Shallow Trenches

I’ve shown up in a few places around the web lately.  These links are mainly for friends and family who like to keep tabs on me.

• Rachel and Anna blog regularly about our shared experience in Hanoi with MCC’s SALT program.
• Erin, a SALTer in Cambodia, posted pictures of our exploits in Laos.
• Tim Nafziger, a young Anabaptist activist and writer, and Dale Suderman, a Vietnam war veteran, stopped by Hanoi on a recent tour through Vietnam.  Tim posted a blog entry about us. You can read about Dale’s reasons for visiting Vietnam here, and Tim’s here.
• Michal Garcia is a freelance photographer and friend of mine here in Hanoi.  He has let me use his big, expensive camera gear on a few occasions.  By a bizarre coincidence, we happened to meet each other in Luang Prabang, Laos on our respective vacations. Michal has posted pictures I took of him in Laos and at Minh’s Jazz Club on his blog.
• Just Massage, which I wrote about in an earlier blog entry, has a website featuring a picture of me receiving a Shiatsu massage.  You’ll just have to take my word that the back being massaged in the second picture on this page is mine.
• My friend, Lutheran vicar J.P. Cima has created a website for Hanoi International Church. I show up in a few of the photo albums, and many of the photographs in which I do not appear (only the good ones, mind you!) come from my camera.
• Anna, mentioned in point #1 above, is a communications officer with a small NGO in Hanoi.  As such, she occasionally uses her friends to promote various causes — like Just Massage in point #5.  Most recently she used the three Vietnam SALT volunteers as exemplary bicycle riders in a green transport campaign.
• After Tet I wrote a short letter to Charleswood Mennonite Church in Winnipeg, which was printed in The Grapevine, the church newsletter.  You can see a PDF of that letter here.
  

According to Martin, a German tourist I met last year on a boat in Halong Bay, the Lao city of Luang Prabang is one of the most spiritual places in the world.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect based this passing comment, as I do not consider myself particularly attuned to the spiritual world. I think the mental image I formed was of a town blanketed with an atmosphere of reverential silence. I was expecting to join quiet queues of tourists filing through ancient temples and pagodas. I was expecting a soothing and salutary two days spent amidst relics of Buddist history.

Instead I was reminded again of why it’s best to travel without expectations.

That’s not to say that Luang Prabang is not a peaceful place: compared to Hanoi it’s a veritable woodland clearing.  But the streets are full of tourists, the markets bustle with activity (though, mercifully, not with high-pressure sales pitches), and there are plenty of ways to exhaust yourself.

We started by kayaking out to the elephants.  I had pushed our group to take an elephant ride, not so much for the ride itself as to enable us to later make the claim that we had ridden elephants in Laos.  Our walk through the woods was slow, with the animals seeming to begrudge us their every step.  Our young elephant drivers kicked behind the ears of their charges to spur them on, occasionally resorting to beatings with a small stick, or plunging a sharpened hook into the skin of the elephants’ foreheads.  I can now say that I’ve ridden an elephant in Laos, and have the pictures to prove it, but I would neither repeat nor recommend the experience.

Our four-hour kayak trip down a river through the countryside, however, was majestic.  As we propelled ourselves forward beneath torrential rains, we passed scenes of such staggering natural beauty that I felt compelled to refuse their subjugation by camera.  (It was also pouring rain, and the dry bag seemed to be the best place for my camera.)  People from local ethnic groups cast nets in the river for fish as we passed, and we went miles without seeing any signs of the modernity that is slowly making inroads into the underdeveloped country.  That experience I would both repeat and recommend unreservedly.

The following day we hiked to the top of a waterfall, swam in the turquoise water at its base, and pulled leeches from our feet and legs, leaving trails of blood trickling down between our toes.

My German friend Martin’s comment about spirituality must have been made in reference to the very active Buddhism of Luang Prabang.

