#3 - "So What Do You Think of Life Here?"

         These last two days being woven into the fabric of life in the village have been breathtaking to say the least. So where do I begin?
         Following my lunch with my grandfather, I started to get to know my father's siblings and their children. Sitting in a circle around our lunch we spoke of many different things. Constantly I was asked about how life was in college and how my parents were doing. "Its great, etc. etc." I would seem to reply, but with time, I eventually opened myself up. By this time it was about noon and the temperature reached over thirty three degrees centigrade in this hot, bright, and humid environment.
         "What do people do around this time of the day?" I asked my uncle's middle son. "We rest, eat, hang out and talk" he replyed. So we did just that. Around me sat my uncle and three of his sons who were home after working in the beach and doing other activities. We discussed everything. In the news, China and Vietnam, alongside other Southeast Asian nations are currently in a political dispute over the South China Sea. My uncle gave his opinion of the United States jumping into the dispute and also gave his opinion of the diplomacy in his opinion that the nations currently are adopting. We also talked about life in Hai Nhuan and about all the sacrifices people constantly make to get by. I was not shocked, but I still felt sorrow for the people here, particularly my family members on my father's side.
         "The sea is our work" my uncle and his sons' told me. My dad at home often would tell me how hard it was during this time period to make enough money to raise a family in my village. In the past, he said, there were countless numbers of fish, big and small, in a great variety. Over the decades, people started to overfish the beaches and even worse, used bombs and other violent methods to catch more fish. Due to these practices, much of the catches of fish are much smaller than usual and people can hardly fish enough to support their families. "So how do you get by these days? I asked. He told me that many of the villagers depended on family members living in other parts of the world. Gifts, money, food, etc. is sent over to the people every week to month. "It takes about one hundred dollars to support a family here for a month" he told me. This number rang out in my head. One hundred. One Month. Family.
           Remembering back to my last visit to Vietnam, my mom brought home thousands and thousands of dollars to give to family members. Thousand here, two thousand there my mom told me. She tells me "you give to one family, and other's soon will tug at you to give to them." "You feel sorry, and you... have to or else they talk bad about you."
          So here I am, an Vietnamese American citizen coming home to Vietnam, to my ancestry, wanting to give back. Since I still have not started my career, people do not expect me to give them anything less than my presence here. However, being around here has really allowed me to see much more clearly of how the reality is for the villagers. Hearing it from my parents was one thing, but being able to sit down with the villagers and share a conversation is so captivating and convincing. "Don't worry about us, Ben" my uncle said, "focus on your own business in school and get settled as an adult." "When you finally establish that foundation, then you will be able to make a difference" he told me.
          In the States, I began doing an extensive amount of community service, to which my father had recommended against. "Why are you doing all these things?" he once told me, "you should focus just on school since other people will do them." Never did I agree with him and I still don't. This is where I realize is the divide between me and my father. Being raised in this village, in a world where social mobility is extremely difficult, my father always worked under the idea of what I call the "foundation-minded lifestyle." This is the idea that one should focus solely on achieving a goal, usually a career, where one is able to support oneself and/or a family and avoid getting involved in other matters that do not add any immediate or direct support towards achieving the goal. For my dad, focusing solely on academics, and just academics, was what he did as a child. In order to go to college, he told me, "you have one hundred kids, they all test, and only about five of them make it." "Even after they past these tests, it is still hard as you need money to go to most colleges, and being poor usually prevents most students from going to college, regardless of how bright they are" he once told me. It was this same event that happened to him when he was young. It was because of this that he decided to flee Vietnam at 17 years of age, even after passing the tests to go to college. He did not make it this first attempt. But, this story perhaps is better told another time.
         The long story short, the people here are geared toward a very specific mindset. One that guides their way of life and way of teaching. Anyways, we finished talking about all these different things and I at last went off to go see other family members.
         I can go on forever about all the different things I did, but what caught me the most over these last two days was an instance I sat with one of the sons of my uncle on his motorcycle riding around the village. We rode for a long thirty minutes, visiting this and that. "Ben, you see how hard it is living here?" he asked me, as I stared around like some wide-eyed tourist taking pictures of this and that. "Sure, I know it is, people like me coming back here, we see it as beautiful and fun, and yet people here suffer every single day trying to get by" I replyed. By then we found a cafe to sit down and talk. I ordered some of the famous Vietnamese iced coffee and we spoke for a long hour and a half. "You see the beach over there?" he said, "its fake." The beach he said was the lifeblood of the village. Since the volume of fish has gone down dramatically over the last decade, people have not made enough money, as I said above, to make it. Many people, he said, leave the village to go find work but can't because they don't have enough money to even set themselves up in the city. He says they have to wait 'till a relative outside of Vietnam sends home enough money to allow them to make the journey and also live in the city. "So what do you think of life here?" he asked, "what kind of people do you see us as?" he asked.
         I paused and thought. "I'll tell you what we are" he said. "We are sitting people." He asked me to look around and look at the people throughout the day. "Do you see them doing anything" he asked? From what I saw, people tended to rest a great deal during the day, fishing often occurring in the early mornings or late nights. The weather being so hot during the day, I can't blame them. "People seem to be doing everyday activities and such" I replied. He laughed. "In this village, it is now impossible to make a living" he said. "You have to either go to college and get hired for work, or you have to get lucky and get a job in the city" he continued, "otherwise you are stuck wiveless and sad." I laughed with him. For the first time here, sitting in this cafe, looking around at the village and speaking of it, I felt as if I understood the reality of the people here.
         Many more conversations occurred. My grandfather finally spoke to me to a great degree after a short nap today. He talked about his life and his grief over the split between him and my father, along with other family members who also had strong feelings against him. He told me that people only came towards his house because they knew that I was coming home. I was the reason why people even sat down and ate with him. We talked for a long time. He talked about his memories of my father, how he helped my father as he grew up, found his first wife, and supported him through all his troubles. I kept nodding and allowed for him to continue talking. I knew he felt at peace with me here with him. Sitting across from him, sitting outside on the front bench, being soothed by the wind alongside another hot, humid day, brought peace to my heart and being.
          There are countless more stories to be told and I still haven't ate dinner. Tomorrow I finally embark on the next phase of my journey: meeting the orphans. I am extremely excited and cannot wait to meet them all. To end this piece, I shall recite a saying that I have been constantly pelted with throughout my stay at the village thus far: "Ben, you know that a lot of girls here love you and would marry you, right?" After chuckling, I always reply, "sure."

This is getting easier as I keep writing... YAY!

Thank you to those of you who are following! =)