a tale from the third storey

One of the most difficult aspects of writing a compelling blog entry is finding where to start. Life in a foreign country usually exposes you to so many new things that you simply want to describe everything in maximum detail in order to get as much across as possible. For instance, I could describe where I am presently writing from, 3 stories above one of the busiest veins in Hanoi, Kim Ma street. I could concentrate on describing the purple sky, and the tall, skinny buildings which poke their heads towards the setting sun. But then I'd be neglecting the flurry of activity below, how the street-side restaurants are slowly beginning to fill their empty, foot high seats designed for Western children but that somehow manage to suit 95% of the adults in this country. I could elaborate upon the incessant traffic which keeps this city bustling, alive with the simultaneous roar of the hundreds of thousands of motorbikes and scooters of all shapes and sizes which run through the street like little gas-powered amoeba. Their collective purr can be felt three stories above, all the way into this very seat in which I relax after a long day at work.

At a certain point in anyone's long term stay as an ex-patriot in a foreign country, one begins to feel the wear of being an outsider. To some it may hit sooner than others, but for myself it has been slowly creeping in after the 1 month mark. I'm beginning to feel an absolute longing to participate in the world around me as more than a silent observer. As the cultural practices and actual language are quite new to me (at least, in their absoluteness in my all encompassing surroundings), I am feeling the frustrations of being unable to penetrate beyond the canvas which separates me from this mysterious world.

To put it in more practical terms, I feel like I'm trapped inside my own head, looking at the world as if I was in some sort of inescapable museum, only capable of interpreting the images that I see through my own determinations. I want to jump through the wall hangings and say hello to the moving still-life people that are illustrated beyond.

Unfortunately, this is one of those 'requiring time' things, where my immediate problems cannot be solved by any other means than simply waiting and making an effort. The real beauty in exploring foreign lands is not only that they mimic a foreign planet with its own gender of alien species to interact with, but that, as a human being, I can learn to speak their completely Martian tongue, to make myself understood, and to take away more from a tiny exchange about something as silly as the weather than I would in my own language.

And herein lies the true satisfaction of life: not gaining wealth, power, or recognition by the masses... but rather in simply sharing your thoughts and receiving mental feedback from another. To open yourself as a human being, and be touched by others in the process. This is why traveling for long periods of time in foreign countries can be quite difficult: you are simply deprived of this during your day to day activities. In work, at restaurants, even between friends that you have made in this new world... unless you are a master at learning languages, there will always be a massive gap that separates you from your immediate surroundings.

It is an amazing moment when you realize that you are almost completely separated from the reality in which you stand, because of your immediate inability to reach out beyond your body, to send your words out with meaning to make your life meaningful, so to speak.

Times like these must not be squandered on frustration though, as being pushed so deeply into the depths of one's self allows for a wonderful amount of introspection to take place. Constantly, the limits of my patience, energy, and mental sanity are tested by the driving forces of this country. The insane habits of motorbike drivers on my to work, the network of thieves who occupy the buses and pray on innocent fools like myself, being regarded as a moron for simply not being able to respond to something as simple as 'how was your day' when spoken in a foreign tongue... these are but to name a few, believe me, I could go on, but I would be missing the point that I began this tangent with the intention of finishing with. All of these events which frustrate the balance of my life, they happen to me not only as passing moments, but as events that will mark my character for the rest of my life. I carry them, sort of like scars, in my persona and psyche, I will take them with me as I grow and age, and ultimately, the age old adage applies perfectly: what doesn't kill me can only make me stronger.

Life here in Vietnam, though difficult at times, is certainly not boring. I leave my room at 8 am and most of the time do not return till 10 pm. At that point, I'm usually too tired to stand straight, which makes my uncomfortable bed that much easier to bare. Not only my bed, but the lack of comfort which accompanies our daily lives in the developed world.

Believe me when I say that, though the basic human interactions which define my day remain the same as if I lived in Canada, the daily grind itself is something entirely different. Never has the act of 'taking the bus' been such a chore. I call it my 'daily test of patience', as each time I seem to be pushed closer and closer to that very fine fault line which prevents me from splitting heads. But, again, it is all part of the experience, and deep down, even when it has pissed me off to the point of no return, I can still calm myself down, smile internally, and even break out into a fit of joyful laughter, simply because I know that I actually love being pushed out of the zombie mode which can take a hold of us in such a powerful way.

