(On behalf of Kenneth. Enjoy! ^^)
Time flies! It’s been more than a month since we have come back from Vietnam. Looking back on how this whole journey began, it just seemed so strange and distant; I guess most things on hindsight always looked different compared to what memories registered it to be. It all began with an email that said, Earthlink NTU: Ecoventure 2010 Recruitment Drive. I didn’t think much about it at that point, was probably too busy, but I decided to just indicate my interest in it. I even forgot about the first interview! But then I received a call from Wan Ying reminding me of a 2nd round of interviews. Guess I couldn’t say I forgot again...
As the Confucius saying went: ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’ For me, going for the interview was that proverbial first step.
Cutting to the chase, the pre-EV preparations blazed pass like a speeding train; the weekly weekend trainings (in that stuffy room), the weekly teaching and performance planning, the last minute backpack shopping, the last hour clothes stuffing, the cab ride down to Changi Airport on that rainy afternoon…And before I knew it, we were suddenly together! The entire EV 2010 Team! It was actually the first time the entire team had met up, and not in the fragmented bits and pieces which we were meeting each week. It was strange standing there, among strangers, soon to be friends. With one final group shot by our photography major, Willis, we were whisked off on a plane to Vietnam.
Taking the plane from the budget terminal meant that we had an up-close view of the plane. I could not help but notice how much smaller the plane seemed from the outside! It was tiny! So very different from the rather voluminous interior! It really goes to show how perceptions from the outside could be so different from the inside! The entire time in the plane, I sat there wondering how that small little plane could ferry so many of us, across the vast expanse of sea and land, across the many cities, across the farms and towns to a foreign land and carrying with it, the hopes and anxieties which we all harboured in varying degrees...
The first few days we spent in HCMC were hectic. Each of us busied with our own components to finish, the exhibitions, the performance, the presentations, and the list goes on. Even with the busy schedule to keep to, we found time to talk to our Vietnamese friends and to take part in the various activities. During one of the many conversations, I was surprised to learn that this was actually their exam period! Some of them were only days away from their exams! For some of the volunteers with us, it was right after the end of our trip! What a sacrifice! I was very thankful to be in the care of such a team of dedicated host, and was glad that we would be in such caring hands for the duration of our stay in Gia Bac.
[A BIG Thank you to our friends at ECO Vietnam Group for being such wonderful host; for helping us with communicating with the locals, providing administrative and logistical support, and attending to our varied meal preferences. I hope we can extend the same hospitality when you guys come visit us!]
Somehow I felt bad knowing that they had taken time off their revision to be there with us and providing the necessary assistance to ensure that our event was a success. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure if I could have done the same. And that somehow just deepened the guilt. I can only hope we will be able to extend the same hospitality when they come visit us.
Those few days passed quickly and before long, it was time to leave some of our new found friends behind and embark on an even longer journey – The Road to Gia Bac!
If I have one word to describe the bus ride to Gia Bac, it would be “loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong.”
It was possibly the longest bus ride I had taken in day time. Had it not been punctuated with the numerous stop overs, I would probably have been sitting there in my own puke for the better part of the journey…
However, that same long bus journey provided ample opportunities to glean more information about this country which had such a rich and fragmented history. Just a few hours ago, my only perception of Vietnam was a huge urban buildup with a thousand motorbikes zipping passed in a labyrinth of alleys and streets. Moving away from the city centre offered a very different view, and as the vaguely familiar urban landscape slowly fell away to give way to the alien-rural surroundings I found myself thinking of what I had left behind in Singapore, away from the familiar, from the comforts, from my safety-net, and at the same time I was also excited at what was to come.
The slow and arduous journey up was one with anticipation. The winding path taken by the bus offered a breath-taking view of the surrounding mountain range cast in the ocherous rays of the setting sun, it was almost as if each peak was ablaze. I sat there in my semi-comatose state and wondered at each mountain – Is that where we were going? Is that the village? Our village? What would tomorrow bring?
Half-conscious after the bus ride, I stepped out of the bus only to find myself plunged into darkness. I realised why - There were no street lights! As my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, I noticed a dimly lit wooden building on a raised platform with someone behind the counter.
On a closer look, I could discern a middle age lady (Chee Bey) who was there manning the mama-store lookalike shop. Suddenly she got out and took hasty steps towards me! She started tugging gently on my arms, pulling me to her shop, at the same time she seemed to be mouthing something which I couldn’t quite make out at first, but then it hit me! She was speaking English! She seemed to be trying her English out on me! Her face was a picture of enthusiasm. She started asking me all sorts of questions, where we were from, how long we took, have we eaten, even though we both struggled to communicate with each other, it seemed we could somehow understand each other with the aid of simple body gestures and facial expressions.
