Moments: Illness

November 5, 2010

I took two students to lunch on Sunday. We stopped in at a popular campus restaurant, but the place was full of people. The students immediately turned and said we would find a different restaurant. I followed them to a place known to the foreigners as “The Corner Restaurant.” We ate green beans, rice, and a dish the menu called "Crispy Sweet and Spicy Chicken." At three o’clock that afternoon my stomach started the same dull ache I’d felt several times the semester before. I ignored it at first. By five, I was wrapped in a blanket on the couch, holding a hot water bottle to my stomach. Foreign friend Amanda brought toast to me at dinner. Ten minutes after she left, I walked to the bathroom, kneeled before the toilet, and passed out. When I came to, a lurch in my throat left vomit on my sweat pants, the bath mat, the hot water bottle, and the tile. I felt lighter – almost too light. I cleaned with paper towels and went to the couch again.

Almost every hour that night, I woke with more stomach pains and diarrhea. Substitute teachers were called for my classes. Amanda brought toast and rice. In the middle of the night Tuesday, I walked into the bathroom and twice lost consciousness. When daylight came, two teachers helped me to a small campus clinic. There, I could see just a few rooms – a pharmacy, a cashier’s office, a waiting room, and one room with two little stools that faced computer desks. Into the computer room I went, and sat down to face a Chinese woman who wore a white coat and had a firm jaw line. Glasses sat on the tip of her nose. She pressed her fingers into my stomach, asked a few questions, and led my helpers into the pharmacy room. I could see them through the doorway, talking for a while. When they came back, I was handed a box of tablets. The foreign teacher had looked up the word “antibiotic” in an English-Chinese dictionary.

Over the next two days, I watched an entire season of Gilmore Girls while I lay on my bed. Wednesday evening, I assured a supervisor I could teach an eight o’clock class Thursday morning. In the night, I woke with more stomach pain and more diarrhea.

Another visit to the campus clinic, and a better translator. This time I got directions: while taking the antibiotics, eat only liquid foods such as congee or soup. No meat, no solids, no cold food. A new box of antibiotics and a package of anti-diarrheal drinking powder were given to me. I have eaten only congee since. My stomach has so far had no pain. I will continue this for the next two or three days. But all this laying in bed has made me miss home a lot – Mom's chicken broth and English-speaking doctors and English medicine labels.

November 28, 2010

A few nights ago, I felt the same stomach pain that plagued me a month ago. I waited by the toilet, but no vomit came. I couldn’t sleep. The pain started gradually at around seven thirty p.m. At two a.m., on the phone with my parents, my mom and I searched the internet for any disease that remotely matched the symptoms – dysentery, ulcers, appendicitis. I called an American Registered Nurse hotline. At three the pain began to subside, and at four I fell asleep.

A student took me to the Xinzheng hospital at ten thirty the same morning. I sat on another wooden stool in a room much like the San He clinic on campus. The student translated the doctor’s questions, and led me upstairs for blood work and an ultrasound. In the lab, I sat at a little window and put my arm on a counter. My student talked to me while my blood was drawn.

Two nurses sat in the ultrasound room. A patient was standing by a bed, unrolling the waist of her long johns and zipping her pants. I laid on the same pillow and paper sheet that she’d lain on. The nurse spread the jelly, passed the camera, looked into her screen and said she could see everything clearly, just like pictures she’d studied in textbooks. I was too thin.

Downstairs again, the doctor prescribed four stomach medicines. It was now twelve o’clock. There was a crowd of people at the pharmacy and cashier windows – patients trying to get medicine before the hospital employees went to lunch. At one window, a woman put on her coat and pointed us to another window.

“Push through the people,” my student told me, “or we’ll never get your medicine.”

December 7, 2010

I finished taking the medicine yesterday. My stomach felt strange a few days last week, and I didn’t have a strong appetite – ate mostly toast, rice, crackers, and bananas. But by Friday, I felt quite normal again.

Moments: Construction

October 20, 2010

It sounds like a jackhammer is about to take out my apartment. The walls and windows shake. I feel the vibrations as I sit in my chair. A grating, never-ending hammering – I woke up to it at midnight last night.

Now that I’ve looked out my window I see it’s not a jackhammer, but an excavator machine. I only know the name because I just looked for it on Google. I wonder if Peter Hall will be shaken into a collapse.