It is indeed difficult to pin-point what to start a usual blog entry with, which is why today, I decided to start with everything. The now darkened sky beckons: I have an event that I must attend tonight that may or may not be the topic of another blog entry... after all, who is to say where time will take me?

Dreams can lead to real thoughts, who'da known?

I had a weird dream last night, and I felt like I had to write about it.

I was invited to a sort of convention for the poor and homeless. The organizers of the event thought it would be a good idea to invite all these underprivileged people from all over my dream-scape to a 'special' location, one where they would never get a chance to go to otherwise.

The day of the event arrived very quickly, almost 2 seconds after I get the invitation. I suddenly found myself walking through crowds of homeless people, eyes caved in, faces wrinkled and worn by a lack of proper sleep and shelter... they look at me with deep, penetrating stares, and I have trouble shaking off the feeling that one woman, clearly addicted to morphine, has given me by simply making eye contact. Do you look at the homeless when you are awake, do you make eye contact with them as they ask you for crumbs? If so, it was akin to that feeling.

I wonder why everyone is so solemn, the mood is supposed to be cheerful and uplifting at this event. I look around my surroundings, and am quickly answered by what I saw. The location, thought fit for the occasion by the organizers, actually turns out to be Disneyland. I am perplexed by the idea of trying to provide one day to experience what most think to be a 'happy place' to those who simply could never afford to go there ever again.

I woke up thinking all kinds of things about this dream. It made me think of my own situation here in Vietnam, and about developing nations all over the world. Why do we think that we can make the lives of the so-called 'underprivileged' better by giving them tastes of what we can live every day? Where is the charity in having them realize that we do indeed have it better? These raise a greater question: What good can come out of giving someone a taste of a life that is so much better than the reality they will continue to face once that 'taste of the better' is gone?

The people in my dream were miserable, not because of their lives living as homeless refugees from society, but rather because this 'good cause' only caused them to feel even more secluded from the world.

What exactly are we Western volunteers doing in Dev. Nations? We come here, work long hours without reward, show our intent and willingness to participate in the local culture, learn more about the limits of our nature and being, and gain infinitely by adding this experience to our resume. Then, what do we do? We leave. We go home. We leave the hard lives which we have come to experience for the better world which waits for us back home.

I'm sorry if this sounds like a pessimistic view on international volunteering, but I can't shake the feeling that there is something morally ambiguous about the whole thing. Certainly, the most honest intern or volunteer knows that he or she cannot seriously affect the '3rd world' country that they enter... anyone who does is either a fool or a religious zealot. So we leave for our 'experiences', fully knowing that the experiences we will live can only provide us with nothing more than our own 'taste' of another's 'lesser' reality. We know damn well that we're coming back to our privileged worlds, which makes leaving all the easier.

On the other hand, to put a bit of optimism into my own view, I can say that sometimes the help we provide is needed. We can do good, we can make good friendships in foreign countries, and opening our own minds brings us closer to understanding the true plight of people in countries that are seriously in need of our recognition. But to say that we are volunteering for a better world, giving our services in exchange for no 'material good', may be a little misleading and perhaps a bit dishonest...

The word 'volunteer' is described as such by the Webster Dictionary:

"A volunteer is a person who performs or offers to perform a service out of his or her own free will, often without payment."

The term 'free will' comes up in this definition, which I found to be quite interesting primarily because of the implication of choice which comes along with it. People choose to volunteer, usually to help those who need it. Free choice implies an active will to accept the consequences of that choice, but in the end, everyone is simply human. Can a human being 'volunteer' to act in a way that is benefits only others and not themselves?

This raises another very important question: If the volunteer is to represent a symbol of selflessness, yet intrinsically benefits from his or her labours (be it knowingly or sub-consciously, directly or indirectly), can we say that there truly is such a thing as a 'completely selfless act'?

