Quyen Tran returns to Vietnam after 25 years as a volunteer with Global Volunteers.
I have no memories of Vietnam. And now, after 25 years of wanting to visit my birthland, after 25 years of thinking and saying "one day I'll go back and visit," I am in Vietnam. I can't quite fathom that I am truly here. You may not understand, but for 25 years, Vietnam was always over there, but now, it is here.
I see green grasses and waving palm fronds. I see remnants of old concrete structures. Perhaps left over from the war? I may have been born in Vietnam, but I realize that I perceive almost everything from the perspective of an American. I grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota. Later I went to high school in Chanhassen, home of the famed Chanhassen Dinner Theatre. I enjoyed my college years at Macalester College in St. Paul. I'm as American as they come, yet I am Vietnamese. And I've never felt so confused about my identity until now, as I step onto the land of my ancestral roots.
How to cross the street, Vietnamese style
On the taxi ride to our hotel in Saigon (as Ho Chi Minh City is still called by the locals) we are introduced to Vietnamese-style traffic. It's absolutely marvelous to watch. Because almost everyone is on an efficient scooter, traffic jams are nonexistent. Traffic flows continuously and smoothly, like a school of fish -- crowded, yet fluid, with each person reacting to the vehicle ahead, beside, or behind. As scientists have observed, even chaos has a pattern.
Our taxi driver discovers my little sister and I are viet khieu, or Vietnamese-Americans. He hears of my father's reluctance to return to Vietnam, for fear of retaliation by and corruption in the government. He laughs, and says that times have changed. Today, he says, one can even curse the government! They will not do anything about it.
I learn how to cross a street in Vietnam. Here, instead of waiting on one side of the street and looking both ways until it's safe to cross (if you did this, you'd never get to the other side!), you have to do as the locals do: that is, to walk -- in a very slow, meandering way -- across the street. This gives the scooters, cyclists, cars and cyclos enough time to gauge your speed and position and thus zoom around and not into you. Do not run across the street, unless you have a death wish.
After a steaming bowl of pho for breakfast (what heaven!) the Global Volunteers team rumbles off in a van for Cao Lanh, where the program is based. Cao Lanh is the newly designated capital of Dong Thap province. An up-and-coming town, it's located about 4 hours west of Saigon. It's also the city where my grandparents (on my mother's side) lived until their death.
I still marvel at the sheer coincidence of Global Volunteers' program being based in a city so near where I was born. Tram Chim (now renamed Tam Nong, as so many towns and streets were renamed after the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975) is where I was born, and it is only an hour and a half's drive from Cao Lanh. I vacillate between whether or not to go visit this town.
On the one hand, I tell myself, of course I must go! This is an unprecedented opportunity. To be in Vietnam, within a couple hours of where I was born…it would be foolish not to go. But part of me does not feel ready. I don't know if I'm emotionally not ready to see Tram Chim, or if I am just being superstitious. You see, I've been thinking up to now that this journey back to Vietnam is like having my life come full circle.
Many emotions run through me as scenes of everyday Vietnam speed past me on the ride from Saigon to Cao Lanh. Children playing in the streets. Young women dressed in the traditional ao dai. Old women selling fruit. The buildings and homes built up one right next to the other. It's all everyday life to them, but so different to me. And yet it could easily be me sitting in the streets, selling fruit.
Another wave of emotion is felt for my parents. This all seems so strange to me. I feel a kind of relief that this is only a three-week program, and afterwards, I will be able to return to the comforts of home and my family. Yet 25 years ago, when my parents arrived with four small children in tow, they faced the same sheer unfamiliarity of a different country and culture, and knew they had to stay and live in that country forever. I grieve for my mom, especially. Most of my dad's side of the family accompanied us, but my mother's parents, brothers, sisters, and homeland were all torn away from her and replaced by a land so foreign in language, climate, food, and people. I cannot even begin to imagine her shock and sadness. My mom never saw her parents again.
And what saddens me the most is that her story is not uncommon around this world. Not then, and not today.
Our first day of teaching at the Foreign Language Center in Cao Lanh. My morning class is composed of 25 children, seven through nine year olds. They are tiny, tiny children. I can't believe they are more than five years old.
They greet me with a loud and cheery, "Good morning, Teacher!." Their teacher admonishes them that next time they should greet me properly, and not yell.
I am to be a teacher's aide, mostly working on pronunciation. I say a word, and they repeat it. I immediately understand why such help is valuable. Vietnamese is a tonal language. Many of the sounds that exist in the English language do not exist in Vietnamese, and vice versa. This is why it is so difficult for an English native speaker to learn Vietnamese, and why it's difficult for Vietnamese to learn English.
