Tuoi Tre

Yesterday, there was an article about Smiling Group in Tuoi Tre, one of the largest news organizations in Vietnam. The article can be seen online here:

Tuoi Tre Online: "Niu tay nhan ai giua doi"

The article is in Vietnamese with dictation for those of us who can't read very well (ie. myself). This is so exciting!

Jude

It's amazing how I can run away to the other side of the world only to find out that my life changes very little no matter where I go. All I can say is that my experiences here are getting more and more intense as I only have two weeks left in Vietnam. Honestly, I can't wait to get home, curl up in bed with a burrito and take a nice, long nap. The stress is starting to get to me a little bit and I wish the BSP family was here with me. In some ways, it is - I've noticed a common thread among community leaders here, one that emphasizes health and happiness over financial progress. There is so much to talk about, so much planning to do for the future and build upon my dreams. Before I left for Vietnam, Linda DiMello, director of the ALS Association, was kind enough to send me a quick note wishing me well on my trip. She gave me the simplest, but most useful piece of advice I received before my departure, "Be bold".

I have been very bold with some of the decisions I've made, but I really wish I had a bit more time to reflect on what's been going on. As amazing as my internship is, I've been having some difficulty lately as my supervisor has fallen ill. We went to go visit him in the hospital the other day and I realized that he has a combination of tuberculosis, HIV, and liver cancer. His illness has been hidden from the public eye. As far as everyone who is not staff is concerned, he's at home resting. There's been a lot of talk lately and I have the feeling that they are organizing a change of hands within the group and requesting more foreign aid from their benefactors in France. It's saddening watching a hero grow weaker, but if there's anything that life has taught me, it's that death is not to be feared and there is much we can learn from the passing of others, even if it is deeply disturbing in some regard. We can approach death with boldness, stare it straight in the eyes, and understand what is going on instead of turning a blind eye. Life, in all it's glory, can reveal itself most candidly in these moments.

It is quite obvious that he's not well. Maybe it was the hospital environment, the fact that he was laying in a hospital bed in the middle of the hallway of Cho Ray hospital, a place where the open air reeks of the mixture of bodily fluids, death, and rain water. I don't know why any sick person would go there, but I'm hoping he gets better soon.

----------------------------------------------

"Do you ever go numb to it?" she asked.
"No, never."

I hope I can keep my resolve.

Pictures!

I've been very busy lately and there's much to blog about. There are so many intense experiences here that are beyond words, beyond pictures even and I only wish I had more time to write about them. Life here, much like life in the States, gets split up between work, school, family, and friends.

Rest assured, it all goes toward building up my dreams and plans to live a life of service. Many of the lessons I've learned in Vietnam have not been written down here. They've moved me in ways that nothing else can.

Sometimes it takes something, someone to let you know that your dreams aren't yours alone. Dreams can be shared, ambition can grow.

Do not fear, through all the heartbreak and suffering I've witnessed in this country, there is always something to smile about and be thankful for. These lessons, like I said, are more than words can say, so I've just been posting what's been most important to me. I actually have a lot of fun here, but would prefer to be a student instead of a tourist. If not, there's always attempting to learn how to salsa dance with a rice pot.

Enjoy the pictures! (via Facebook)

Summer '07 in Vietnam: Part 2 - Central Region Study Tour
Summer '07 in Vietnam: Part 3 - My Tho
Summer '07 in Vietnam: Part 4 - Mekong Delta Study Tour

Updated galleries, previously posted:
Summer '07 in Vietnam: Part 1 - Sai Gon, etc.
Smiling Group/Nhom Nu Cuoi - Fighting HIV/AIDS in Vietnam

Mekong Delta Tour

This weekend I will be going to the Mekong Delta or as Perry put it, "Stalking the Mekong to finish up what Rambo couldn't". I don't know if I will have internet access but I'll try and update if I get the chance.