And then she suddenly went behind her counter and started looking for something. Was she trying to sell me something? It turned out I was wrong! She fished out a worn piece of paper, creased from folding many times, and then showed me its contents – It was a vocabulary list in English! It must have been from the previous groups that were here before us! And to think that for a moment there I was sure she had wanted to sell me her wares! Oh my, how could I! She then started reading each of the words out loud, slowly articulating each word, and signed with her hand as if asking me if she was pronouncing the words on the list correctly...
It was then that I realised how much impact our presence, us foreigners, has on this little village! I can only imagine how it was like when the first team came! There must have been a lot of excitement and uncertainty! But from the way it seems, in spite of that, they must have welcomed them with open arms. And so, that was how I first met Chee Bey, the nice lady who owns the provision shop opposite our place.
Looking back now, I think the night when we first arrived was ironically one of my most memorable memories of Gia Bac, since I was barely even acquainted with it. Perhaps it was a welcomed relief after the bus ride or perhaps it was the fresh evening air untainted by pollution (or so I thought…) or maybe, it was the small glimpse of what was to come that truly made it such an unforgettable experience.
And over the next few days, I slowly got acquainted with the daily routines and embraced the many hidden joys of Gia Bac...
The early mornings. The cool and fresh morning air that glides across your skin like cold silk. Greeting the rising sun emerging from behind its mountainous bed. Touring the surrounding areas of Gia Bac and attempting to capture it on camera. Aromatic Vietnamese coffee, instant noodles for breakfast, preparations for the morning’s reforestation work. The treks to our reforestation site, the kids that come out to greet us! The back-breaking, body-aching weeding, the camaraderie, the beautiful mountain view, the strange bugs that we occasionally found.
The blazing hot afternoons with the consistent and invariable afternoon showers. The preparations for teaching. Going for classes, having fun with our students. Teaching them new words, having games with them. Trying to get pass their occasional bouts of coyness. Playing games after lessons.
And as evening set in, the cool mountain water baths, the occasional long queues for toilets. The missing toilet bowl seats. The blackouts, bathing by the candle light, meeting and talking under the portable lights. The cosy feel of everyone sitting together for dinner. Doing laundry, washing dishes with friends, feeding the dogs with scrapes, watching the chickens fight it out for food. The swarms of bugs that the afternoon showers bring. The nightly debriefs which always seemed to go beyond the stated time. The daily reflections. Young Soul! Mafia! The starry skies. The chilly night air. Setting up the sleeping bag on the table in preparation for sleep. Brushing teeth under a star studded sky. And at the end of each day, the warm embrace of a good night’s rest.
Thinking back now, I’m surprised that it is the simple routines and mundane events that I found joy and beauty. Those are truly the memories of blissful simplicity.
Waste Management
In Gia Bac, there were many of eye-openers, the beautiful sunrises, the unadulterated view of the starry skies, the unobstructed horizon, whoever, guessed that the issue of rubbish would be one of the other eye openers...
‘So where do we throw the rubbish?’ I can’t really remember who asked that question, but at that point, it struck me that there I don’t recall seeing rubbish bins or collection points since the day we arrived. So where does the rubbish go to? Well, I was soon to find out. ‘This is where we’ll be taking the rubbish to’. I looked at where Harry pointed, yet all I saw was the mountain range spread out before me. Where? ‘Not there, there...’ tracing the imaginary path his fingers pointed to, it dawned on me where we would be dumping our rubbish off the mountain side...
So what happens to rubbish when you dispose of it? Most of us living in Singapore, probably never gave that question a second thought, after all, the next day, the bins are emptied and rubbish strewn on the ground are swept clean and all of yesterday’s trash becomes nothing but just another bad memory. If only rubbish were to disappear so easily...
The reality is that waste, especially inorganic ones so prevalent in our modern synthetic world, doesn’t just decay overnight, they take years, decades, centuries before being broken down completely! Most of us take for granted the infrastructure that Singapore has put in place to handle the thousands of tons of waste generated daily. In a small isolated village like Gia Bac, they lack the financial resources and the technological knowhow to run a sustainable waste management system akin to the one we have. Hence, their solution to the issue of waste is simply dumping it anywhere they saw fit, even if it means off the mountain...
Dumping refuse had always and still is one of the main ways for people to remove rubbish, the only difference being the varying degrees of complexity and sophistication. Dumping is still dumping. So I told myself that I shouldn't be too particular about it. I was wrong. What was truly shocking was what I saw some days later. At the base of the debris shrewn slope where we have been dumbing our rubbish, I saw a coffee plantation. It was just some twenty meters away from the base of the slope! That meant that contaminated ground water from the rubbish laden slope would be washed down towards the plantation! I was appalled! What was the farmer thinking? Then it struck me, maybe he didn’t know better...
