A moan, a book and a re-think....

It's strange, but recently, whenever I've been feeling unsettled, frustrated, or miserable, a song or a book has appeared which helps me make sense of things.

Today was a perfect example. I had a long conversation with my sister on skype, telling her about my frustration with my current placement (2 of 3). The many obstacles I'm meeting. The feelings of ineffectiveness and professional impotency. Basically having a moan, feeling sorry for myself, and feeling a waste of VSO's precious and limited funds.

Anyway, once she'd had enough of me (!!)  I took my grumpy butt to a coffee shop around the corner, where extremely strong Vietnamese coffee and Barack Obama's book 'Dreams from my Father' made me re-evaluate. The bit I happened to be reading describes how, in his late 20's, Mister Obama moved to Chicago to make big waves as a community organiser. He talks about how he went with big ambitions, full of enthusiasm, wanting to work hard and bring about dramatic changes. He goes on to describe more than a year of bitter weather, empty meeting halls, un-returned calls, futile knocking on doors, weekends alone in an apartment with his books..... frustrations, set-backs, dashed hopes, let-downs. But we all know where he's at now. That someone who has achieved so much and has so much confidence, had times when he achieved very little, and felt very useless, was exactly what I needed to read at that moment. Thank you Mr O.

Of course us volunteers are going to feel demotivated at times. Of course there'll be times we can't see a way to move things forward. But looking at the big picture; I've only been in this (literally) sleepy little town two weeks. I'm doing the best I can, with the skills I've got and the things I can make. I'm not going to change the world (and I'm pretty sure the US is better off without me as President, haha), but, whilst in the short term I need to give everything I've got to fulfilling my job description with VSO and my local partner (essentially to improve the quality of life and life chances for these children with disabilities and their families), I also need to acknowledge that part of the value of doing this is actually for me. For me to develop skills in listening, communication, problem-solving, understanding, patience, resiliance.... in other words, to prepare and practice positive action for the long term. For a lifetime.  

As well as fundraising and personal donations, VSO receives some money from DFID, the UK Department for International Development. So all you tax-payers - after a few minutes considering (and if you're inclined, getting active about) your hard earned pennies being used to prop up unethical banks (RBS? Goldman Sachs?), subsidise airlines and re-build Trident... you can smile and remember that some of your money is going to help the most disadvantaged people in the poorest countries of the world, and some to funding my personal development. You should feel good about that  :o)

Family party Viet Nam stylee

About 4 hours ago, with a long empty Sunday evening stretched out in front of me, I thought I'd write a post about Vietnamese parties. Then, as I went downstairs to make some tea (you can take the girl out of England, but.....) I found myself on the back of a motorbike being whisked away to the beach for a.... family party.

A feast for 27

Having grown up in the Otto/Stephenson clan (both families being renowned breeders), some aspects of these gatherings are very familiar. We also enjoy large rowdy meals; with 30 or so family members ranging in age (and behavioural age) from 0 - 93, laughing, teasing, shouting, children dangling off chairs / trees / hammocks / roofs, lots of food and drink, someone sleeping on the floor etc....

There are subtle differences though. Things I'm less familiar with including;

- throwing all scraps and bottles onto the floor

- scrawny dogs eating said scraps from around your feet

- people pissing off the edge of the restaurant platform

- being given the chicken's head as a prize delicacy

- having whatever watery iced drink I have in front of me topped up with whatever someone else has at hand....beer, coke, or green tea, or worst of all, 'sting' (the local version of red bull)

- hookers sitting at the next table eyeing up the younger guys

- the lady who's drunk the most (apart from grandma) telling me she's due at work in a couple of hours. At the hospital.

- grandma vomiting from her hammock after one-too-many glasses of said watery-iced-beers (granny, don't get any ideas!)

The aftermath

So, I'm back at the guesthouse, feeling a bit bewildered by the last few hours, a bit tipsy, and glad to have been to another party instead of just sitting here typing about them :o)

Things that are starting to get a little bit annoying....

Whilst I am meeting lots of fabulous kind funny people here in Vietnam, and the vast majority of interactions with people are positive, there are a few things that strangers do which have started to get a bit irritating after four months here....

