The Southeast Asia Journals: A Visit

(Continued from "The Southeast Asia Journals: Part Two," which was posted Thursday, February 11, 2010)

January 19, 2010

On the moped, I watched hills and rice fields fly past while I clutched the seat handle behind me. Mr. Ng would every now and then shout back tourist information – here were rubber trees, or here was a nice view, or here were minority villages.

As we drew closer to Phu Bon, we saw more and more minority buildings. They looked somewhat like I imagined they would – boarded one-room houses that sat on stilts above dusty ground. The walls weren’t thatched like I’d seen in pictures from the sixties. Only the roofs had straw.

Every now and then I’d see a man or woman walking along the side of the highway with a great basket strapped to his or her back. They were the basket backpacks Lap had once described to me during a translation session for the dictionary. He’d sketched them on a notepad, and together we’d written a description.

The landscape was more open than I had pictured. Not much jungle, just open dirt and rice fields, and sometimes a hill. From my seat, I could see far into the distance.

The main Phu Bon street felt almost like Pleiku or Hoi An, except that it intersected with dirt roads that led off to the villages, and most of the storefronts were shabby.

Lap’s family wasn’t there when we arrived, and I was afraid for a moment that we wouldn’t see them. A phone call to one of the family members revealed there had been a miscommunication. The family had understood we would arrive at nine, but Mr. Ng had meant to express that we would leave Pleiku at nine. It was now close to eleven. After waiting for several hours, the family had gone back to the village to eat lunch.

I felt anxious – were they upset that they’d had to wait? My discomfort grew when I heard Mr. Ng speaking with them on the phone. I didn’t know what he was saying to them, but he wasn’t hiding his frustration. When he got off the phone, he told me, “The minorities, they don’t understand nothing.” He kept smacking his lips and sighing. Not until this point did I sense his prejudice, and I thought, What have I done?

I was made uneasy not only by Mr. Ng's attitude, but also by the miscommunication I’d just witnessed. I knew it was only a small taste of the language barrier that would soon confront me. Mr. Ng was operating in broken English, and the family would be operating in Vietnamese, their second language.

We sat down, and the three men ordered coffee. I kept trying to ask Mr. Ng about the meeting between Benny and the sisters. How long had Benny stayed? Where did he go? I didn’t know if I should offer to buy a meal for the family, or where we could eat. Mr. Ng kept saying his signature phrase: “Don’t worry nothing!”

As we waited, I learned he had served with the Southern Vietnamese armies during the war.

“What happened to you when the U.S. left the country?” I asked.

He laughed. “I went to prison.”

I don’t remember now how long he said he was held. I only remember that he kept laughing like usual and acted as if the imprisonment had been no big deal.

“Tell me,” he said. “If you did not go here with me, who would you go with?”

I told him about the man at the travel agency.

He laughed. “Ah Cham! He my friend! I know Cham. He speak English very well. He works for the government. I fought with the U.S., so I can’t work for the government. The government don’t care about me.”

So here, perhaps, was the reason why he could bring me to the sisters and translate, and Cham couldn’t. Knowing that Cham worked for the government made me somewhat grateful I hadn’t held out for his help, but even so I wished for his perfect English and calm, collected manner. Mr. Ng's smiles and high-pitched talking bothered me.

When the waiter brought the bill for the coffee, Mr. Ng said he didn’t have change to split the cost with Joe.

“I owe you,” he said.

Yeah right, I thought.

After a half-hour or forty-five minutes, two mopeds parked in front of our tables. A man, a woman, and a younger boy and girl. Only one of Lap's sisters had come. I noticed her right away; she looked like Lap. I’d been imagining what his relatives would look like. I knew it was them. But my heart was beating hard. I stood up, but I didn’t know what to do. Approach them? Hug them? I didn’t know them. I decided to take a few steps toward them and smile. I didn’t know a word of their language, not even 'hello.' I contemplated shaking their hands. In the end, no introduction took place at all. We simply beheld each other, and smiled. Mr. Ng immediately started speaking to them in Vietnamese, then turned and asked me if I wanted to stay here, or go to the place where they had eaten with Benny.

