In February 1995, the thirty-year American trade embargo with Vietnam was lifted. In July, Clinton announced full diplomatic relations saying, “Whatever divided us before let us consign it to the past.” I arrived in October to a country in transition from communism to capitalism. Volunteer work was my way to get there, but my goal was for a deeper understanding of communism, their people, and the effects of the war. I rolled this into an independent study program in the course of International Studies at Oakland University. The following are formal interviews performed under the guise of that study.
A teacher of English in Tan Hiep, Nguyen Thi Phuong Chi, had positive feelings toward her father’s bee cooperative. He was assigned as Bee Master in 1983 to the Ho Chi Minh Bee Company. It was since separated into a ‘private’ company with the government owning fifty percent. I asked Ms. Chi if they want the help of the government, she said they need it. I would say they need it. Honey is made for export, and the government controls all exports. She was secure with the situation, and an older brother was in the process of creating a new hive to expand the business to another area.
This family of six lived in a masonry house on the main road. Ms. Chi, at twenty-three, taught school twelve hours a day, six days a week. She also managed two girls in a cottage industry of finishing conical work hats purchased in bulk from Saigon. Her young brother, Tam, age twenty-five, had a concession stand selling goods by the road. A retarded sister with another stayed in the kitchen with two more hired help cooking food for another commercial venture. The older brother was forty-six and had long since taken over the bee mastering from her sixty-six-year-old father. Father, who appeared a little feeble, was busy planting seedlings for another cash crop. The mother had been dead for ten years.
I would say this family is very exceptional but typical for this area in the Mekong Delta. Teachers in Vietnam are motivated by a passion for the work, not money. I think wages are amongst the lowest for any University profession.
Another teacher in Tan Hiep, Mr. Tien, told me of his struggle. He was from the North. His family was part of the dispersion of Catholics from North Vietnam. In 1954 and 1955, eight hundred thousand Catholics went south after the fall of the French. Mr. Tien’s father, who served with the French, was killed, and his family joined the exodus. These refugees fled the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh and were able to settle in the South thanks to the Ngo Dinh Diem regime. This opened another struggle that consumed the nation with a Buddhist-Catholic rivalry. The wrath of South Vietnamese Buddhists destroyed the Diem regime and lead to the civil war with the North.
Mr. Tien’s mother worked on a successful farm and sent her two sons to the University. His brother, an officer, was killed during the American war while the younger Mr. Tien worked the farm for his mother. After the war, in 1975, Mr. Tien saw the corrupt leadership consuming the government and decided he had to try to make a difference. With disgust for the system and people in it, he gave up the farm and became a teacher. He said it was necessary to start building a new Vietnam with its children.
There was a privilege afforded me to hear the stories of these teachers.
Pardon me, but I had never thought of Vietnam and intellectuals in the same context -- wrong. I met a teacher in Vietnamese literature. In my ignorance, I said, “Huh?” She quickly gave me a dissertation on a lot of people that were important to her and Vietnam. My apology was for stupidity in not relating their substance of character with a base of intelligentsia and history.
A teacher of English in Tan Hiep, Nguyen Thi Phuong Chi, had positive feelings toward her father’s bee cooperative. He was assigned as Bee Master in 1983 to the Ho Chi Minh Bee Company. It was since separated into a ‘private’ company with the government owning fifty percent. I asked Ms. Chi if they want the help of the government, she said they need it. I would say they need it. Honey is made for export, and the government controls all exports. She was secure with the situation, and an older brother was in the process of creating a new hive to expand the business to another area.
This family of six lived in a masonry house on the main road. Ms. Chi, at twenty-three, taught school twelve hours a day, six days a week. She also managed two girls in a cottage industry of finishing conical work hats purchased in bulk from Saigon. Her young brother, Tam, age twenty-five, had a concession stand selling goods by the road. A retarded sister with another stayed in the kitchen with two more hired help cooking food for another commercial venture. The older brother was forty-six and had long since taken over the bee mastering from her sixty-six-year-old father. Father, who appeared a little feeble, was busy planting seedlings for another cash crop. The mother had been dead for ten years.I would say this family is very exceptional but typical for this area in the Mekong Delta. Teachers in Vietnam are motivated by a passion for the work, not money. I think wages are amongst the lowest for any University profession.
Another teacher in Tan Hiep, Mr. Tien, told me of his struggle. He was from the North. His family was part of the dispersion of Catholics from North Vietnam. In 1954 and 1955, eight hundred thousand Catholics went south after the fall of the French. Mr. Tien’s father, who served with the French, was killed, and his family joined the exodus. These refugees fled the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh and were able to settle in the South thanks to the Ngo Dinh Diem regime. This opened another struggle that consumed the nation with a Buddhist-Catholic rivalry. The wrath of South Vietnamese Buddhists destroyed the Diem regime and lead to the civil war with the North.
Mr. Tien’s mother worked on a successful farm and sent her two sons to the University. His brother, an officer, was killed during the American war while the younger Mr. Tien worked the farm for his mother. After the war, in 1975, Mr. Tien saw the corrupt leadership consuming the government and decided he had to try to make a difference. With disgust for the system and people in it, he gave up the farm and became a teacher. He said it was necessary to start building a new Vietnam with its children.
There was a privilege afforded me to hear the stories of these teachers.
Pardon me, but I had never thought of Vietnam and intellectuals in the same context -- wrong. I met a teacher in Vietnamese literature. In my ignorance, I said, “Huh?” She quickly gave me a dissertation on a lot of people that were important to her and Vietnam. My apology was for stupidity in not relating their substance of character with a base of intelligentsia and history.
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