1) People who just stare, without acknowledging a smile or hello. That's rude any place.

2) People (mainly groups/gaggles?/herds? of teenagers) who jostle and dare the bravest to shout "hello" and then before I reply, all run away part-giggling part-terrified, as if they expect my eyes to start glowing red, a forked tongue to flick out or a scaly tail to appear.

3) On the same note, people who wait until I've cycled a safe distance past them to shout "hello". This leaves me in a conundrum - do I ignore them and feel very rude, or turn to shout and wave back, risking veering into an oncoming tractor.

Please, I'm not a freak. I really don't have glowy red eyes. I don't foam at the mouth. I won't bite. So speak to me if you want to, I''m quite friendly. If you don't want to, please don't shout at me...

4) Restaurant/shack owners who, after I've chatted with them (in Vietnamese), and asked how much i owe (in Vietnamese), scrabble around for five minutes to find the appropriate denomination note to demonstrate, or hold up the appropriate number of fingers. Give me some credit,  we learnt numbers in week one.

and the next one is by far the most annoying....

5) People who slow down to ride beside me on their motorbikes, wanting to practice English..... Firstly, I can't hear you because you're on a motorbike. Secondly I can't hear you because you have a face mask on, and you're refusing to remove it. Thirdly, you're talking incredibly quickly. So... sorry dude/dudette, it's just not going to work. Please ride on and let me ride in peace?

Wow. That unintentionally turned into a bit of a rant.
All insignificant in the big scheme of things.
I still think Viet Nam rocks....

SWEATING

Doesn't the title just make you so excited to read this....!?
Uncharacteristically for the new, very ladylike me, I thought I'd put this little observation out there on the world wide web. Don't worry, I won't put pictures with this one.

Have any of you lived in a tropical climate? Or used a sauna on a regular basis? If you have, or do, then you'll have some idea what I'm talking about.

It's mid-summer, and the temperature is between 35-42 degrees every day. It's not much cooler at night. Relative humidity is very high (40-50% in the countryside, 70-80% in the cities) . In this rural area there are few places with air con, and fans are dependant on power, which is pretty inconsistent right now (Viet Nam hasn't yet embraced solar power, although this will be a perfect place for them.)

So.... sweating is like breathing, or digestion, or toenails growing - it happens without you even being aware of it. It's not a pleasure, but it's not really an annoyance. It just happens.

It's not a sweaty-stinky-pits type of sweat. It's not wet-patches-in-politician's-shirts or nervous-job-interview type sweat. It's not BO sweat. It's more of an all over leaking type sweat, seeping out of every pore - knees, chin, arms, stomach, eyebrows, toes, just everywhere. Like an childhood Babybel-left-in-a hot-lunchbox, only without the smell of cheese. Like a running-on-the-beach type sweat. It's a clean fresh sweat, that smells like clean hot people. And everyone takes a lot of cool showers.

At night it's a case of sprawling on top of a sheet, in as little clothing as you can get away with and still be decent when the landlord walks into your room to plug in an extension lead at 5.30am, and finding positions to sleep where there is a minimum of skin-on-skin contact. I'm almost grateful to be here alone - i can make a skydiver star-shape, and rotate both pillows to get 3 more cool sides. I now understand why (at least in the rural areas) most people don't even use a mattress. Lying on a hard surface allows air to move underneath you.

Well, there you go. Sweating à la Vietnam. Not the most exciting of posts, but life isn't all incredible and amusing and fascinating. You're gonna have to read about some of the mundane too!

See you soon :o)

4 days and the extremes of Viet Nam

My birthday weekend was pretty special. I hope that in writing this I can show you some of the extremes of life in Viet Nam - from the simplicity and poverty in the rural villages to the ex-pat (and Vietnamese) high life in Ha Noi. In both worlds, I had time, laughter and celebrations with good friends - thanks everyone!