I said we should go to the place where Benny had gone. I didn’t like our time being so completely under Mr. Ng's direction, but I didn’t know what else could be done. I didn’t know if the family had eaten or not. We had yet to say a word to each other when the decision was made, and everyone immediately climbed back on the motorbikes. I tried to smile at the slender woman, the face that looked like Lap, as much as I could. But I already felt despair that I could say nothing meaningful to her.

It took some time to find the restaurant. When we did, we found it occupied by a wedding. Mr. Ng disappeared, and Joe and I stood by the mopeds, silent and stiff. The family members were wandering about, looking to see if there was an empty room. Finally, Mr. Ng returned saying that we could not stay, so we got on the motorbikes. I didn’t know where we were going now. Soon, we drove into the garage of a white building down the street, and entered a large room filled with checkered table cloths. We sat down in a circle. Still, so little had been said. Mr. Ng looked bored.

“Tell them I am very happy to see them,” I said.

I kept hoping to see the faces of the family smile at me -- some sign that they were pleased or happy. They did smile, in the quiet moments. But when I tried to tell them something, their faces looked confused and drawn. I prayed Mr. Ng was telling them what I was actually saying, and he was probably doing his best. But even for the simplest phrases I expressed, I am doubtful that the right message was passed on.

I had written questions in my journal. I wanted to ask about the war, about what H’Blu felt when her brother left, or what she felt when her father was imprisoned by the North Vietnamese. Now I realized such conversation was not possible through Mr. Ng's translation. He often needed me to repeat a question two or three times before he could pass it on.

H’Blu gave me a small, strapped basket like the one Lap had drawn pictures of, and a drinking gourd. Mr. Ng told me H'Blu had made the basket, and that the gourd was used to drink wine.

I suddenly felt rather ridiculous to pull out Lap’s 123 page thesis. I hadn't before considered the impracticality: most of it was in English. What would they do with over a hundred pages they couldn’t read? I gave it to them, and tried to have Mr. Ng explain what it was. I said I thought maybe they’d like to see what Lap had been working on for so long. She took it, and passed it on to the next person, and each family member looked at it. I watched their faces. I confess I had been half-hoping for smiles or tears, and was somewhat disappointed when they responded with neither. I was thankful that Lap had sent me pictures to give them, and a letter -- surely these items would be meaningful to them.

I wanted to know so much what they felt, or thought. But often, when I asked them a question through Mr. Ng, he never returned me an answer at all. The bulk of the conversation was them saying “thank you” through Mr. Ng, and me telling them that the basket and gourd were “very special” to me. Beyond that, I don’t remember much of what was said. Ultimately, very little was communicated. I remember asking them their ages, and it took some time before they had finished discussing with each other and speaking back and forth with Mr. Ng. Finally, Mr. Ng wrote on a napkin the ages he had understood. The boy and girl were eighteen, he said.

I asked what their work in the village was like, and Mr. Ng asked the question for me, but then gave me his own answer: “They’re rice farmers,” he said. “All the minorities are rice farmers. Poor.”

I vaguely remembered what Lap had told me about the process of planting rice. He had tried to explain the tool they used – some sort of long, hollow stick was used to plant the grains in the mud.

The food came, and we ate silently. The family had not suggested anything to eat, and of course Joe and I knew nothing of Vietnamese food, so once again to my regret, the situation was placed in the hands of Mr. Ng, who chose whatever he wanted – there was chicken, pork, rice, squid, soup, and I don’t remember what else.

I took pictures and videos of the family, and then we left. H’Blu hugged me tightly. I looked back over my shoulder at her as the motorbike pulled away. I spent the two hours back to Pleiku wondering if the meeting had benefited them at all. I clung so tightly to the basket and gourd H’Blu had given me, that my arms were sore when we arrived at the hotel. I reminded Mr. Ng to pay Joe for his coffee, and he did.

August 4, 2010

Last week -- six months or so after visiting the Siu family -- I visited their brother, Lap, here in the States. He speaks with H'Blu and the others regularly by telephone, and I wanted to hear what his sister had told him of the visit, and to give him my account as well. I was surprised (and not surprised) to hear that soon after I left the town of Phu Bon, police stopped Lap’s sister as she rode back to her village. They questioned her, and took from her the dictionary and letter that I had given her. Most surprising of all, someone knocked on her door a day later, returned the papers to her, and said he was sorry.