The temples in the city are not historical relics — they are home to dozens of young monks in saffron-coloured robes.  Rather than maintaining a distance, as I might have expected, the monks could be seen mingling with tourists in the evening market.

This posed an ethical dilemma for me: I wanted photographs of the monks, but I did not want to play the role of the culturally insensitive, obnoxious tourist with a camera.  A telephoto lens might have helped.  In the end, I cowardly shot them from behind.

We spent almost a full day in each direction travelling by bus between Vientiane and Luang Prabang, and only spent two full days there.

Still, while I didn’t rediscover my latent spirituality as Martin’s comment led me to believe I might, and while I suffered from a head cold for most of the time we were in Luang Prabang, the trip was worth it.

Next time, though, I’d take the plane.

If you don’t know much about Laos, fear not: you’re probably in good company.

Before we begin today’s brief geography lesson about one of Asia’s more obscure countries, a word on the country name. Laos is pronounced as one syllable, not two, with a diphthong resembling the pained expression ‘ow’. Enunciation of the ‘s’ is optional, as it is silent both in Lao (the official language of Laos) and French (the language of their former colonizers).

Laos is a land-locked (or, in the positive parlance of politicians, land-linked) country bounded by Thailand to the west, China to the north, Vietnam to the east, and Cambodia to the south. Like Vietnam, it has been a one-party communist state since the end of the “American War” in 1975. Also like Vietnam, the Communist Party of Laos has opened up considerably through a series of market-oriented reforms in recent years.

Per capita, Laos is the world’s most heavily bombed nation. As part of their efforts to disrupt the flow of supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the United States dropped more than two million tonnes of ammunition on Laos during their escapades in the region. Unexploded ordinance – bombs that didn’t go off upon impact and remain volatile – poses a major danger to the country’s six million inhabitants.

None of that background information, however, is immediately relevant to the long bus ride between the current capital, Vientiane, and the ancient seat of the monarchy, Luang Prabang. I just threw it in for free.

Crossing the mountain range that separates the two cities, the bus ride from Vientiane to Luang Prabang is at once spectacular and nauseating.

If you buy your tickets too late, as we did, you’ll end up seated at the back of the bus, unable to see the mist-covered mountains as the tail of the bus wags in exaggerated arcs around vicious curves. If you happen to be on the KING OF BUS, you will also discover that the bolts securing the rearmost seats to their frames are missing, and that reclining causes the cushion beneath you to slide forward and fall to the floor.

For ten long, headaching hours, I was unable to sleep, unable to enjoy the scenery streaking past, and unable to converse with civility, thanks to the nausea.

The most enjoyable moments of the journey occurred when the bus driver pulled to the side of the road to relieve himself, allowing passengers to briefly enjoy a view of what, at that precise moment, might well have been the world’s most beautiful mass urinal.

Those of us with antsy shutter fingers snapped off frame after frame, reminding ourselves that digital photography is cheap, and forgetting that our hard drives are already full of pictures we’re too lazy to delete.

We finally arrived in Luang Prabang around dinner time, having lost the best hours of the day to the road, and caught a tuk tuk – a modified pickup truck with benches and a roof serving as a taxi – into town to find a guesthouse.

I am perched in the brief window of time between my return from India and my departure for Laos tomorrow afternoon. I am back at work in body, but my soul remains with the School of Peace just outside Bangalore, India.

I plan to write my experiences with the School of Peace (SOP) into a report in the near future, so I won’t go into too much detail here. In short,

The purpose of the SOP is to encourage engagement between peoples of different faiths in Asia. This is done through bringing together approximately 20 young adults from conflict areas of Asia who share different faith perspectives. Through lectures, exposure visits, and interaction with one another, the participants are able to learn about other faiths, and the importance of living with one another in peace. (Source: APEN)

I know there are those for whom the word peace brings to mind images of bell-bottoms, flowers and LSD, so I feel obligated to point out that the school is not teaching passivity or disengagement from a dangerous world (though I think this might be a misrepresentation of what the bell-bottomed LSD-trippers were about). But the “School of Structural Analysis and Social Transformation” would be a rather unwieldy name, especially as the students are not native English speakers.