The excessive hammering is the construction of housing for the foreign teachers who have children. The site’s lights stay on late at night and brighten my room even if my curtains are closed. Almost every time I open the curtains, there is a new scene to observe. One day I saw a giant ditch in which four or five women in visor hats shoveled debris onto the bed of a front loader. Above ground, men were shoveling some kind of white powder – ash, maybe? Cement? The stuff filled the air. It swirled above the workers like columns of steam. The next day I saw the ditch was being filled. It slowly grew shallow. With each new layer of dirt, a road roller drove up and down the ditch, setting my radiator to shaking again. A few teachers sat in my living room on Sunday and couldn’t hear a sermon podcast over the din. As I look out now, I can’t quite tell if the workers are constructing, or still removing remnants of the demolished dining hall.

October 27, 2010

The construction site outside my window is mostly level now. The ditch is filled, and the dirt is smoothed into one flat rectangle. I’ve heard teachers say the building will have no foundation. I wait to see if this is true.

Moments: Re-entry

June 14, 2010

Last week, China surprised us “new” foreign teachers by lengthening a national holiday – students and teachers will be free not only on Wednesday, but on Monday and Tuesday as well. Of course, in exchange for the extra free days, we were all required to teach last Saturday and Sunday. The news made me angry at first, but now that the holiday has begun and three free days together are before me, I feel differently. I’m just about done with my first year of teaching oral English. Only two classes left, which I will teach Thursday after the holiday has ended. I start a long journey home on Saturday evening.

When I consider all the relationships that have begun, grown, or dissipated, the myriad of emotions I’ve felt, the extremes of weather I’ve experienced, and all the things I’ve done, I can believe that ten months have passed. But when I think about arriving in China, my Culture Week performances the first semester, or Christmas in Peter Hall, nothing seems to have happened so long ago.

One thing that does most definitely seem as if it happened ages ago is that day I cried and said goodbye to Mom, Dad, and my brothers. I’m very ready to attempt to somehow catch up on the ten months I’ve missed with them.

July 5, 2010 (At home in America)

Before this weekend, being with the family hadn’t worn on me at all because there were only six of us at home – Mom, Dad, Kim, and the boys. There was an empty room for me to go to. Now, when I walk around the house people are everywhere. Bedding is on the floor. I’m close to everyone and everyone speaks English. I’m expected to interact with all of them, or at least I expect myself to. I’m still reeling from all the emotions I’ve felt in the past few weeks. And now everyone is going swimming at the neighbor’s pool. If I don’t go, I’m afraid I’ll be looked at as strange, and questioned: “Why don’t you want to be a part of the family activity?”

I feel, around people I don’t know or around large groups, that I’ve been rude and disconnected. Last night at a Fourth of July barbecue I felt I couldn’t summon the energy to talk to even one person. I knew the kind of talk I’d have to do, and I didn't want to do it. Few people ask about China, few people care about China. If I want to talk about it, I have to bring it up myself.

It’s not necessarily the people who alienate me, but the circumstances. I’ve just come from a world that no one here knows much about, a world that may have changed me forever. And now I’m supposed to sit in the family circle in the living room and talk about the new iphone, or a Youtube video, or the Fourth of July fireworks.

And it’s not that the family can do anything differently. I can’t expect them to change their way of life for a few weeks. It’s I who has to fit into their society. I have to find my place again.

Hebrews says of people of great faith that they “admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth… If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country – a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:13-16). Perhaps I ought to consider this time as an opportunity to long for my heavenly home. Maybe Christ would say to me, “Get used to feeling like an alien. You are one.”

My house and my family are things I’ve often longed for during the past ten months. Now that I’m here, nothing is as wonderful as I dreamed. But life back in China doesn’t sound wonderful either. I guess I’ve not yet arrived at home.


September 19, 2010

It is a Sunday, four days until I leave for China. We are celebrating Mom’s birthday by having a small, early Thanksgiving meal. Mom put a small turkey in the crock pot this morning. I am struggling with, among other things, a dread and a fear of leaving. I don’t want to leave my family for so long again, and there’s no telling what things will be like when I finally do come back to America again. What if the next re-entry is as harsh as this year’s was? Or worse? No, I can’t ask that question. I still believe it’s right that I go back to China.

September 23, 2010

I sit at the Austin airport, waiting to return to China. First to Chicago, then on to Beijing. I just said goodbye to Mom and Dad, the last in a long string of drawn out family partings. I waved to them about five times as I progressed through the line at security. Only a few tears showed up. I told Mom and Dad, “I’ll be back before you know it,” and Mom reminded me that when I do come back I’ll be an aunt. It’ll be a bigger, better family reunion than before. These are the things to think of. What not to think of is that this will be the last I see Mom and Dad for a while, and the last I see real blue sky for awhile.

I was stopped in the security line because the guards thought I had jelly jars in the bottom of my backpack. I watched a young guard pull out all of Mom’s fudge bars and chocolate peanut butter balls and unwrap thick layers of newspaper to find not jelly jars, but candles. I told him I was sorry, but I was going to China and needed something that smelled good.