In the meantime, I've posted two albums of my travels and internship:
http://berkeley.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2194330&l=32325&id=1201936
http://berkeley.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2194327&l=bf25a&id=1201936

Next up:
Cai Lay
Can Tho
Hoa An (Biological Research Center!)
Vinh Long
Cai Be
Mo Cay/Dinh Thuy

I'll even be participating in a fundraising event held by the Vietnamese Language Studies school called the Fun Run. A 3km foot race in the heat? I'm down.

Người Dân

Tonight I bathed to rid myself of the dirt, the filth of degradation and the stench of corruption. I bathed to find purity, to search for the innocence of the street children. I bathed in search of sanctity, for the Vietnamese women who lose their virginity to a stranger participating in the sex trade, not knowing that they've already lost their lives to HIV and drugs. I wanted to cleanse myself of the impurity, praying that their children be spared from the degradation.

Tonight I felt anger and hatred. I hate the backpacker bars, I hate the sixty-year-old men spending their life savings reliving their glory days with young Vietnamese prostitutes. I hate the people taking pictures of children dancing on pool tables and selling cigarettes. I hate the woman who forcefully pulled Hao and me in for a picture; she only did it because we're Vietnamese, even though we don't look at all like locals. I am angered by her ignorance, by my own degradation, by my own loss of dignity. I am no dog, I am no novelty. I hate the backpacker district, for every child and woman lost in the struggle for survival, for every man paid to keep his own people out of the nightclub.

They are no novelties, they are human beings. They are daughters and mothers, neighbors and friends. You, dear backpacker, may see a beautiful woman sitting by herself near the pool table, a prostitute waiting for work - another whore in the street. I see a woman lost to corruption and desperation. I see a single-mother coming home from work, I see a hungry child, I see the slums. I see a person, a human being dying of AIDS. I see exploitation and suffering.

I think of Thuy Cuc, Thuy Truc, Vi, and Thanh Thy. I think of the beautiful children who want to become doctors and teachers, I think about how much they deserve a voice in the world. I pray, oh I pray, that they will never have to suffer so. That they live as long as they can and receive the opportunities that we have. I pray that I never see them in a bar, sitting by a pool table. I pray I never see another three-year-old dancing at three in the morning to sell gum.

I stood in the shower, water running down my back, head in hands. The water of Vietnam cleansing me, the stench of cigarette smoke still in my nostrils. The cigarette burns a hole in my mind, a pockmark to remind me that scars never wash away.

Ghosts

Tonight I will return Sai Gon from the beautiful resort town of Hoi An, our last stop on the Central Region Tour. A recap of the last twenty-four hours:

• Going to a beautifully empty beach near Hue (Bien Lang Co).
• More swimming in the pool at our resort.
  
• Drinking the best mojitos in the world in a beautiful South-American-styled cafe while dodging the rain.
• Getting custom fitted for a pair of sneakers and a new pair of sandals, both for about $25 USD total.
  
• Hitting on a drop dead gorgeous 28-year-old Viet Kieu from Philadelphia. She is the hostess of the Mango Room (home of aforementioned best mojitos in the world) along with her boyfriend (doh!). After examining and wrapping her sprained ankle (what's a gentleman to do?) we had a wonderful dinner conversation and she gave our whole group a round of drinks on the house.
  
• Her boyfriend is a great host and burly at that, so I didn't push my luck and invite her back to the hotel for a swim.
  
• Walked to the swimming pool at the resort in a silk robe while holding a handle of Absolut Vodka - enough said. The pool here is very nice.
  
• My roommates and I were haunted by a ghost in our hotel room at the resort last night. I'm just going to say that we both simultaneously woke up at 3am screaming bloody murder, which resulted in us not sleeping at all last night and huddling together in the hotel room. At 5am, we all ran out of the room screaming into the hallway. Good times.
  

Bach Ma

Hue is the most beautiful place I've ever been. The women are more beautiful there than in Saigon, the food is better, the people are friendlier, and it's peaceful. Beer is 10,000 dong (roughly about $0.60USD) because a lot of the beer in Vietnam is brewed there. We spent two nights there and I took a lot of pictures of the Imperial Palace. I wanted to stay longer, but today we went to Bach Ma..

