Today at the toilet site was more of the same. We mixed cement and then sat around while the contractor finished siding the other two walls. We had another held up today when it actually did rain and some of the newly laid cement started to drip. We quickly covered the walls by perching planks of wood over the top then mixed in the remaining cement before it could harden and patched up the dripping walls. This is ending up taking much longer than I expected - we thought we were going to be done by last weekend but my new prediction is that we'll finish by next Tuesday. If I'm right, I'll be bored for another week yet. All of my blisters are going away with all this sitting around. I thought about going over to help the road group for a couple of days just so I could feel useful, but then I really do want to see my project through to the end. At least there are occasionally entertaining visitors coming to the school. Yesterday a couple of people from the local chapter of the Youth Union came by and gave us a care package of coconut candy and sweetsoup fixings. Later a woman from the People's Committee complimented us on the path we'd made before. She said she was impressed that we'd never done anything like this before and were still able to do such a good job (at least that's what I'm extrapolating although if the direct translation was correct she actually said we did nothing at all before).
There was also a pig harvesting day which we were inadvertently thrown in the middle of. The owners were all sitting in a circle in front of the school chatting while the sellers weighed and painted a number on each pig before leading it to a canoe which was docked right next to our toilet. The pigs seemed perfectly fine but it was sad because I knew they were on their way to be slaughtered. But that's the fate of most the world's pigs I suppose. The riverboats here are awesome - they're thin wooden oversized canoes decorated with colorful blues and reds and painted eyes on the bow. As long as I stay here I may not get to do much but at least there are interesting sights and of course, lots of Vietnamese sweet tea.
I only taught about fifteen minutes of science class today. The rockets looked really great and were all decorated so creatively (one boy even made the tip of his rocket with the tip of an eye-dropper rather than paper) - I was impressed and the kids had a lot of fun with the launch. We then moved over to the little kids who were supposed to be having "fun time" which was completely unorganized today. We kept them occupied for about fifteen minutes with Wen and Khang's catapult (which we probably should have cleared with the People's Committee because they were looking on with concerned faces).
When we got back, Kendra, Van, and I got sugarcane from across the street and just sat outside the lobby talking about the differences between our perceptions of Vietnam and America. In the process, we met the owner of the hotel when he politely asked us to move our bikes so he could park his big-ass Chevy. You could tell this guy was loaded because an imported car like that is ridiculously expensive here and he was wearing clothes only recognizable to our generation because of "That 70's Show." It was kind of jarring to look at him because it's so different from how everyone here dresses. In Saigon, everyone wore Western clothes and that's true here only to a much lesser extent. Overall people are more comfortable here wearing traditional Vietnamese clothing like the single-colored shirt-pant combos for women. By comparison, the hotel owners pale yellow paisley shirt and polyester hot pants were a bit jarring.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Vietnam Day 52 (7/29/09)
I mentioned before that I'm becoming quite a speed-demon on the bike. That's not necessarily because I'm in control, but I am getting good enough to enjoy the scenery along the way. The ride along the small path is surreally beautiful as we pass under the shade of palm branches hanging over the trail. Bamboo and lush tropical shrubs brush my legs (and sometimes my face) as I pass. Apart from the motorbikes and children riding their bikes past us (often two or three to a bike), we also came across a lot of pedestrians. Today we passed a family with grown daughters all pitching in to gather reeds from down in one of the shallower ditches just off the road. Every day we pass groups of elderly women, always in threes, walking single file in their conical hats, laughing and gossiping. I've noticed the women who walk alone return my smiles with changeless stony expressions, but the women in these gaggles always smile and sometimes reach out and touch my arm (which, I can't lie, freaked me out a little when I was trying to control the bike).
Today the rest of the group went to the site of the new road so it was just me, Van Anh, and Hieu at the school working on the toilet with the contractor. Sorry, perhaps the term "working" is too strong. I felt entirely useless. We mixed three batches of cement and then spent the rest of the morning literally sitting on our asses on piles of bricks watching the contractor put in the doors we painted yesterday and then add a smooth layer of cement over the outside of one of the brick laws. He was going to do the same thing with the other two walls but then the rain clouds started rolling in and the wind picked up like it was going to storm so we hastily covered the classroom for safekeeping. Just as I walked out from putting the last few shovels inside, the sun came back out and the clouds moved on. Van Anh said the gods were playing with us. It appears she was correct because five minutes later we encountered another delay. The tiny, frail old woman that keeps the key to the school came over to observe our progress. Not knowing that the cement holding the door in hadn't hardened yet, she tried to open the door, instead pushing the hinges clear out of the wall (something I would never have thought possible for such a small person). We had to stop again to go through another long process of attaching the door. By that point, it seemed clear that the contractor wouldn't be finishing siding the other two walls today so we gave him as much cement as we needed then left to see if we could be more useful at the road.