For instance, on Wednesdays I teach English to a class of disabled Vietnamese College students. I go voluntarily, and do not take anything in return for my services. However, I can admit that my reason for going is not even close to being selfless. I go because of the feeling I get during and after a lesson is finished. Teaching and interacting with the students brings me incredible personal joy and satisfaction. I simply love going to this class, I could never get enough of the laughs and lessons that I share with these students, and perhaps I am guilty of selfishly continuing these lessons for myself rather than for the overall benefit of the students.

I'm not going to pretend that I am here in Vietnam on some sort of mission to save the world. I am here to learn about myself, Vietnamese culture, and to open my self and mind to new possibilities. This experience will invariably benefit me in the long run, and I am very aware of this. Because of this, I would like to reconsider the meaning of the term 'volunteer', as it wrongly implies that those doing international volunteer work do so in the name of bettering the world, while knowing that there is always personal gain to be had from their (our) seemingly selfless actions.

ps:
In the future I promise to write more specifically about my observations on Vietnam, rather than focus on meaningless rants about the nonsensical such as I have above!

Time and time again

We plan for the constant 'now' by projecting our thoughts forward into a string of interwoven and unclear futures. We clear the many paths of the foggy unknown with the cognitive capacities of our mind's eye, deciphering a real path for the present to follow where at first it did not exist.

We constantly thrust ourselves into this future, where multiple paths lead to singular destinations. Where we go is always where we are, but how we choose to get there is up to how our minds decide to see the future.

With all that could possibly become, at every instant I'm left with these simple questions: what now, and when will that be?

In a meeting...

SHAPC, the NGO for which I work for here in Vietnam, is involved in all sorts of HIV/AIDS awareness building projects. I am currently working on a project which would bring some 300 trained Peer Educators to 3 different universities. Our target group is first year students, and we plan on implementing our project this coming November.

Right now I'm sitting in a meeting, and there is a lively discussion concerning the layout of our project proposal. This proposal is what will get us funding from PACT International, for the total of $100,000 USD. I have so many ideas to help this project move along. I even created an a schema of how I think the proposal should be laid out (based on the criticisms of their last proposal from PACT). I know what their problems are, how to get past this meeting, and to get some actual progress done in defining their strategies, goals, and necessary actions and activities in a comprehensible fashion.

I know all of this... but I can't say any of it, because I don't speak their language. The meeting is going on completely in Vietnamese, and I hardly know more than 'hello, my name is.' The PACT Proposal was written in English, and the meeting we had with PACT was held in both languages with good translators. Right now, however, sitting here in SHAPC's third floor office, I find myself feeling helpless and almost completely useless, despite the fact that I have many answers to their questions and frustrations.

I'm sure that they are discussing things which I might not have the answers to, but whenever I'm told what they are arguing, I get frustrated because it is usually the exact same solution which they were originally criticized by PACT for. It offers no improvements what so ever.

When I explained the amount of work necessary in creating a proper proposal to the one who can speak English, she sort of frowned and muttered 'that's a lot of work'. But that's what is necessary! I'm frustrated, because if I was the manager of this project, I would know exactly what needed to be done, and I would proceed by distributing the workload so that we could build a working proposal that had all of the requisite details to make a functional, logical document!

Okay, I know this is a rather boring blog entry, but damn it do I ever need to vent!

I've joined the digital revolution

Today I have joined the millions of people who have caught onto the power of digital media. I have posted a short video that I shot, edited, and posted on youtube!

Okay, so my video is actually a little lackluster. It's boring and doesn't really show much of Hanoi, but it will be the first of other videos that I plan on posting for my friends and family to see.

Here it is, my first video:

My first 'I hate this country' moment

Mondays, that special time of the week when all that is bad comes together to upset the perfect balance reached during the week end.

Monday mornings, full of lazy spite and unwilling necessities.

Mondays... in my case: waking up with a fever, waiting for the bus in the rain, having Hanoi's traffic multiply times a billion, taking an hour and a half to get to work, getting robbed on the bus, and it is still only 9:30 am - plenty of time for things to get worse.