I joined half of the students on a field trip in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where we spent the week engaging with and learning from a non-governmental organization called AREDS. AREDS works primarily with the most historically disenfranchised segment of the Indian population, the Dalits (or Untouchables).

At the end of a week spent learning together with Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians from seven Asian countries, I was entirely unready to leave them and return to Vietnam.

For those who are interested in reading more about my experiences with the School of Peace and AREDS, I hereby promise that my report is forthcoming.

I suspect more people are interested in seeing pictures. Unfortunately I don’t have enough time before Laos to edit and process the more than 1,000 pictures that made it past the first cut (a quick review on my camera’s LCD screen). I promise to edit significantly before I post them here.

Here’s a preview of what’s to come:

A market in Karur, Tamil Nadu.

Young villagers in Tamil Nadu watch a rural education drama

There are things you can buy in Hanoi, Vietnam, that might surprise you. For your reading enjoyment, I have put together a short list here.

• $1 DVDs. For less than the price of a movie rental back home, you can pick up the latest George Clooney film from any one of a large number of DVD shops stocking thousands upon thousands of pirated movies. While the price can’t be beat, not all copies are created equal. Some of the discs don’t play at all. Others aren’t what they claim to be. My friends Leon and Carmen were told they were buying three complete seasons of Arrested Development, and ended up with only a handful of episodes. One movie I bought turned out to have been shot with a camcorder in a movie theater, dubbed into a language I couldn’t understand. Still, it’s hard to argue with one dollar movies. The same deals can be found on music CDs and computer software.
• Dolce & Gabbana. Fashion is paramount in Hanoi, to young women especially, but also to the young men who style their hair and weave through traffic on flashy red motorbikes. The brand name of choice is Dolce & Gabbana, the Italian fashion house known for its exorbitant prices. In Vietnam, a pair of “D&G” jeans will set you back only around ten dollars. Authenticity undetermined, of course.
• Prescription drugs, without a prescription. Feel like diagnosing your own illness? Go ahead, pick up some antibiotics or narcotic painkillers from one of the hundreds of pharmacies in Hanoi that will sell anything, to anybody, cheap.
• Dog meat. It’s a delicacy. A special treat to be eaten at the appointed time of the lunar month. To answer the question on everyone’s mind, yes. I have.
• Peanut Butter. Needless to say, I was nervous about this before moving to Vietnam. Thankfully, my staple food made it here before me. A handful of small grocery stores catering to the expatriate community carry peanut butter (not Skippy, unfortunately), as do Big C and Metro, two Walmart-wannabes I try to avoid. The price of a jar here is about the same as it is in North America.
• Kentucky Fried Chicken. Before McDonalds, before Burger King, before the arrival of any other fast food chain, KFC has set up shop in Vietnam. To the best of my knowledge, the half dozen or so KFC locations were the only North American restaurants in Hanoi, until the first Pizza Hut opened its doors last month. KFC and Pizza Hut are, it turns out, owned by the same parent corporation. I expect we’ll be seeing Taco Bell and A&W joints opening shortly.

On Thursday I fly to Bangalore, India to spend twelve days with the School of Peace, and I fly to Laos for an MCC regional retreat shortly after I get back to Vietnam. Details and pictures to follow.

Mennonite Central Committee works exclusively with local development partners in Vietnam, rather than working alone.  The theory behind this, and I believe it to be a good one, is that it’s better to build sustainable development capacity in a country than to move in, give money to particularly needy individuals, and move on.

But there is a very popular model in the charity world that involves sponsoring individual children.  Doing it this way provides something tangible to donors: letters, pictures, report cards.  Things you can put on your fridge.