Bach Ma National Park is gorgeously located high up in the mountains near Hue. Today we went hiking in the jungle on a crazy trail full of steep, slippery rocks that would drop you in the river. At some point, there were wooden ladders to help us down as we walked along the river, but most of them were broken, mossy and slippery. Parts of the trail were littered with broken bridges and after each descent, we'd find ourselves at the bottom of another waterfall, a beautiful lagoon, and a playground of trees, rocks, and vines to swim from. We ended up at the top of a 300m high waterfall overlooking the mountains. Everything I saw today was well worth the hike and I'm certain this is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

The wildlife there is abundant and lush. So abundant, however, that we ended up having to leave our hotel at the top of the trail because the water got shut off, the walls of our rooms were covered in moths/butterflies/stick bugs/leaf bugs half the size of my hand, and my buddy Long found a scorpion in the corner of bathroom while he was on the can. I didn't want to know what creatures I'd wake up in bed with the next day. We drove back down to sea level, by the ocean, to stay in a nice cushy hotel with running water and bars nearby.

Now we're in Bien Lang Co (Lang Co Beach), I can't wait to see what this place has in store for us...

Huế Ơi!

I'm in Central Vietnam for the next five days, posting will continue one I return.

Your name on my cast and my notes on your stay
Offer me little but doting on a crime.
We've turned every stone and for all our inventions
In matters of love loss, we've no recourse at all.

Blind to the last cursed affair pistols and countless eyes
A trail of white blood betrays the reckless route your craft is running
Feed till the sun turns into wood dousing an ancient torch
Loiter the whole day through and lose yourself in lines dissecting love.
- The Shins, "The Past and Pending"

A Nuclear Family

This photograph was taken inside the home of one of the families I visited. The grandmother takes care of her three grand children and husband, who is retired and was sleeping upstairs when I visited. The twins, Thuy Truc and Thuy Cuc, and their younger sister are from different fathers who have long since left. Their mother and both fathers are HIV positive. Their grandmother works all day, spending the morning salvaging bottles and cans to sell. She spends her afternoons cutting vegetables as her second job; in the evening she comes home to take care of the children and cook with the meager supply of vegetables she is allowed to bring home.

To add a sense of scale, I was sitting against the opposite wall when I took this photograph, and their entire upstairs is where they sleep at night. Two elderly people and three beautiful children, all crammed into a tiny home in the back alleys of Sai Gon. Amazingly, they are happy, loving, and welcoming. In this home, I learned that love really does hold a family together more than anything. The three children dream of becoming doctors and teachers. Thank goodness they aren't sick.

I drew pictures for the little girls and tore them out of my notebook. They returned the favor. They little one said she would color in my drawings of gorillas and dogs and stick them to the wall upstairs. They sent me home with a handful of their own drawings and I plan to do the same. We all have something to give to each other...


This small home houses six brothers and sisters and their grandmother, who lives outside on what appeared to be a wooden platform surrounded by tarps. The second story of this home is also wooden platforms surrounded by tarps and at night, the children all sleep together. If you look closely, you'll see a picture of Jesus - this is where the back wall is. The children were kind enough to show me around and take pictures with me. I later found out that this entire community was built on top of a cemetery. I'm not even sure if the children noticed because they were busy running and playing as children do. This home reminded me that home is truly where you make it.


It was the Fourth of July and a few hours later I was sitting in a swanky restaurant eating my second gourmet hamburger of the evening. I didn't know what to feel knowing that I'd probably eaten a month's worth of someone else's wages in one sitting. It's not my fault, but I'll be damned if I ever take for granted the blessings I have in life.

So I was laying in a hospital bed today, curled in the fetal position and groaning in pain when...

I realized that there are always unresolved things in our lives we must take care of before we pass on. I'm lucky because if something really did happen, then I would be content in knowing that I've done as much as I can to help others in my short time on this planet. There's always that one topic that I will remain unsure of though, because I'll never be able to say anything, and even if I did, it wouldn't make much of a difference. Funny how that's what passed through my mind, when I was laying in a hospital in excruciating pain, thinking that I might have a kidney infection, a kidney stone, a broken back, or something equally as painful or life threatening.