Last night was hot, I mean, REALLY hot. I lay in bed, completely unable to fall asleep thanks for the lack of any sign of coolness in my room. I open the window, 'nice, some fresh air,' I think. 10 minutes later, thunderous clashes announce a quickly approaching rain storm. 5 minutes later, god is taking the longest and most powerful piss of his/her/it's life on Vietnam. I close the window so as to avoid the flooding of all my belongings. The heat returns.

6:30 approaches quickly, I wake up feeling disgusting. It is still hot, and I don't feel as well as I did the day before. I can tell that I have a slight fever, and I'm slow to wake. When I finally do wake up, I walk to the washrooms, but they are full of 17 year old Singaporeans who seem to like taking forever to primp their teenage faces. Thinking that I would play it smartly, I go to the washrooms upstairs, because they don't tend to occupy those ALL of the time. 'Yes, it's empty, a victory for me,' I tell myself as I hang my towel in the open washroom. As I reach down to turn the tap to have all of that beautiful water come rushing towards me, I am met by nothing by annoying dryness. There is no water. 'Fuck'.

20 minutes later I am out of the shower downstairs. I dress and make my way to the bus stop. The bus takes longer than usual, but I am happy to see that there is a free seat. I gingerly sit my butt down and count the number of cyclists my psychopathic bus driver nearly flattens.

The rain slows as my bus arrives at my transfer point. Today is the first day that there are no other buses at the stop, so I wait for 10 minutes until the number 32 arrives. Me, and 50 Vietnamese rush for the doors as it pulls up, as if the bus only had a limited number of seats, or something crazy like that. I don't get a seat, 'fuck, again,' I think as I stand by the side of the window along with the rest of the poor seat-less souls.

As we slowly begin to leave the country-side, I notice the unusual amount of traffic which occupies the streets of the incoming city. My bus ride, which takes me about 45 minutes (on a good day), ends up taking one hour and thirty minutes. To make it worse, I had the worst money collector ever.

What is the money collector? I'm glad you asked.

The money collector is the bus driver's partner. He works for the bus company, and his job is to go around collecting money from the passengers. He walks up and down the bus checking bus passes and handing out tickets, leaving the bus driver to drive freely without the hassle of keeping count of who paid and who didn't during the rush for seats.

These money collectors, or, MCs, are usually a quiet bunch. Today, however, my bus had the anti-christ of MCs. He went around pushing people into place, yelling at them to take out their cards, and generally acting like a big'ol asshole.

Okay, back to my story.

So, as my legs begin to feel the cramped ache of standing like a sardine in an over-sized tin can on wheels, I am relieved to see my usual landmark which tells me that my stop is next. It is a big, grey-ish temple which is oddly located next to my route. 'About 4 more minutes, and I'm outta here,' I think in celebration. The damp stink caused by the other human beings had begun to take a toll on my patience, and my slight-fever wasn't getting any better, so I actually had something good too look forward to: not being on the bus in ridiculous traffic.

4 minutes quickly turned into 15 minutes, as the traffic came to a complete stop not 200 meters away from where I would get off. 'FUCK!'

Finally, we near my stop. I push past the 300 billion people on my bus to get close to the exit. You see, if I don't do this, I will be trapped on the bus. Not only that, but if I'm not quick, the bus doors will close on me, and I might have a foot or an arm stuck between two closed bus doors... and even though traffic wasn't moving fast, I didn't feel like holding hands with the bus for another 2 kilometers. AND, the bus never actually 'stops', it comes to a slow roll, which forces you to make a leap of faith off of and onto the bus whenever boarding or disembarking. Fun stuff.

JUMP, and I'm off. 'Yes!' I allow myself a moment to enjoy my victory. I bend over to roll down my pants, and realize something is wrong. Usually, when I bend down, I can feel the mobile phone in my pocket pressing into my leg... but my phone isn't there. 'FUCK FUCK FUCK'. The quick realization that I had been robbed during the disembarkment procedure removed any sense of victory from me.

