Lottery

Yesterday I visited the home of one of the many women in Sai Gon who sell lottery tickets. Since they are taken as solicitors, treated as another annoyance in the street, few people notice that they carry their children along with them. Long and I had a conversation about one of these people yesterday, and I never expected the opportunity to be welcomed into this kind woman's home.

She is HIV positive, living alone with her son in District 12. Her husband died of HIV two years ago and since then she has been selling lottery tickets in the evening from 4:30pm until 10pm. She rides her bicycle around the city from District 12 to the air port, son in tow. Since the price of lottery tickets has gone up to 5000 dong, it has become harder and harder for her to sell them. Somehow, she manages to sell about 40 or 50 tickets a day - which would seem like a lot of money, but in terms of profit she probably only makes a few pennies. The single, dark room that she rents in the back of a narrow alley costs roughly 200,000 dong per month, in one of the cheapest places in the city. The bathroom is outdoors and the neighborhood reeks of raw sewage, which seeps into the black waters of a nearby stream.

She is living solely for the survival of her son, though see grows weaker and more desperate every day. She loves him as any mother and is saddened by the fact that she has no family to turn him over to. During our conversation, while sitting on the cool cement floor of her room, she half-jokingly asked me to, "Take her son with me to America and turn him over to someone else". I could only respond with a smile, saying that a college student is not fit to take care of a child and that he would be better off in the arms of his mother. We continued putting together the wire flowers sold during the New Years festival, which take hours to make but only sell for a few thousand dong per kilo (roughly about 50 cents for several hours of manual work). She was kind enough to let me take pictures of her and her son, her house, and her life.

The experience, above all else, has been humbling. I'm glad I followed Thay Bac's advice when he told me to ask questions, talk to people, and try to understand what their lives are like. This is how I am learning about Vietnam - through the lenses of the common person. It's moments like this when one realizes that the person on the street bothering you during your lunch is more than an annoyance, they're human beings whose livelihood weighs roughly on minor decisions such as whether or not to buy a lottery ticket. They'll never win the lottery that they sell tickets for.