of the extreme poverty; refugees crowded into make-shift shanties, military trucks and jeeps overpowering the ubiquitous motorbikes and tri-shaws, the steam rising out of sidewalk food vendors pots and men openly relieving themselves on the side of the road. All these street scenes filled me with the overwhelming realization that I was clueless about this civilization, this country called Vietnam.
Over the years, I have fed my obsession with Vietnam by filling my home library with dozens of books written by Vietnamese, French and American writers. I sat through every movie made about Vietnam, allowing the tears to flow hoping, I suppose, for some cleansing ritual. Now as I eagerly anticipate my first visit to Vietnam since I departed in August 1971, I wonder how my experience of present-day Vietnam will compare with my jumbled web of memories and the volumes of books and articles I’ve read over the years.
I’m one more American returning with a backpack spilling over with memories and stories that no doubt over time have blurred the actual facts. I’ve protected certain memories of those two years that I served as a volunteer administrative and fund raising assistant at Hoa Khanh Children’s Hospital, located 10 miles north of Da Nang. The stories I have written and that have shaped my personal history contrast with the other Americans who I worked with at Hoa Khanh. The one consistency in all our stories is the black cloud of fear that shadowed us every single day. The hospital had been built as a joint humanitarian project by the Navy’s Seabees and the Marine for refugee children whose families had poured into the hamlets surrounding DaNang. The hospital stood just inside the entrance to Camp Books, Force Logistic Command Base of the Marine Corp. This served as the largest supply base for I Corp, the northern sector of South Vietnam. “Rocket Alley” the nick-name for our new ‘home’ got shelled almost every night the first few months of our in country adventure. We learned to hear the distinct difference in the whistling sirens of in coming versus out going rockets. Between the constant sounds of war and seeing the broken and burned little bodies of the children lying in the hospital, death seemed to close in around us. At the ripe age of 21 I doubted that I would make it out in one piece. On the worst nights, I believed I would die on Vietnamese soil.
For years after my safe return home, I tried to put Vietnam behind me and get on with my life. When I stepped off the plane in San Francisco and fell into the hugs of my sisters, I fully expected that it would be possible to just dust myself off and pick up life where we left it after college graduation and our wedding. I was determined to guide my life script, like a well crafted story: launch my career, get a graduate degree, have children and settle into a happy marriage. After all, none of my worst fears had come true: I was not injured, not captured and force marched up the Ho Chi Minh Trail to a prison (which was my worst nightmare) and I even escaped contacting tropical diseases. The fear with a capital F had wormed its way deep into my unconscious and over time manifested in the usual forms, nightmares, jumping at loud popping sounds, and a suspicion that if I ever returned to Vietnam, death would hunt me down and get me the second time around.
I carry a load of disappointments and guilt from those years; disappointed that I curled into the fear, allowed the ‘foreignness’ of Vietnam to scare me enough so I shrank into the false protection of the U.S. military and never really allowed my curiosity and love of adventure to open up to the vast and wondrous Vietnamese history and culture. I ventured only superficially beyond the American dominated universe at Hoa Khanh Children’s Hospital. The Vietnamese nurses and other staff seemed in awe of American ways and adapted to the requirements to be employed on an American military base. They were even given American names which they readily assumed in deference to the overpowering western influence. There seemed to be no doubt in their minds who would win the war and they were preparing themselves, I think, for another long period of western dominance.
I was disturbed by how brazenly we pushed aside thousands of years of customs and insisted that the Vietnamese adopt our faith, our food, our language and our form of democracy. I argued with our superiors that we demeaned the Vietnamese by replacing their given names with American names. I regret that I didn’t take time to learn the language, or to understand much about the people and their customs. I found myself in the middle of my childhood fantasy; to experience life in a foreign country and yet, fear gradually displaced my childhood fascination with the Far East.
My daily interaction with the Vietnamese people and their culture was contained to occasional drives out the villages and hamlets, the street markets of DaNang, Tet celebrations in the homes of the Vietnamese staff and the occasional grand feasts in the home of our head nurse and my dear friend, Nguyen Thi Khang, known as Gwen. I deeply regret that I could not summon the courage to gaze beyond the barbed wire barriers into the heart and soul of Vietnam. I remember one remarkable adventure when we were thrown into a rare cultural exchange. We were driving on the outskirts of Hue, having just toured the remains of the Hue Citadel: ancient Vietnamese Imperial City. This area had suffered enormous damage and hundreds of military and civilians were killed during the Tet Offensive in 1968. It was still considered an ‘unstable’ area. Our driver, an American who claimed to know his way around the countryside, had lost his way and our apprehension grew when the road dead-ended at a Buddhist Temple. Instead of coming to face to face with Viet Cong we were greeted warmly by the nuns and monks and invited to participate in a feast. As I recall it was the celebration day honoring Buddha’s Birth. They ushered us into this lovely hall and insisted we sit at a long banquet table while they served us heaps of tasty, Vietnamese food. There was every reason to bask in the warmth of their hospitality. I am ashamed to say that I sat silently picking at the food placed in my bowl, worried that I was eating dog meat or worse and convinced that I would get ill, or that this was a ruse and the V.C. were waiting in ambush for us the minute we piled back in the jeep. I missed so many opportunities like this to really see and learn from our Vietnamese hosts.
