Through the Tin Roof and the Ceiling Fan

Depth all around...Embracing

Creeping darkness of deep reds and ephemeral blues

Penetrates from the outside

Through doors, shutters and imaginary windows

Fills the house with density

The smell of wet soil as the earth prepares to receive

Life creatures begin to migrate

The loudness of silence while time moves still

Perceptible warnings

And the monsoon rain finally sooths the air

It erases the memory of the steps left behind

It calls out through the tin roofs

As the ceiling fan struggles to keep up with the melody

Lost yet grounded

As the skies seduce the earth

Timeless

I listen and I stare

Weightless

I travel

 

The world changes its colours from my front door

First Flood 24 August 2008

This time the monsoon did not last as long as usual but the quantity of water greatly exceeds any prediction…As always Vietnam proves it self grandious in yet one more affirmation of its natural power! Nature converts my downstairs floor in a swimming-pool…As I set foot water is half way through my calves…Slimy creatures caress me as they happily swim around our shoes turned little floating vessels. A bull frog is struggling to stay afloat. The power chords previously hanging from the ceiling and wall outlets are dangerously half-way submerged in the muddy waters…I stand on a chair eyes closed, breath suspended fishing out the chords with a wooden broom. My roommate’s luggage also submerged by the muddy waters. Ben is at the door standing in…Water! With a package of tea light candles. Roommate Huong notified as she is on a bus back to Can Tho. Her aunt comes by. We both stand on chairs speaking to each other but unable to communicate. What to do? Eat! Ben is off in search of nourishment…What else? I soak Huong’s clothes in warm water as instructed. Ben is back with a delicious meal of sautéed squid. I have dinner while Ben catches the big worm I had panicky mistaken for a snake! (within seconds there are several of them!) Roommate is back. Her sleeping quarter moved upstairs. Belly full and resigned to let nature further take its course we go to Ben’s dry house to have a beer. We borrow rubber boots to get back in the house. We let the creatures’ water park be. Tomorrow we will go to work.

A Weekend to love Can Tho (8/24-25, 08)

Smiles

Still

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s noon and Laura arrives from HCMC. We sit for hours at my favorite café for long awaited catching up. In the center of town we reserve a tour of the floating market (gift for my upcoming birthday) and we visit a Cambodian Pagoda. The pagoda’s beauty is melancholic with bare interiors and slightly decaying walls. We wander around. Drink liters of sugar cane juice and buy home appliances. For dinner we recruit neighbor Ben, a British PhD student and go nhau. We walk into a huge garage like structure where men enjoy feasts of seafood, beer and Vietnamese home brewed alcohol. We begin pointing at the dishes on the tables around us. Its crab legs, it’s a fishy engraved type of clam with thick juicy gravy, it’s bia (beer), it’s fried squid and fried sweet potatoes dipped in butter and sugar (don’t discard it ‘till you try it). Every time I manage to open a slippery juicy clam w/my fingers someone from a nearby table gives me thumps up. I nod and smile…“ngon” (delicious)! The cook/owner also keeps on cruising by with his thump up before slipping into his very fashionable silk pajamas and collapsing for the night in front of a fan in the only room in his restaurant/home. The crew of young drunken men at the next table is increasingly intrigued by our presence and, with every sip of alcohol, decreasingly shy….”Where are you from?”…“Isn’t the food delicious”… ”Do you like soccer?” Ben is offered a brown concoction in a shot glass. Our neighbors have by now downed 4 bottles of “…whatever they are drinking”. It’s pictures-taking time! Someone arrives with an apparently long awaited bottle of “STRONG MUSCLE WINE” which is displayed with great pride as, it is announced, arrives straight from Cambodia. And Laura and I have to try it as well…But just a sip is okay! We are given a list of “this is so delicious” foods that we need to try while in Can Tho and told that we are “very lovely”. Our gladly-self-appointed host for the night tells Laura that her “physique is very suitable for volley ball” in a rather complimentary tone and off we are as soon as we manage to shake everyone’s waiting hand. It’s midnight; we hunt frogs and lizards in the house before crashing exhausted and “vui” (happy)… Why does this word always make me think of Lillian (VIA Vietnam program director)?

It’s 6:30 am, ban mhi in hand, feeling like happy tourists we get on a Xe Hom directed to our boat appointment. It’s just us, the driver and a very quiet and smiley guide on a beautiful wooden boat with red and blue large painted eyes. The Can Tho River humbly offers itself to its inhabiting families as the source of so much daily life from bathing to cooking to cooling off and playing. After about 30 minutes we arrive at the Cai Rang floating market.  It’s buzzing with activity though there seem to be more sellers than buyers, perhaps too early…Too late…? Off we are to the vegetable garden which has been offered to us as a bonus. We have no idea of what is awaiting us, but we happily follow the quiet guide. We walk through a little thriving community guarding the garden who lives on the river banks while smiley children run after us shouting “hallo”…”where you from”…and occasional motorbikes compete with our attempts to walk on skinny little bridges. In beautiful traditional Vietnamese style homes, grandfathers drink morning coffee while a woman skins a snake on a makeshift cooking table on the side of the road. We arrive. We meet crocodiles, various snakes, a monkey, iguanas and the hugest python I have ever seen!! I would call this a reptile farm rather than a vegetable garden. We are back by 11. Its 15:30 our Xe Om drivers race each others on the way to the bus station and Laura is off to HCMC. I am on my way home and I can’t believe I had failed to notice how wonderful this place is!