It appears I've thrown out my back, ironically, for no reason at all. I woke up Saturday morning a little stiff, and by Sunday night I was moaning and groaning with every turn. By this morning, I could hardly brush my teeth without almost crying so I decided to go to the local "Western" clinic across the street.

They took two sets of X-rays and ran tests on my blood, urine, and poo only to find... well, nothing. The doctor, the nurse, and the orthopedic specialist were all confused by how I couldn't roll over in bed without screaming when I came in, but hours later after an IV full of Volteran I could sit cross legged on my bed reading the newspaper. The orthopedic specialist (a foreign doctor I only knew as "Dr. Claudio") was even more confused that it didn't seem to have to do with any specific kind of trauma.

They suspected kidney stones or a possible kidney infection so I figured I'd be in for the long haul. Surprisingly, I actually received very good service while I was here, or at least more personal attention than a hospital in the states would give me.

I was doing martial arts the night before my back started getting sore, but if I pulled something then I would have known then and there. In fact, I've been doing martial arts for the past two weeks without any problems. Either way, the pain developed over a period of several days. My urine, blood, and poo came back clean so there was no internal problem to account for it, and my X-rays showed no associated bone fracture or malformation that would show any problems with my spine. On the plus side, they gave me enough ibuprofen to numb a baby elephant and sent me on my merry way.

On the plus side, I don't have any tropical diseases, AIDS, hepatitis, or tuberculosis (which is what I work around) so I should be alright. My back is feeling much better after sleeping the whole day and I've got a good supply of ibuprofen to last me a week, so we'll see how the progress goes. If I feel better by Wednesday, I'm going on a tour of Central Vietnam to see the waterfalls and touristy spots around Hue.

Don't worry! It's probably just a pulled/strained muscle in my back. Most likely, it will resolve itself with antiinflammatories and pain medication...

Creature Comforts

Weird shit I've seen in the hallway outside my room and in the vicinity of the guest house:

• geckos
• a dragon fly
• a frog
• a cat
• a cockroach the length of my index finger
• mosquitoes
• more mosquitoes
• a rat

Weird shit I've seen on the back of motor scooters (and sometimes the front):

• a wind shield - for a car
• a desk
  
• a refrigerator
• a large flat-panel television
  
• four grown women
• four people and a dog
• a man and four children
• babies standing on the back, no hands
• me, trying not to crap myself and holding on for dear life
  

Independence

Just thought I'd post a picture that one of the kids I work with took. The children are incredibly sweet, and the little youngin' here wouldn't let me put her down during the whole visit.

When they saw the camera, they went nuts and totally wanted to play with it. For the most part, they take pretty good pictures! The children took me by the hand and showed me around the neighborhood, leading me through alleyways until we ended up outside of a small Buddhist temple in the middle of the slums.

More pictures to come later (I promise)... Happy 4th of July!

Rust

During last Sunday's meeting in the park, Anh Hung had me take pictures of each and every family that attended, so when I met them later on I could recognize where they came from and who they were. Yesterday I had the opportunity to make a house call with my internship at Smiling Group. I visited the home of an older woman and her eleven-year-old granddaughter, Thanh Thy.

They live in a small house in the back of a church and school, pretty standard compared to the homes I've been in recently. The pale blue paint on the walls was peeling with rust. The other women of house were sleeping on the floor and retreated to the small loft upstairs as I came in. Thanh Thy's grandmother gathered two glasses of water and we sat together on the floor. Her 60-year-old grandmother calls me Anh Loc out of respect for Anh Hung (who she calls Thay), and Thanh Thy calls me by Chu Loc - I'll never get used to that.

Thanh Thy is only eleven, but she's so small I could've sworn she was six. She was resting from school that day because she was tired and didn't have the energy to study anymore. Her grandmother brought me water and we sat on the floor talking while she showed me pictures of her daughter and son-in-law, Thanh Thy's parents who passed away eight years ago from a combination of tuberculosis and HIV. Her mother was a tailor and her father was a driver. She also lost her newborn brother to tuberculosis during that period; she was only three at the time. I flipped through the family album, a handful of postcard sized pictures that I realized were Thanh Thy's only connection to her parents besides her grandmother. Thanh Thy is not yet old enough to understand that she also has HIV, she just knows that she has to take a lot of large orange pills three times a day.