The teachers, despite their hard work, still speak with a Vietnamese accent, and pass this on to their students. For many students – both children and adults, the Global Volunteers are the first native English speakers they've ever encountered
I close out my morning class by teaching the children how to play Red Rover, Red Rover. Oh, how they loved it!
They depart the classrom after wishing me good-bye: "Good-bye, Teacher! See you again!"
I am very glad I've come to Vietnam as a volunteer and not a tourist.
My parents' friend
After morning class, UyenThi and I set out to find the one person in Cao Lanh that my parents told us to contact. We call her Co Ba, because she is the third child in her family. She and my parents used to teach at the same school in Tram Chim, where I was born.
We have Co Ba's address, but it doesn't mean much here in Vietnam. By asking a succession of people if they know where Co Ba's home is, we are pointed further and further into a winding complex of unpaved alleys that connected small homes with the main road.
Roosters crow even though it is ten-thirty in the morning. Women squat over fire pits, roasting corn, banana cakes, and other delicacies.
We finally arrive at the open door of Co Ba's home. An old woman, about four and half feet tall, wearing glasses, her hair neatly rolled into a bun, looks at us in a confused manner – my parents had not written to her beforehand. I clasp my hands and bow to her in the traditional Vietnamese greeting, and I introduce myself and UyenThi. I tell her my parents' name, and watch her eyes light up in amazement as she comprehends who we are.
She takes my hands firmly in hers, and leads us into her tiny house. We remove our sandals before entering, as is the Vietnamese custom. The floor is neatly laid with red tiles. Every inch of wall space is covered with icons of Jesus and Mary. A black and white TV perches on one shelf. A hammock, no more than five feet long, hangs from a metal stand.
We tell her our parents are well, and update her on each and every extended family member. She has not seen most of our family in 25 years. My father's sister did visit her a couple years ago, and gave her some money which she used to build houses for two families. She promises to take us to see the families and their homes, so that I can take pictures for my aunt.
In her house is young man of 22, whose education she sponsors. She raises money from family and friends, both from Cao Lanh and the U.S., and sends him to college to study computers. Other money is used for school supplies and clothes for small children in the rural areas surrounding Cao Lanh.
Not for the first and last time on this journey, I am astounded and humbled by how a woman who has so little devotes her time to giving to those even poorer than she.
We show her pictures of my parents. To my delight, she says I have my mother's dimples.
Evening classes
My class in the evening is a bit different from the morning one. The students are mostly teenagers, with a couple adults. They can read and write English well but want to practice their conversational English skills.
I introduce myself to the class in English. They stare at me for a while. Then one student asks me to write my name on the board. I do so – Vietnamese style, last name first: Tran Thi Hanh Quyen. There's another moment of silence. Finally, another student asks, "Why do you have a Vietnamese name?"
I am stunned. So much for passing as a local! I realize I don't look Vietnamese to them. It must be my clothes (though they're all wearing western-style clothes) or my height (the average Vietnamese person seems to be about 5 feet tall).
I explain that I was born in Vietnam, and that my family and I came to the States in 1975 as refugees.
They ask, "Why did you leave?"
Not knowing how else to respond, I say, "Because when the war ended, we had to go."
As the class comes to a close, I can tell they still can't quite figure me out – am I American or Vietnamese?
In my various shopping excursions and rides on the pedicab (a bicycle towing a wagon on which the passenger sits), I discover that since I cannot pass as a local Vietnamese woman, I am being charged the higher price that foreigners are often charged (often double the local price).
When this happened the first time, my natural reaction was to bristle at what I thought was extortion. I would try to bargain the price down (bartering is a common practice in Vietnam). After successfully "saving" anywhere from 25 cents to a dollar, I began to feel rather foolish and ashamed of my stinginess; I started paying the asking price.
The team drove to a school about two hours from Cao Lanh, to deliver scholarships of notebooks, fabric for clothes, and money to 90 students. As our van pulls up, through the open windows of the classroom drift a few bars of a song the children are singing. With a start, I recognize the song from my childhood in Minnesota. As such memories are apt to do, the memory rips through my head and heart, and I try to connect and reconcile this live group of Vietnamese children singing, as they always have, with the faint echo of my mother singing the same song many years ago in Minnesota.
The little boy by the bridge
There's a little boy whose mom sells peanuts near the river bridge by our hotel. Everyday when we walk past, the boy runs alongside, giggling and shouting, "Hello! Hello!" He holds up his hand for a high five.
His fine black hair is cut short, but sticks straight up at the back of his head. He reminds me of my second oldest brother. His eyes and smile are strikingly similar.
There are very few, if any beggars here. I believe it's because very few foreigners visit Cao Lanh. Could it be that children and adults learn to beg through foreigners handing out candy and money? I have a deep urge to give the little boy on the bridge some candy or money, but the previous thought holds me back.