The road crew is making incredible progress. Of course the locals won't trust our group with any cement mixing or laying but then there are quite a few locals working on the path so it's still coming along quickly. The students have been transporting bags of rocks and sand all morning so they're pretty tired. I originally thought the road group didn't get to do anything today except lift bags, but then I found out they've also been doing a lot of eating. The people who live around the work-site have been bringing them tons of foot throughout the day; starchy corn, odd fruits, and coconuts (which I arrived just in time to partake of). I saw the bags of rocks and thought I was finally going to get my chance to do some hard manual labor, but I'd only carried two bags before everyone stopped for the day. The locals had one more edible treat for us before we could go. I didn't feel like I'd earned it but one of the neighbors gave us all sweet soup made from water coconut. It was very different from the sweetsoups we've had in the past - it was much less heavy with a coconut milk base and lots of pieces of cocnut and little colorful balls of tapioca, all served in "Merry Christmas" mugs. It was excellent but no one from the road group had any appetite for lunch (which was fine, more for me).
We didn't have a science class today so Wen and Khang used the time to finalize work on the catapult. They managed to fix the mechanics, not with the help of the carpenter, but with the help of a twelve-year old who figured out that by attaching a bungee cord to one end you could make it spring-loaded. Since we had free time this afternoon, Van Anh went with me to the market to get some cheap adidas sweat pants (which somehow every person in this region owns). Later when Kendra got back from the school, I took her back to the market so she could get the pants too. We went without a roommate but I learned the word for tailor so we managed to get it sent to the tailors without any problem. After that however, the language barrier became a bit of a problem. They spoke to me as if I understood conversational Vietnamese, offering no hand gestures or context clues. I spent the longest time asking how long it would take for the pants to be finished, pointing at the minutes hand on my watch, offering suggestions of five or ten while pointing adamantly at the tailor shop. It was hopeless though - they didn't understand any of our impromptu sign language so Kendra and I decided to just go on an adventure and check back later. We bought a couple of sticky rice bananas and munched on them while we walked around the market. The market is actually quite extensive, selling some pretty nice things, including gorgeous fruit that we plan to come back for and coincidentally the same adidas pants we just bought found at two other stalls. By the time I finished my banana, we had made it back around to the pants stand where we found the pants waiting but not the shirt Kendra had sent along with it to be mended. We proceeded to have an excessively confusing conversation with the vendors. After a couple repetitions we caught the word "sach" meaning clean (which we only know because the girls at school are always commenting on which parts of cloths are clean or dirty after the morning's work) and figured out that they were having the shirt cleaned before Kendra could pick it up. I was pretty impressed that we deciphered that conversation (and by we, I mean Kendra of course). I feel like I should have been carrying around a dictionary the whole time I've been in Vietnam - it's certainly been an interesting experience trying to communicate without one but I haven't been making things easy on myself.
The rest of the night we just watched Hercules, Kendra and I turning it into our own personal karaoke session. I know I complain a lot about the hotel, but we really are spoiled here, watching movies all the time and having internet in the lobby. Apparently the other Green Summer participants are actually living in huts with local families, eating questionable food and showering with chemically treated river water. It's only because the People's Comity wants foreigners to have the best possible perception of their town that we're in a hotel at all. In a way, I'd rather be in the huts. Good or bad, at least that would be unique cultural experience.
Today the rest of the group went to the site of the new road so it was just me, Van Anh, and Hieu at the school working on the toilet with the contractor. Sorry, perhaps the term "working" is too strong. I felt entirely useless. We mixed three batches of cement and then spent the rest of the morning literally sitting on our asses on piles of bricks watching the contractor put in the doors we painted yesterday and then add a smooth layer of cement over the outside of one of the brick laws. He was going to do the same thing with the other two walls but then the rain clouds started rolling in and the wind picked up like it was going to storm so we hastily covered the classroom for safekeeping. Just as I walked out from putting the last few shovels inside, the sun came back out and the clouds moved on. Van Anh said the gods were playing with us. It appears she was correct because five minutes later we encountered another delay. The tiny, frail old woman that keeps the key to the school came over to observe our progress. Not knowing that the cement holding the door in hadn't hardened yet, she tried to open the door, instead pushing the hinges clear out of the wall (something I would never have thought possible for such a small person). We had to stop again to go through another long process of attaching the door. By that point, it seemed clear that the contractor wouldn't be finishing siding the other two walls today so we gave him as much cement as we needed then left to see if we could be more useful at the road.
