By CRAIG THOMAS
January 21, 2000
I doubt I will ever forget the tired looking woman I met in a small fishing village in central Vietnam during the first days of my research project. Outside her small thatched hut she told me of her struggles to raise her 10 children, only two of whom had ever been to school. She herself could neither read nor write.
As I went around the homes of the village I found her story was not unusual. There was a material and spiritual poverty that contrasted dramatically with what I had known living and working in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon.) After four years of living in this country, I was shocked to discover how little I really knew about the actual conditions in which most Vietnamese people lived.
I ended up in Vietnam more by accident than by design. Graduating from law school during a lull in the job market in the U.S., the high paid job I had counted on was nowhere to be found. Going back home to Alabama was not a very enticing option, so when the opportunity to work in Vietnam arose I took it without a second thought. Working as a lawyer in Vietnam would surely be easier than slogging away 14 hours a day with a firm in the U.S.
Like most Americans, prior to my arrival I knew little about Vietnam other than what I had read in books about the war. Besides a vague notion that Vietnam was run by a communist regime and was one of the poorest countries in the world, post-1975 Vietnam was a blank page. Like many Americans before me I filled the gaps in my knowledge with impressions I gained during my time as an employee for a foreign company - impressions that I would later realize were far from complete.
Arriving in Vietnam in 1995, I found a country on the rise. The country's policy of doi moi, or economic renewal, was in full swing and had made Vietnam a hot new destination for foreign capital. There were new office buildings and hotels going up everywhere. A sense of optimism pervaded the air. The U.S. embargo had recently been lifted and the country was crawling with foreign investors eager to get a piece of the new Asian tiger.
My first job in Vietnam was with a French law firm in Hanoi. I was set up in a beautiful villa on picturesque Tran Hung Dao street with a car and driver at my disposal. Having grown up with a working mother, I reveled in the luxury of having a full-time housekeeper. Madame Yen would make my bed, do my laundry and bring me my meals as if I was lord of the manor.
My status had been instantly changed from middle-class American nobody to that of a privileged expatriate. Life was good and as the months rolled by I believed that I was really getting to know Vietnam. Like most foreigners, I made a number of Vietnamese friends. Charming and well-educated, most of them spoke at least one foreign language. Generally working for foreign companies, these people belied all the statistics that I constantly heard about Vietnam's poverty. Although annual per capita income in Vietnam was around $200 a year, my friends dressed fashionably, drove expensive motorbikes and sported the latest mobile phones. Of course, I encountered less fortunate Vietnamese people, yet they did not seem to be that badly off. Although some were doing better than others, it seemed that everyone in Vietnam was taking part to some extent in the country's growing prosperity.
After a short time working as a lawyer in Vietnam, the initial shine began to wear a bit: While the country's reforms had indeed made some significant inroads in freeing up the economy, much still remained as before. I became all too aware of the country's endemic corruption and the obstacles facing foreign investors in the country. I cringed as I billed long hours trying to help clients comply with the often capricious and onerous regulations governing their activities.
Still, after two years in Vietnam I had the sense that despite a few detours, the country was still headed in the right direction. Along with the country, my own situation continued to improve when in late 1997 I was hired to work in the Ho Chi Minh City office of one of the more prestigious international law firms.
In 1998 the ride came to an end both for myself and for Vietnam's investment boom. The Asian financial crisis combined with growing frustration in the foreign investment community to puncture the bubble of optimism enveloping the country. For Vietnam, the combination meant a drastic drop in foreign investment and a sobering return to a harsher economic reality. For me, it meant unemployment as a lack of clients forced my firm to scale back its operations.
Not ready to leave Vietnam and frustrated with the practice of law, I decided to try a new line of work. I had always envied my friends who worked for non-governmental organizations (NGO). They wore jeans to work and sat around discussing things like participatory development. I didn't know what participatory development meant, but it had the sound of good deeds and meaningful experiences. It had to be more rewarding, I reasoned, and less frustrating, than being a lawyer in Vietnam. Mentioning my desire for a change to a friend in the NGO world, I was quickly offered a job as a consultant on a project to research the problem of children without birth registration in Vietnam.
The research would focus on the most marginalized portions of Vietnamese society -- street children, migrants and the "poor." Although I had been in Vietnam for four years, these were people that I had only seen in my peripheral vision. Looking more closely would force me to re-examine my understanding of the country, and to acknowledge what a privileged life I had enjoyed.
District One is the Manhattan of Ho Chi Minh City. The site of a number of new modern office buildings as well as many chic restaurants and bars, it is the place where the foreign residents of the city work and play. Its central avenue, Nguyen Hue, has had a substantial facelift over the past five years and gives the impression of affluence. To my surprise, I soon found that some of the most impoverished people in the city lived in District One, within walking distance of where I had spent some of my most carefree moments.
My introduction to the "other side" of District One came on a visit to a neighborhood that bordered one of the many canals that snake through the city. Following my guide down the narrow alleyways to the neighborhood that was our destination, I was taken aback by what I saw. The stereotypical images of developing world poverty -- ramshackle houses and stunted children - were everywhere. This, in what I had always thought was an oasis from the country's worst problems.
Sitting on the floor in one of the homes, a mother told me about her son, who had been forced to leave school after the third grade in order to earn money to help the family. Working on a fishing boat at night and sleeping during the day, the boy looked at least five years younger than his 14 years. Most depressing to me was the resigned way in which the story was told, as if nothing better could be expected.
I found that this boy's story was repeated again and again. As I continued in my research, I encountered children as young as eight years old living alone on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. One little girl in particular stands out in my mind. Originally from Ha Giang province, in the north of the country, this 10-year-old child had made a journey of more than 1,000 kilometers by herself to come and make a living in the city. Her days were spent walking the streets of the city selling lottery tickets in order to make money to send back to her family. Her nights were passed sleeping on the floor in a boarding house with other children for 2,000 dong (about $0.15) a night. Part of an army of children who have migrated from the countryside to the big cities in recent years, this little girl has come to represent for me both the sufferings and the resilience of the Vietnamese people.
My experiences over the several months it took to complete the research were eye-opening. Although Vietnam had been like a big playground for me, I came to realize that life for the average Vietnamese person is much harsher than I imagined. Perhaps my biggest lesson has been that while I really thought I knew the country I was living in, in fact I only saw a small part of the story. I feel embarrassed by my failure to observe the reality around me, and a bit ashamed at the cavalier way I accepted the privileges of the rich expatriate lifestyle in the midst of so much hardship.
My brief stint in the NGO world has not inspired me to give away all my material possessions and devote my life to helping others. It has, however, given me a greater empathy for the average Vietnamese person for whom day-to-day existence is still a struggle. Rather than rushing past them, I now take the time to stop and have a chat when I see those children roaming the streets of Saigon with their lottery tickets. I now know they have much to offer to someone who really wants to know Vietnam.
(Mr. Thomas is a HCM City-based freelance writer and researcher.)