Water...Life

Destinations

Community...Life

Crossings

Laura...Balancing

Snuggles

 

 

 

Bored and grumpy

Over waters

Elephants’ Sanctuary

I guess time is just a construction…Which I am unable to narrate in a linear way…Back in Thailand I visited an elephants sanctuary w/ Heather and David. No shows, no rides, no entertainment… A sanctuary started by a “Little” “great” Karen woman on a patch of gorgeous donated mountain land where elephants who have been abused come to heal and neighboring refugees come to find work…

First Teaching Week

First Teaching day – Wednesday August 20, 2008

I wonder what more could have gone wrong…

After a few days of “misunderstandings”, “disagreements“, “miscommunication”…Or “No communication” between the English Department and the Center for Foreign Languages (who officially oversees my residency here)…And after getting over feeling guilty for not having being here sooner than August 17^th although my contract starts September 1^st…It finally gets announced to me with 2.5 hours notice that I am to begin teaching!!!! The person handing down the by-now-not-so-surprising news is not sure of several details or how to locate some of the materials needed. She suggests I spend the 2 hrs and 40min. class doing introductions! Nevertheless she kindly gives me a tour of the campus on her motorbike and a ride home so that I can eat a quick lunch before returning to campus… If only I had a stove where I could prepare the lunch! By now there is only 1.5 hour to go of which 30 minutes will be spent bicycling/walking back to campus (not so comfortable facing Can Tho intersection anarchy on my bicycle quite yet…) I try to scramble together a lesson. Can’t use the resources left by the former volunteers because they have been overtaken by maggots and the internet is down at the only wireless café in my area. I manage to write down a lesson plan and to get rid of the maggots. I get to campus at 1pm because I want to be early for my first class. Minor details withstanding I’m feeling pretty good. I am at the environmental studies bldg which had been indicated to me during the campus tour. I look for room 303 but it apparently does not exist…I find someone in an office whom I later find out to be a lecturer at the school. It is a rather large campus, time is beginning to speed past me and the nice man must perceive a prelude to panic before I even do and gets me on his motorbike to take me to the one, he believes, is the correct building. We get to the Mark Lenin bldg but the students in classroom 303 inform us that no English class is to be held there. We call the nice lady who gave me a campus tour and she politely replies “this must be a misunderstanding”. We rush to the registrar office to find out more, but everyone is out to lunch. The nice lecturer is keen on believing it is the Mark Lenin bldg and maybe I’m confused about the name of the class…I try to explain to him that I seriously doubt they would have an American teach an “ideology class” at the Mark Lenin bldg…But he is kind and determined. We are at the Mark Lenin bldg for the 2^nd time (or 3^rd?). It is now almost 2pm and it begins to storm. Rain is pouring, water is running through the hallway, doors are slamming…If the building architecture included windows, they would be shattering. We establish without the shadow of doubt that I am indeed NOT teaching the ideology class, but I am relived and amused to be providing entertainment for the students in the ideology class who keep seeing us return with no apparent progress in our quest for room 303. Their teacher is apparently awol!  We call the lady from the tour who once again states “this must be a misunderstanding”. Rain subdues and off we are to the registrar office again (should I give him money for gas? And is it okay that he just left his office unattended for so long?). We find the glitch…It was a misunderstanding!!!! Everyone was given the wrong class number. The kind lecturer calls everyone he can think of to track down the students and direct them to the correct building. We return to the Mark Lenin building for the 3^rd time (or 4^th? Who is counting at this point!) The ideology students are gone and we wait to see the English students arrive. And yes about 2/3 of the students show up (was never given a class list…Estimating…). The kind lecturer returns to his office and leaves me his number in case this happens again!!! It is 3pm and I manage to teach 1 period. The students are amazing and they make it all worth it!