Before I can curse aloud for the world to hear, a motorbike zooms past me, nearly knocking me over. 'WTF, I need to get off the road,' I think, but I don't have any time to move before I notice that I am not in fact on the road. ZOOM, another fucking motorbike nearly turns me into a pancake. I look around and am amazed yet not entirely surprised to see that the innovative Hanoi-ians have transformed the side walk into a road for their scooters and motorbikes. This once safe sanctuary for the motorless individuals such as myself has turned into a quick path to salvation for every damn motorbike on the road. I have to stand aside while bikes drive by me like maniacs, nearly getting hit every 5 seconds by another impatient motorist. My 10 minute walk to work turns into 20 minutes of me playing the South East Asian version of Frogger.

I arrive at the front steps to my office, I go to clean my shoes on the rub and slip. I open the door, walk into the office, wet, and looking miserable, and my lovely coworkers greet me with smiles and broken English 'Goo Moaning's'. I tell them about my commute, my fever, and my stolen phone, and, with the infinite kindness which everyone in this office seems to possess, they make me feel much better.

Another co-worker, Son, arrives 30 minutes after me, soaking wet. He is nothing but smiles. It reminds me of how sometimes, life can suck, but what matters is how we perceive it. Sure, my morning sucked real bad, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let it dictate the rest of this god forsaken Monday.

:)
A smile is an inexpensive way to change your looks. ~Charles Gordy

Falling Between the Gaps

Life always offers us challenges to overcome. That's what life is about, finding the strength to defeat the obstacles which prevent us from achieving our goals. Though all challenges are identical in principle, some are a bit bigger, or rather, more unique than others, and this blog entry is about one such challenge.

For me, the most frustrating thing that I can experience is to not be understood. That is why I strive towards being a good communicator, laying out my thoughts and ideas in a comprehensible fashion for the listener, no matter who they may be. I know the importance of shaping my words so as to best penetrate the thought process of he/she who is listening, but what happens when that person does not speak any of your spoken languages? Madness - that's what.

Recently, an opportunity to gain some grant money to help fund a project that the NGO which I work with has been preparing has come about. At a meeting with the National MSM Working Group (a group which aims to increase the rights of gays in South East Asia), one guest speaker mentioned a special fund from amFAR which would give $10,000 USD to NGO's who are willing to do research on MSM (men sex with men) in South East Asian countries, or who want to implement a safe sex program which would aim to decrease the spread of HIV/AIDS and STIs in the region. My NGO is working on one such project, and I thought this would be an excellent grant to apply for in order to get some extra funding.

At the meeting was my director, who's English isn't so hot. The speaker spoke in English, and was translated (poorly) into Vietnamese via a headset. I took the initiative and made some notes on the grant. Once the meeting was over, I presented the idea to one of my coworkers, who, despite being very sweet and well-intentioned, didn't seem to understand why this was such a good idea.

For the first time since I've been here, I actually got frustrated. I really wanted her to recognize that this was a good potential for some extra cash for the organization, but the plan that I suggested was not easily understood with her limited English. My own inability to speak Vietnamese didn't help either, and we were at a loss. I was losing patience, because I tried my best to explain that we needed to present this to the director, and that it should be taken seriously.

In addition to the language gap, there is another problem which peers its ugly little head at me. I guess I suffer from the 1St World Syndrome. That is, I am very used to a working environment where coworkers don't diddle. One thing that I forget sometimes is that I'm not in Canada anymore, the work schedule is very different here than in my homeland, and I can't expect to have people act on things right away. I mean, they take an hour and half for lunch at my office, which is considered to be short by the Vietnamese standard of two and a half hours.

This is a problem, because I have already written a proposal about the grant which I intend to present to the director. However, I need to get it translated... and I would like to have one of the staff help me. However, her pace of work is not exactly... well, it won't get done today, that's for sure.

Just another instant of culture gaps. Completely Unavoidable, that is for sure. Luckily, I have some extra reserves of patience that I've kept just in case such a problem might occur.

Living in a foreign country which bares hardly any resemblance to the world you know has many challenges, but the rewards are even more numerous. I've learned the value of taking work into one's own hands, and of being self motivated when it comes to my ideas to better the organization.

This is just another one of things that I need to take in stride, and overtime my ability to adapt to their ways of working will pay off.

Now to go pester the secretary, to see if she'll translate my proposal if I buy her some cakes.
:)

Nick