Thursday
At the centre where I'm working, the happy occasion was celebrated with a hyperactivity inducing, teeth-dissolving sugar-fest - kids and adults alike tucked into an enormous cake, elaborately decorated with roses and swans and lashings of longlife, sweetened cream; brightly coloured, very sweet, agar-based jellies (somehow moulded into a bizarre and entertaining array of animals - fish, dolphins, giraffes, cats...); 'che' - various beans cooked with what seems like an equal amount of sugar and drunk with ice; lychees, rambutans, jackfruit...

I'm sure there were some very grumpy children and parents that evening. 

From that chaos, I gratefully retreated to spend a lovely evening with Mrs Thong (pronounced Thom) and her family. Thong is one of life's angels - despite having poor health, she spends her time (voluntarily) visiting families with disabled children. The family have very little money, and few material things (you can see how bare the house is), but they radiate friendliness, warmth and contentment. They insist that I don't take gifts when I visit, and have done everything they can to make sure I'm looked after here in Dien Ban. I hope one day I can repay their kindness, or at least pass it on.

Setting out for Ha Noi later on was a bit of a sad occasion, as it meant saying 'tạm biệt' to my very good friend Phuc, who's just moved to the US for a year (yep, heard all the jokes, and yep, I've pre-warned her). She took me to Đà Nẵng on her motorbike to catch the train to the capital, and as usual we stopped at various local eateries in the never-ending exploration of Vietnamese cuisine! I wish her all the best for her new life over there, and expect that she now understands why I broke down in tears the first couple of times I visited her house for language lessons and couldn't correctly pronounce the difference between

a, ă, â, à, ã, á, ạ and ả.

It wasn't her teaching. Tôi nhớ bạn!

   

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Friday
Arriving in Ha Noi the following afternoon (after 16hrs overnight in a non-aircon train compartment. 4 people in 2 seats!?), I met fellow VSO-ers and great friends Kathy and David for a drink by Truc Bach lake. A happy re-union, a beautiful view, lovely trees, handsome men exercising on parallel bars with their tops off, a cold beer.... would have been perfect apart from the young guy dropping his kegs to shit in the water just in front of us.

Later that evening the three of us dodged fat tropical raindrops to go round the corner for a gorgeous Indian meal (my first dahl in 3 months!) and then I gladly made a nest on their (far more comfortable than my bed) sofa.

Saturday (my Birthday!)
Breakfast chez Kathy was a treat. Living in Ha Noi allows them some little luxuries - cold fruit, yoghurt and apple juice from the fridge, with muslei from Fivimart. Which, when eaten in their company, on their 4th floor balcony, listening to the birds and watching early morning urban life down below, was the perfect start to the day.

Socialising here in Vietnam, as all over the world, tends to revolve around meals. So my birthday breakfast was just minutes and a short motorbike taxi-ride from a birthday lunch with Vietnamese friends (staff at my partner organisation) at the 'Ngon' (Delicious) restaurant. It certainly was 'ngon', and really great to catch up with them.

What better way to laze off lunch than by a pool? So, next on the birthday agenda was the Thang Loi Hotel pool, where for around £1 you can swim, sunbathe and hold your belly in to your hearts content. And it was also where I'd arranged to meet up with the rest of my VSO family (from my first post). The lifeguards were a little bemused by me screaming, running and jumping in the pool with all my clothes and shoes on to hug my friends, but they were happy enough once they'd extracted me and sold me a ticket. Lots to catch up on - work, and play. They were all jealous of my country tan - I was jealous of the accomadation, music, culture and cheese that they can get in the city.

                                                

After whiling away a good few hours, we headed to Pat's (another VSO's) house, where we were joined by more people for WINE and aformentioned CHEESE!!!! I'm ashamed to say that when she brought it out of the fridge I didn't wait for crackers or for anyone else to start - I dived straight in. Kind of like the pool I guess!

It was a joint celebration weekend for me and VSO Sarah (on the left in the pic above), and the first time we've all met up since we started out here, so everyone was as excitable as the kids in Dien Tho after all that sugar....

Pre-dinner snackage and wine started playtime perfectly, and from then on it became a bit of a blur of food, beers, laughter, taxis, trees blowing down, boys, cocktails, giggling, running in the rain, MCing, motorbikes (don't worry mum, it was very safe) football, Jagermeister......