 

Second Teaching day – Friday August 22

Now I know what more could have gone wrong…

So I had all of Thursday to relax, do laundry, bike around for practice, clean the bloody diarrhea of a sick animal who ventured through our (still) broken front door and into our living-room. But most important I prepare a lesson plan and a revised syllabus!!!! I have dinner with nice Italian contractors working on some kind of thermo something plant in the Delta. We were put in touch with each other by the consulate as we are the only Italians residing here. We eat at a very nice restaurant…Against all indications by the “sexy expat doctor’ who suggested street vendors are more reliable because they buy and sell fresh. I set my alarm for 5:30am because I want to print my lesson plan and arrive early to my 7am class. It’s 3:30 am and my long overdue introduction to the consequences of eating carelessly in a new country kicks in! It’s 6am I have officially moved my sleeping quarter to the bathroom. Such decision was taken according to several (physiological) factors in addition to the large lizard on my bed upon my return from my first bathroom trip…NOT a cute geck! Apparently mosquitos are not the only adept ones are getting through my mosquito net… May have left it open… I carefully ponder whether to try to make it to class or make the dreaded call…”Hi, Hello, Anh…/Co…I know I barely started, and I know this is already the second week of class that the students miss, but I’m already calling in sick…” And think that I was to meet with the Vice Head of the English Department right after class…! I can barely stand up to return to my bed and check if Mr. big lizard will let me rest. I make the first call and text message everyone else, as I can’t bear the mortification. Everyone is wonderful and so supportive and offers his/her help whether that is taking me to the doctor or to breakfast tomorrow. I especially love Co Thu suggestion “You should eat more and become a real Can Thonese sooner” I am so relieved. I begin to feel better and I am ready to drink coke as the “sexy expat doctor” in HCMC recommended. The lizard has moved to the kitchen where he joined a “multi-species” crew of various friends. I will make up the class. I will also get some cardboard to cover the holes in the front door and some tape for the mosquito net. My friend Laura will visit from HCMC this weekend. Everyone here is so nice after all. Now I need to rest.

The (Sexy) Expat Doctor

He inspires a television series…The expat doctor (always followed by suspense music of some kind…Or maybe the sound of a threatening jungle creature…) One of those originally intended for the bored housewives, but which soon makes it to primetime. Crude, direct, fatalistic…A literary existential trapped in a realist profession.

While in HCMC the VIA group had an orientation with the Family Medical Practice in HCMC for the health Dos and Donts in Vietnam. We were expecting the usual…Cholera, Malaria, Avian flu…But no! Not the expat doctor. His cameo appearance could not be reduced to such trivial and cliché diseases. He got right down to business, starting every sentence with “look…” followed by a weighted pause extremely effective at building additional momentum. He didn’t just give us “cholera”…He gave us tens of species of lethally poisonous snakes (“look…there is only an antidote for 2 of them!!!” ). He didnt give us avian flu, he gave us the tourist who just died in his hospital for a robbery gone bad (“look…Don’t even bother carrying a purse”;  He didnt give us malaria, he gave us “look…Dengue is tragic and there is nothing you can do and it’s dramatically on the rise”;  he gave us hepatitis and tb are all around you…”Look… it’s basically the majority of the population”.  He saved the best for last, “look there is a landing strip for the Delta region in Can Tho. We have a plane and we will come get you because you cannot trust any hospital or any doctor. The strip closes at night so if you get injured or sick after dusk…Look…You are basically on your own”. Oh and he added, “Helicopters here are not reliable. They are too old. You will crash”!!!! And think that he started his monologue by saying, “look…Here it is not like in Africa or South America where there are so many risks for diseases…”

Chiang Mai

Hopes

Chiang Mai

The proliferation of colorful temples framed by the mountains as their architectures and colorful interior compete with each other to be dipped in the bright and fading golds, pinks and blues of the monsoon light.

While the almost invisible migrant workers come back “home” from a hard day of underpaid undervalued work, maybe unaware that their exploitation and almost-stateless status mirrors the one of other migrant workers in Europe, the Middle East and the United States.

The school-uniformed children take over the streets while the saffron robes of giggling novices cruise by.

While Westerners sit in their air-conditioned room drinking ice cold beverages and complain about the pollution or the mistreatment of animals…As if air conditioning, refrigeration or the plane that got him/her…Us here did not pollute…Or as if higher living standard or buying makes them, us morally superior…

The sudden scent of sweet flowers in the streets makes an instant magical.

While the middle-aged western men who were travelling alone turn out not to be business men… As they cruise the night life in search of a compromising (too) young man or (too) young woman.

The western idealists work side by side with the locals to better the lives of the disenfranchised, the neighboring exiled, the poor, the trees, the elephants.

While the western dreamer is fascinated by colors, scents and sounds. Exoticization leads to confused thinking. And thinking betrays him/her cause to think is not to feel. He/she believes he/she can be a Buddhist overnight and own the magic. But can anyone own the magic?

Perspectives

 

 

 

 

Hello world!

I will be teaching, learning, nhauing…Living in Vietnam for about one year. Would love to share occasional streams of consciousness as a way to keep you guys nearby along the way as I experience, discover, dream…Find.  I am sincerely grateful to VIA and the Ford Foundation for this fascinating and life changing opportunity.

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” — Lao Tzu

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” –- Henry Miller