The road crew is making incredible progress. Of course the locals won't trust our group with any cement mixing or laying but then there are quite a few locals working on the path so it's still coming along quickly. The students have been transporting bags of rocks and sand all morning so they're pretty tired. I originally thought the road group didn't get to do anything today except lift bags, but then I found out they've also been doing a lot of eating. The people who live around the work-site have been bringing them tons of foot throughout the day; starchy corn, odd fruits, and coconuts (which I arrived just in time to partake of). I saw the bags of rocks and thought I was finally going to get my chance to do some hard manual labor, but I'd only carried two bags before everyone stopped for the day. The locals had one more edible treat for us before we could go. I didn't feel like I'd earned it but one of the neighbors gave us all sweet soup made from water coconut. It was very different from the sweetsoups we've had in the past - it was much less heavy with a coconut milk base and lots of pieces of cocnut and little colorful balls of tapioca, all served in "Merry Christmas" mugs. It was excellent but no one from the road group had any appetite for lunch (which was fine, more for me).
We didn't have a science class today so Wen and Khang used the time to finalize work on the catapult. They managed to fix the mechanics, not with the help of the carpenter, but with the help of a twelve-year old who figured out that by attaching a bungee cord to one end you could make it spring-loaded. Since we had free time this afternoon, Van Anh went with me to the market to get some cheap adidas sweat pants (which somehow every person in this region owns). Later when Kendra got back from the school, I took her back to the market so she could get the pants too. We went without a roommate but I learned the word for tailor so we managed to get it sent to the tailors without any problem. After that however, the language barrier became a bit of a problem. They spoke to me as if I understood conversational Vietnamese, offering no hand gestures or context clues. I spent the longest time asking how long it would take for the pants to be finished, pointing at the minutes hand on my watch, offering suggestions of five or ten while pointing adamantly at the tailor shop. It was hopeless though - they didn't understand any of our impromptu sign language so Kendra and I decided to just go on an adventure and check back later. We bought a couple of sticky rice bananas and munched on them while we walked around the market. The market is actually quite extensive, selling some pretty nice things, including gorgeous fruit that we plan to come back for and coincidentally the same adidas pants we just bought found at two other stalls. By the time I finished my banana, we had made it back around to the pants stand where we found the pants waiting but not the shirt Kendra had sent along with it to be mended. We proceeded to have an excessively confusing conversation with the vendors. After a couple repetitions we caught the word "sach" meaning clean (which we only know because the girls at school are always commenting on which parts of cloths are clean or dirty after the morning's work) and figured out that they were having the shirt cleaned before Kendra could pick it up. I was pretty impressed that we deciphered that conversation (and by we, I mean Kendra of course). I feel like I should have been carrying around a dictionary the whole time I've been in Vietnam - it's certainly been an interesting experience trying to communicate without one but I haven't been making things easy on myself.
The rest of the night we just watched Hercules, Kendra and I turning it into our own personal karaoke session. I know I complain a lot about the hotel, but we really are spoiled here, watching movies all the time and having internet in the lobby. Apparently the other Green Summer participants are actually living in huts with local families, eating questionable food and showering with chemically treated river water. It's only because the People's Comity wants foreigners to have the best possible perception of their town that we're in a hotel at all. In a way, I'd rather be in the huts. Good or bad, at least that would be unique cultural experience.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Vietnam Day 51 (7/28/09)
There wasn't a whole lot of work again today after we mixed the first batch of cement. Still, I got a little variety when I was asked to paint the doors for the toilet. We're using this Duke blue paint that is made with gasoline (which the ten-year old Nhi purchased for us) and gives off noxious fumes that can theoretically make you high if you breathe in too much. I avoided that by wearing a carpenter's mask and breathing through my mouth but every time I accidentally took a whiff I started gagging. It was a bit awkward to paint the doors propped up against the front gate because more photographers and reporters showed up again today. I don't know how there can be this many publications in a town this small but there seems to be an endless supply of photographers taking artsy shots of us painting.
Now that I'm done painting, there's nothing to do again for a while as we wait for the contractor to finish laying bricks so we can cement the outside. It feels like we have a long way to go because we still need to put in the actual toilets and pipes, the doors, and the roof and I'm not sure how long all of that will take. The school group on the other hand just finished and will be starting work on a small road tomorrow. I do feel a sense of accomplishment with the school being done - I wasn't technically on the team but I ended up coming around so many times to help when there was nothing to do with the toilet, so I think I contributed something. I just hope the toilet doesn't take too much longer because it will be quite lonely here after the school group leaves.