Her grandmother was extremely welcoming and trusting of me. She told me all about her family, leaving each question thoroughly unanswered as I wrote gradually everything down. Looking through the album, I saw a picture of Thanh Thy's brother's funeral, a picture that both moved and disturbed me by the resolve at which her grandmother spoke about it. The picture was of Thanh Thy's mother, being held back and sobbing as the small red casket bearing a white cross was set down next to her son's body. The conversation was weighted by what they had all gone through as a family and that Thanh Thy's grandmother managed to raise her with the help of her uncles.

I sat and talked with them for about an hour. Her grandmother asked me questions about my life in the states. She asked me about my career plans and why I came to Vietnam, who my parents were and how we ended up in California. I got to learn more about the Vietnamese family structure as well, and I realize that my family is an anomaly in itself, especially by Vietnamese standards.

"You live so far away from your family. Don't you get sad?"
"Not really, I'm used to it. I can take care of myself. I know how to cook and clean."
"Oh, that's right, in America young people move out of the house when you are eighteen. Here, everybody lives together until someone gets married. Families here are much closer..."

I discovered that Thanh Thy has beautiful handwriting. Her grandmother proudly showed me the notebooks she brought home from school and we laughed because I couldn't understand most of the vocabulary words and after glancing at my notebook, they noticed that my handwriting is barely legible.

"Do you like to draw?"
"Yes...," she said, with a shy smile.
"What do you like to draw? Cats, dogs, elephants..."
"Elephants!"
"Do you want to draw one for me?"
"I can't! It's too hard!"

So I drew her an elephant standing next to some coconut trees and a happy little stick figure. She giggled and somewhere inside of me, a small child with a rough childhood came out of hiding. This is healing.

This Thursday, July 5th, should have been my father's 60th birthday.

Plans

There were some things I wanted to take care of before I left for Vietnam, but they never got resolved. It's not to say that they won't be resolved in the future, because ultimately, nothing lasts forever and these ideas will work their way out over time. One way or another, unresolved issues will always return to the forefront of our consciousness, whether we want them to or not.

"...you cannot hide from yourself," Anh Hung said. Even if the statement had nothing to do with me at the time, it struck a cord. I am on the cusp of something both dangerous and beautiful, something that I can't hide from, even if I travel half-way across the globe to hide among the masses of a bustling, polluted city. Some things never change no matter where you are.

Cũ Chi

Yesterday I took a trip with the program to Cũ Chi to visit the old tunnels used during the war. It's amazing what people do during war and I got to learn about the different booby traps the VC used. All of them involved spikes.

The best part was walking through the forest and seeing all the different kinds of wildlife and giant bugs running around. We found a lizard and a bunch of giant millipedes, which I suppose were small by VN standards.

I kept hearing gunfire and as we walked through the forest and thinking there was a loud speaker somewhere, I asked the tour guide about it. It turns out the gunfire was real - they had a shooting range! I got to fire a gun for the first time in my life, even though I generally hate guns. With the exception that the ear muffs they provided were useless and we nearly went deaf, it was actually kind of fun.

Trẻ Em

Find the Viet Kieu!

I'll give you a clue, he's the pale one in the center being smothered by small children.

Today I got to go to a meeting in the park for children with families affected by HIV. The talk among adults is weighted by the sickness and death of loved ones, but the experience is positive and the atmosphere is joyous and loving.

Things like this are good for the soul. These children live with HIV in their lives and deal with immeasurable suffering, but their innocence still remains. They love people readily and easily - given the chance, they will climb all over you and ask you questions.

It's even funnier that they call me "Chu Loc" and I get to call them "con" - because, you know, I'm and adult and all. They were so excited to meet me and I got to spend several hours playing games and holding hands and singing with the children. Even though I woke up at 6:30am (on a Sunday at that) to get there from the other end of the city, it was a good recharge.