It was then that I realised that the villagers had to have some basic understanding of waste management. Even if they had no choice but to dump their waste, it should at least be in a contained area so that the leachate would not flow out to the surrounding farmlands so crucial to their livelihood. More can be done.
In spite of the lack of a proper waste management system in the village, recycling was very prevalent! Yes, RECYCLING! A concept which seems to have been embraced in a luke-warm manner by Singaporeans was actually quite receptive in rural Gia Bac! The signs were not very obvious, but they were clearly there! Baskets of glass and plastic bottles, boxes of aluminium cans, stacks of cardboards, seemingly stashed in one corner were all collected and sorted by the various provision shops that peppered the village! They are eventually sent to a central collector who recycles it back in the neighbouring town.
Education
Before I went to Gia Bac, I had always considered education one of the fundamental means of ending poverty. I still do, but I no longer see it in the same light.
As a child, most of us have probably heard of the idea, ‘If you don’t study, you’re going to end up as a road sweeper.’ I doubt the vocation of a road sweeper exist in Gia Bac. But the message here is clear, education is the key to break out of poverty or rather the lack of it leads you to it. But yet, when I spoke with the villagers, I no longer thought of education as a feasible way out of poverty.
I recall asking one of the parents during a home visit what their son did after completing his schooling at the village. Her reply was: ‘Work on the farm’, and his story wasn’t unique, it was sadly very common...
Education was no longer a means to an end; an end where one will be able to get a job. Schooling for most of the children ends after secondary school, most don’t go on to do high school from which they can work their way up to a decent job. It wasn’t that they didn’t make the cut, it was because high school education was simply too expensive for most families. So what’s education for? For most, school was a place where they met up with their friends, had fun, learn about subjects that were sadly as useless to them as what money was to a monkey. It made me wonder if they ever thought about why they were studying such subjects...
Helplessness was probably the word to have described how I felt about the entire situation. To have something that you thought and felt strongly about proven wrong or at least no longer entirely true was something that really sets you thinking about your own perceptions and ideas. Ultimately, I find that education was still the way out, albeit a different sort of education; one which gave rise to more tangible returns, one which would help break away from coffee farming, and hopefully paves the way out of poverty. The education I speak off is none other than skills training. Is that the way to go? Perhaps, but I do not know answers. The solution to Gia Bac’s education problem is definitely not simple. The same could be said of the reforestation project in Gia Bac.
Reforestation
The Reforestation Project; FLITCH; Tree Planting. That was one of the key reasons why we had Ecoventure. The entire problem reminded me very much of this animated film, “Princess Mononoke”, which talks about the difficult balance between economic pursuits and the environment and ultimately the solution was to compromise. Yet this thin line called compromise cannot be easily defined. How do we balance the environmental issues which have long lasting impacts with those of the more immediate bread and butter issues, like food and shelter?
Reforestation meant taking away the coffee plots used to sustain the livelihood of the villagers; yet, if we let the coffee plots expand without restrain, what does it mean for the local environment? It would translate to a lost of segments of the eco-system, already made evident by the lack of tall trees and birds in the village vicinity. It would also mean a lost of their natural heritage, what which have been handed down from their ancestors. What about the longer and far-reaching effects it would have on the region, or on the world? Climate science is not an exact science, but many drops make up the ocean. If everyone makes that little difference, it will add up to a larger difference and consequently effect a larger outcome. We all have to play our part.
Each night we had debriefs on each day’s activities, and it seems that after several nights of discussion, the various doubts that we had culminated in this question: “Are we really helping them?"
Are we helping? It was a question which I wondered too. I wasn’t an idealist, but still, when I had sign on during the project, I had the impression that something tangible would come out of it, that our actions would be able to make a scratch or maybe even a dent on the environment or poverty that was in the village. Yet, at the end of it all, evaluating what we have done, I have to realistically say, we didn’t even make a scratch on it. Like someone mentioned, the work we have done there in that span of a few days was probably equivalent to what the locals could do in 2 hours. I was disappointed.
As we discussed the futility of our actions and commitment, I realised that perhaps the issue wasn’t about our contributions at this point in time, but rather, it was more about generating awareness of the problems in rural villages like Gia Bac. It was about empowering us with the knowledge and empathy for the situation in the village, in hopes that we will take action to help remedy it in the foreseeable future. As Malik says, treat this as an Investigation Phase; to find out more and understand the problems. Maybe 10 years from now, we will have the resources and abilities to help initiate programs to help alleviate the poverty. In a nutshell, the take home message was this: To remember Gia Bac.
Perhaps that was what we were here for, not to give, but to receive. To receive insights into the lives of the villagers, to receive experiences of rural living and to receive the empathy so lacking in the hectic lives we lead back home. And to think that before embarking on this journey, we thought we had so much to offer, so much to give, when in truth we were there to receive. I was humbled.
We will not forget Gia Bac and its lessons.
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