We didn't have time to do the cement siding so I left with the school group to check out the road I will soon be joining them on (with any luck). It was just off the road we usually take to the school except this one is even more curvy and narrow. I only just got used to the other road and now we're stepping up the difficulty level again. The road we're building is currently a dirt path and we'll be laying cement over the top of it. We walked down the path to scope it out, but it just kept going. At every turn I expected it to end but it never did. Finally we reached the bridge that marked the end. The workers who will be helping us were already there starting to lay concrete. They were all very nice but they were skeptical at first as to whether we were capable of mixing the concrete, but Loan assured them that we'd done it before. The people whose house lies next to the road was so considerate - when they heard we were coming they made us way too much of a delicious cake that's a Ben Tre specialty. It's not so much a cake as a pile of leaves (unique to the region) that have been battered in dough and boiled and are served with warm coconut milk (which is thick and sweet like cream). It was very good but we had to go to lunch at the moms' house right after so all five of us together only finished about one out of three plates of the cake. Hopefully they weren't offended because it really was a nice gesture.
We tried just relaxing again at the house during our break but the kids wasted no time in finding us so we just went to the cafe so we could at least get our caffeine fix. And did we ever - after our coffees we all felt rejuvenated. As Molly said, it's like a drug, and a necessary one to since class was a little rough today. The experiment was certainly interesting enough (Khang made a paper bowl, then put water in it and held it over a flame and the paper neither disintegrated nor burned) but a lot of the kids were being "naughty" and we were struggling to stretch the classes out for the full time. It was worse in the second class because the students from the first had already spoiled the surprise and told them about the experiment. As a result, they were bored and even more unruly. I find it difficult to discipline kids here not only because of the language barrier but also because I can't always tell what behavior is and isn't acceptable in a different culture. Still, we made it through (though we had to let the second class out a little early) and spent some time afterwards playing with them outside.
Now that I'm done painting, there's nothing to do again for a while as we wait for the contractor to finish laying bricks so we can cement the outside. It feels like we have a long way to go because we still need to put in the actual toilets and pipes, the doors, and the roof and I'm not sure how long all of that will take. The school group on the other hand just finished and will be starting work on a small road tomorrow. I do feel a sense of accomplishment with the school being done - I wasn't technically on the team but I ended up coming around so many times to help when there was nothing to do with the toilet, so I think I contributed something. I just hope the toilet doesn't take too much longer because it will be quite lonely here after the school group leaves.
We didn't have time to do the cement siding so I left with the school group to check out the road I will soon be joining them on (with any luck). It was just off the road we usually take to the school except this one is even more curvy and narrow. I only just got used to the other road and now we're stepping up the difficulty level again. The road we're building is currently a dirt path and we'll be laying cement over the top of it. We walked down the path to scope it out, but it just kept going. At every turn I expected it to end but it never did. Finally we reached the bridge that marked the end. The workers who will be helping us were already there starting to lay concrete. They were all very nice but they were skeptical at first as to whether we were capable of mixing the concrete, but Loan assured them that we'd done it before. The people whose house lies next to the road was so considerate - when they heard we were coming they made us way too much of a delicious cake that's a Ben Tre specialty. It's not so much a cake as a pile of leaves (unique to the region) that have been battered in dough and boiled and are served with warm coconut milk (which is thick and sweet like cream). It was very good but we had to go to lunch at the moms' house right after so all five of us together only finished about one out of three plates of the cake. Hopefully they weren't offended because it really was a nice gesture.
We tried just relaxing again at the house during our break but the kids wasted no time in finding us so we just went to the cafe so we could at least get our caffeine fix. And did we ever - after our coffees we all felt rejuvenated. As Molly said, it's like a drug, and a necessary one to since class was a little rough today. The experiment was certainly interesting enough (Khang made a paper bowl, then put water in it and held it over a flame and the paper neither disintegrated nor burned) but a lot of the kids were being "naughty" and we were struggling to stretch the classes out for the full time. It was worse in the second class because the students from the first had already spoiled the surprise and told them about the experiment. As a result, they were bored and even more unruly. I find it difficult to discipline kids here not only because of the language barrier but also because I can't always tell what behavior is and isn't acceptable in a different culture. Still, we made it through (though we had to let the second class out a little early) and spent some time afterwards playing with them outside.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)