Sunday

We got in around 4am, which in the UK wouldn't be anything too unusual, but for girls now used to rural Vietnam time (5.30am rising, 9.30pm going to bed) and utterly unused to alcohol, was quite an achievement.

As a result, I'm very glad that I'm not in the following picture, which was brunch a few hours later. Very ex-pat, very luxurious (eggs Benedict!), very nice, VERY hungover. Sarah still manages to look glam though (grrrrr).

 

Ambitiously (for the day after the night before) I'd promised to meet with a Vietnamese friend, Khai, who I first met in my village (he and his brother were staying at the guesthouse where I live). I dragged myself onto the local buses and met him by the lake in Hanoi, and it was really great to see him. He speaks exactly two words of English (OK and No) so we get by on my Vietnamese and both of our amusement with sign language and mis-communication. We walked, had dinner and made plans for me to visit his village the next day.

Khai dropped me off at the Hanoi Opera House. It felt very wierd walking away from my  Vietnamese friend in his old (but immaculately clean) clothes, on his old (but perfectly maintained) scooter, towards my relatively very wealthy ex-pat friends, dressed up and illuminated on the elegant marble stairway. It really highlighted our privilege.

Initial adjustment aside, it was incredible to sit there, in the cool dark auditorium, listening to an Italian cellist play everything from classical pieces from the 1700's to Hendrix and Nirvana. We were transported to another, fabulous, magical world for a while.

Monday

The following morning I set out to visit Khai and his family, which involved over a hour of reading maps, flagging down buses, getting off said buses when heading in the wrong direction, flagging down more buses. With only a text message in Vietnamese to tell me where to go.

I like an adventure.... 

When I arrived in the village, Khai picked me up (at exactly the place and time we'd arranged. I understand if you're amazed.) We headed to the tiny house where he currently lives with his mother and brother Thuong, and met and chatted with her a while.

Power is rationed at the moment (in most rural areas it's off every other day), until the rainy season arrives and fills the hydroelectric resevoirs which provide a third of Vietnam's power. When it's hitting 40 degrees, it's coolest to be outside, in the shade, where you can catch any hint of breeze. So the three of us left his mother to nap, and wandered around the large peaceful village pagoda (a temple, in this case a triple faith temple - with elements of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism). We ended up joining most of the rest of the village on mats under the trees by the river. The men grouped together talking football, napping and smoking. The women chattered (as women do the world over). The kids climbed the trees, caught locusts, paddled in the river. It was bliss. I didn't take pictures, it was too special, and is etched in my memory.

As the afternoon went on, Khai and Thuong took me to the plot in the village where Khai has just started building his own house. The fact that he's able to do this in his twenties is testimony to his hard work and saving - Vietnamese cannot get mortgages, and land is expensive. Most rural Vietnamese live with their parents, even after marriage. I helped with the digging, which they found hilarious.

I fell a little bit in love with Khai that day - he's the perfect gentleman. The kind of guy that the man want in the middle of their group to slap on the back and make banter with, the women want around to mother, tease and flirt with, the teenage girls giggle and hide from, and the kids want to climb all over. There's a kind of sweet, unspoken romance between us, and for hours that afternoon I imagined just staying there, in that village. But there's some very good reasons why it can't and won't ever go further than coy glances and smiles.

Anyway, at the end of that beautiful day (where I'd only spoken Vietnamese!) I was back on the wrong buses, mis-reading my map, and managing to get back to central Ha Noi perfectly on time to meet another Vietnamese friend. This time the very modern, very professional, very welcoming Thao, who is the country representative of my partner organisation. She's married to an Australian, and they have two young children who are growing up completely bilingual, in a fabulous hectic stimulating house with a constant stream of visitors and house guests, tennis courts and a pool. Quite a life for them, and the most beautiful kids I've ever seen (apart from my nephew Orin of course). After a very fun evening with them and various others, Thao dropped me a the station for the 11pm train back to Đà Nẵng.

This time I had a sleeper, and I definately needed it....