This morning I attended a wedding to which a student had invited me. First, we went to di ruoc dau – the ritual in which the groom and his family visit the bride's house and present her family with fruit, wine, and other gifts. The bride then accompanies the groom to his family's house, where more rituals are performed to honor their ancestors. Traditionally, the bride will live with her new husband and his parents for several years, until they can afford to move into their own house. If the groom is the youngest boy in the family, the couple will often live with the groom's parents until the parents die.
After much discussion over who will carry what to the bride's house, I am given the top layer of the wedding cake - to carry with one hand, in the rain, on the back of a scooter! Some of the roads are greasy with mud, and I am doubtful of this proposition. Nevertheless, I grasp the cake stand and, bearing it like a torch, off I go on muddy, slippery streets.
I can't imagine this happening in the States! Any bride in the U.S. would have a conniption if a stranger were given the top layer of the wedding cake (complete with plastic groom and bride figurine) to transport in such conditions. The scooter slips once in the mud, but there is only minor damage to the frosting. The cake arrives safely and intact at the bride's house.
Another volunteer, Mary Ann, who also attends the wedding, has the unfortunate experience of asking for the bathroom at the bride's house. She is led to a little wooden stall built over the river. The floor is made of slats of wood, and a bucket of water and pail stand by, for rinsing the floor when you were done.
The dishes are washed upstream, but further upstream, of course, is another house with another "bathroom."
At the back of my mind, I always knew, of course, what went into that river, but it was never made so unfortunately explicit!
Today was an amazing day! UyenThi, Mary Ann, and I go to visit Co Ba, my parents' friend. She has invited us over for lunch, but first we have to call upon some old friends of my parents and deliver gifts that she had purchased with the small amount of money my parents had sent. We hop onto the ubiquitous scooter and stop at five homes.
At one home, the family pulls out an old photo album, and shows us a blotted picture of my parents' wedding day. I've seen their wedding photos before, but to have it suddenly appear before me in a stranger's house halfway around the world is mind-boggling. What makes my head spin even more is the fact that that picture was taken here. It's as if after 25 years, the ends of the circle have finally met.
I decide that this weekend, I will go to Tram Chim, where I was born.
We visited Tram Chim today. My emotions on this trip have overwhelmed me in sudden, unexpected upheavals. It happened as the plane was landing in Saigon and I saw my first glimpse of Vietnam. It happened in the van on the way from Saigon to Cao Lanh. And it happened today as I sat in front of the gutted buildings where my parents taught, met, and lived 30 years ago.
It takes us one and half hours to drive from Cao Lanh to Tram Chim by car. During my parents' time, there was no road, and same journey took them 6 hours by canoe.
I meet the woman who used to be my grandmother's housekeeper. I meet some of my parents' former students, and their children. They all remember my three older brothers, and ask about them by name.
For the umpteenth time, I wonder what my life would have been like if my family had not left Vietnam. My father would probably have been sent to a "re-education camp," in other words, prison. I would probably be married, with children.
Or perhaps I would be like the young teachers and students with whom Global Volunteers works. Maybe I would have attended a university and become an English teacher. If the course of events had run just a little differently, maybe I would've encountered Global Volunteers, but as a local teacher or student, instead of a privileged volunteer from the U.S.
It makes the head spin, all the might haves and could haves and what ifs. But this is all a worthless exercise, except to make me realize how fortunate I am.
As we approach our final week in Cao Lanh, I will take much delight in what I've come to love about Vietnam:
-I love watching the eyes of the children in my morning class as they think of how to say "red" or "violin," and how their eyes light up when they know the answer.
-Finally, I love to sit and watch the world pass by on the street: entire families on a scooter, a whole billboard on a pedicab, and young women in gracefully draped ao dais sitting upright on their bicycles, with not a speck of sweat on their nose.
UyenThi and I pick up our ao dai from the dressmaker. It cost a total of $35 (U.S. dollars). Walking down the street with my sister, wearing the traditional ao dai, our conical hats dangling from the tips of our fingers, I think that I have never felt so fully Vietnamese in my life. It is a wonderful feeling.
More than anything else, it is the singing that I will remember most dearly from Vietnam. A people that sings keep joy in their hearts. Though we heard some Vietnamese songs, it is the American ones that the locals sing that reverberate through my head: The Eagles' Hotel California, The Carpenters' Over and Over.
How ironic that these are the songs I bring back from my journey to Vietnam!
I'm absolutely exhausted. But I'm at peace with my first journey back to Vietnam, my birthland. Nevertheless, it will be good to be back in Minnesota. That is, after all, where I have lived for 25 of my 27 years. Home is Minnesota, but a little bit of my head and heart will always remain in Vietnam.
Source: http://www.globalvolunteers.org/stories/quyen.htm
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