Perhaps it is these missed opportunities to connect with the Vietnamese beyond the barbed wire that now pulls me back to the place that altered my life and changed my world view. The summation of an essay I published in 1994, “A Woman in ‘Nam: 1969” I stated that “I had gone to Vietnam to help change the world, but I was the one who had changed.”
Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “The worst things in my life never happened,” so too, I admit that my worst fears didn’t happen. What did happen was loss of my faith and confidence in my core beliefs. I returned to a world out of kilter, no longer knowing what I could believe. I was dizzy with doubts and questions about who and what to trust. On the other hand, I felt a fierce kind of patriotism and desperately wanted the assurance that everything I was taught in school and church was rock solid. Perhaps it is karmic power that led me to find some spiritual peace and solace through Buddhist meditation practice. I recently came across something that resonated with my longing to return to Vietnam. The German mystic, Meister Eckhart wrote that, “You must look for God exactly there where you lost him.” I will be on the look out for God in the beauty of the land, the art, the literature, the epicurean delights, the ancient temples, the colorful silk, the fierce strength of the women and the quick laughter of the children.
Shortly after Saigon fell, the news carried heavy stories of the plight of the Amerasian children left behind. Nothing hit me harder than thinking of thousands of orphaned children who would never be accepted into Vietnamese society. Even though I was recently divorced, I seriously considered adopting 2 of these children. My initial hope fell through for various reasons, but I have a lingering feeling of obligation and desire to make a difference in the lives of Vietnamese children. It was impossible not to fall in love with the Vietnamese children. While we cowered in fear, the children in the hospital put us all to shame with the brave stoic acceptance of their pain. Their laughter and eagerness to learn brightened every day. Now, when I think of Vietnam I remember their faces and I feel ready to finally return.
Fun isn’t a word I’ve associated with Vietnam. I’d like to change that and enter the country this time with a lightness of heart. I want to hear the echo of the kid’s belly laughs, and enjoy the sport of haggling over prices in the open marketplaces. I want to run on the white sandy beaches and let the wind blow through my hair. Can I open my eyes, ears and heart to the breathtaking beauty, the lush green rice fields, the mountains, and fully appreciate the rich complexity of their ancient history and culture? I want to absorb those priceless moments and encounters I missed before. I hope to be able to separate Vietnam, the country and the people, from the war.
I feel fortunate to be sharing this journey with a small group called “Humanitarian Adventurers.” Our adventure begins in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, where we will meet with the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organizations (VUFO), Vietnam government officials, plus Friendship village( Agent Orange affected children and veterans.) I am also eager to visit the Temple of Literature and other museums. Our next stop is Hue, the ancient capital and imperial city that was modeled after the Forbidden City in China. The projects we’ll visit in Hue and Quang Tri include Project Renew and a micro-loan agriculture project.
One of the highlights of this trip for me is the chance to drive from Hue to Da Nang through the mountains and over Hai Van Pass, (hill of the clouds). During the war we couldn’t drive beyond the Pass for security reasons, but I have a photo of the lush green rice paddies and beaches taken from the Pass and it is spectacular. Half way between Hue and Da Nang we’ll visit Phu Loc Orphanage. (My good friend, Faith, who served as a nurse in the Hoa Khanh Children’s Hospital with me told me that children from that orphanage were sent to our hospital regularly.) I hope to visit the former Hoa Khanh Children’s Hospital. I’ve heard that it is now a mental hospital. I’ll hold my remarks until after I’ve seen it.
The project closest to my heart on this journey is the Danang Kid Project: sponsoring a house for a family who are living in the city’s garbage dump. I have photos of that dump from 1970. We drove by it every time we traveled from the hospital to Da Nang. If you’ve seen the recent movie, “Slumdog Millionaire”- you’ll get the picture
A rich cultural treat is in store for us in the little seaside village of Hoi An. This ancient port for the Champa civilization is now a World Heritage Site. It is also known for a plethora of restaurants and shops. We’ll even get a cooking lesson from one of the local chefs.
Ho Chi Minh City, still commonly referred to as Saigon, will be our last stop. I’m pleased that we’ll be staying at the famous Rex hotel. During the war, this hotel was the journalists hangout and where the military officers gave the daily 5 pm press briefings that became known as the “Five’0’clock Follies.” From the hotel’s famous rooftop bar, I plan to toast the brave journalists who sought to report the truth of the war.
I will share my travel experiences along the way on my blog site:
eevalentine-pearlfishing.blogspot.com
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Holiday Reading Sampler
December 23, 2008
For those of us who have either finished our shopping or given up and retreated to our favorite chair by the fireplace for a good read of a classic holiday story...here are a few suggestions:
For those of us who have either finished our shopping or given up and retreated to our favorite chair by the fireplace for a good read of a classic holiday story...here are a few suggestions:
- Christmas Holiday, a novel by Somerset Maugham, 1939...a haunting story set in Paris- the city of lights..travel there on Christmas Eve
- a few short stories: "Oh Joseph I'm so Tired" by Richard Yates (note: author of Revolutionary Road-movie version just released.)
- "The Burglar's Christmas," by Willa Cather
- "Mrs. Parkins'Christmas Eve," Sarah Orne Jewett
- on the lighter side..."the Joy of a Peanuts Christmas."..the best Christmas strips from the 1950's- to 1990's --will put a smile on your face.
Happy Holidays and may your heart sing with the music of well-told tale.
eevalentine
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