MCC generally believes group assistance to be better than individual assistance for a number of reasons outlined here.  The challenge, then, is to convince donors to support these projects, and provide them with something tangible in return.

Which is why I had to wake up at 5:00 a.m. last Monday morning.

Together with Vinh, a Rural Community Development program staff worker with MCC Vietnam, and Rachel, I travelled to the province of Phu Tho with my camera in tow.  Rachel is doing a writeup for donors to MCC’s Global Family program to stick on their refrigerators.  I was the designated photographer.

On the way, we stopped to watch a drama team educate high school students about HIV/AIDS, part of another program supported by MCC.

Students watch a presentation about HIV/AIDS.
View full album: MCC Projects

After the presentation, we visited three preschools in the Hien Quan district of Phu Tho, where MCC subsidizes nutritious lunches for 3 — 5 year old students.

Two preschool students eat a lunch subsidized by MCC’s Global Family program
View full album: MCC Projects

If this picture doesn’t inspire you to click here and donate, I fear for your soul.

[Note: MCC does not believe in using guilt to extract money from donors.]

Last Friday, my camera was called into service once again, this time by Anna. Anna spends a good deal of her time working with Just Massage, a massage centre in Hanoi with a mission to train and employ visually impaired youth. It was jointly founded by Action for the City, a partner organization of MCC in Hanoi.

Our Italian model receives a therapeutic Shiatsu massage
View full album: MCC Projects

Take some time to browse through the full album.

Having taken nearly 2,500 pictures since the start of February, I am wondering how soon I can justify buying really, really expensive lenses for my new camera.

It seems I rarely post about the work I do (exceptions are here and here).

For the most part, I spend my days trying to decipher sentences like this one:

It was also recommended that 10 kinds of trees used for land evaluation should be used and land map adaptation 1:10,000 should be constructed with 18 kinds of adaptations, thus, proposing 8 types of lands to be used and appropriate fertilizer putting down, coherent with the district land condition and development orientation.

Or,

However, the amplitude enlarging of this modulation, with its advantages and disadvantages, is an undeniable truth.

I am a manuscript editor in the English department of The Gioi Publishers. I am not a translator: my Vietnamese is not that good. Rather, I am given broken English and asked to fix it.

However, there is another aspect to my job that is often equally as challenging. A few of my coworkers translate English books into Vietnamese. They occasionally come to me with words, sentences and ideas that their dictionaries cannot sufficiently explain.

Some of these questions are easy to field. What does it mean to dunk in basketball? Here, watch this YouTube video:

Others are not so easy. One of my colleagues is translating a book about Feng Shui. When she comes to me with questions like, “What does it mean to centre your inner energy flow?”, I have to refrain from answering, “Nothing. They’re just meaningless words.”

The author of that book has given subsections “witty” headings like Here a Fence, There a Fence. I am forced to explain and sing Old MacDonald (though the singing might not have been strictly necessary), to prove that the author isn’t, in fact, referring to two fences.

A second colleague is translating a book titled How to Think Like Einstein, subtitled “Simple Ways to Break the Rules and Discover Your Hidden Genius”. It is a book that counsels counterintuitive thinking in order to break out of self-imposed ‘rule ruts’. Unfortunately, in my observation, the Vietnamese tend to be rather literal. (The Vietnamese word for diabetes, for example, is “to pee sugar” – đái đường.) Explaining why you would preemptively discard obvious and sensible ideas in order to approach a problem in a radically new way is like explaining vegetarianism to a pig farmer.

The same book also described the (re)productive exchange of ideas between people as sexual intercourse between two minds. This was not only difficult to clarify, but rather awkward as well.

Despite the challenges, or perhaps because of them, I always enjoy it when my colleagues bring me questions like these. I love words and language in general, and sometimes their questions prompt me to research etymologies I had never thought to investigate (why, for example, do we ‘dress to the nines’?). The English language is a flexible and culture-saturated organism. It’s a messy, wonderful thing.