Moments: An Orphanage in Xinxiang

Goodbye, China.

I have moved back to the States to be closer to my family and attend graduate school. I arrived home July first, and in August I'll begin studying for an MFA in Creative Writing at Texas State University.

My biggest excuse for the year-long blog silence is that blogspot is blocked by the Chinese government, so I was not able to access my blog from my apartment in China.

I'd like to post at least a small taste of year two in China, so over the next week or two I'll be going back through my journals and posting any little "moments" that seem interesting. Hope you enjoy them. Here's the first one:

May 2010

What a weekend. I wish I had more time now to say just what has happened. I am at the orphanage now, and will probably turn the light out soon. I’ve never seen anything look so much like Oliver Twist – worse, actually. The girls sleep in one open room, all beds pushed against the wall. We played “Uno” in this room just now, before the kids went to sleep. Paint flakes off the wall and falls onto the cement floor. Blankets and clothing are piled in one corner, and on the other side of the room are desks littered with picture books, textbooks, Chinese checkers, playing cards, and colored markers. Each student has his or her own desk, and inside they keep whatever treasures they own. When I told one little girl she could keep the “Uno” cards, she yelled out something in Chinese, jumped into the air once or twice, then marched to her little brown desk and threw the cards underneath the lid. I gave them to her because she has repeatedly grabbed my arm and shouted, “Pai! Pai!” In English, “Cards, cards.” I’ve learned at least one Chinese word here.

Earlier we sat on stools in a circle in the courtyard and sang songs. They wanted the other foreign teacher and I to sing a song, so we gave them “Amazing Grace.” Colored flags are strung over the courtyard. It was here I played badminton with a boy a few moments after we arrived. Badminton was the first task I found to keep myself busy with, so I kept at it until the little boy put his racket down and said he was tired.

The dining room is another white-washed, paint-chipped space. There are two long, narrow tables lined with stools. We ate corn porridge, steamed bread, and fried fish for dinner. The meat, I'm told, is a rare treat for the kids. The kids stand in a line at the dining room door and quote a Tang dynasty poem before every meal. Then everyone pulls their bowls and spoons from lockers. We’ve eaten steamed bread every day. The aunties roll it into little buns and season it. It supplements the bland gruel – porridge made from rice or corn or wheat. Sometimes we have a plate of vegetables, too – salted cucumber, salted radish, or salted eggs. Most everything is very salty.

I believe the only rooms I haven’t described are the bathrooms, the little room where the volunteers are sleeping, and the boys’ room. That’s the orphanage. Not a very large space for all the people that live here.

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.

I'm Back

...back in the States, and back on the blog. Sorry for the six month absence. Blogspot is blocked by the Chinese government, so when my internet proxy died back in February, I could no longer access Blogspot.

I'm returning to China in September to begin my second year of teaching. I think I've found a proxy that will allow me to keep posting when I get there.

I do still plan to post the last of my journal notes from the Southeast Asia trip -- Southeast Asia Journals, part 3, is coming soon. In the meantime, here are some brief thoughts I wrote during my second semester in China.

3.22.10
As the second semester flies past, I find my students more comfortable and more honest in their interactions with me. I can ask their opinions in class now, and get answers. We’ve talked about cloning, about whether or not the Chinese should be banned from eating dog meat, and whether, as Christopher McCandless said, “Happiness is real only when shared.” Last week we talked about inventions. Our textbook unit was titled, “I Like This Machine!” It gave a lot of outdated scientific discoveries as conversation topics and suggested I have students practice labeling the parts of a computer. Instead, I gave them play-dough, and asked, “What invention do you think will be created in the next twenty years?” They presented flying cars, UFO’s, time machines… my favorite was a machine that records our dreams at night, and transmits the memories onto a TV screen so that we can watch them when we wake up in the morning. Food, clothing, or mechanisms that would allow us to live forever were quite popular, or inventions that would free us from any kind of labor. A robot that does all our work for us. A machine that fixes our writing mistakes. Edible books that, when consumed, fill our minds with knowledge that we could otherwise only attain through reading. Many suggested a chewing gum that would allow us to never go hungry – chew a piece of gum and be filled.

I am enjoying the change of atmosphere. Last semester I felt restricted to simple, objective topics. This semester, class feels much more real.

“Life Forum” was an activity suggested to me by the other freshmen teachers: for large classes, split the students into groups and have each group choose one question to ask their teacher. Today, the first time I tried the activity, I told my students they could ask me anything – questions about my life, culture, travels… whatever subject they were interested in. Some groups asked the questions that I expected to hear: “Do you have a boyfriend?” “Do you like China?” “Tell us about your hometown.” Others asked questions that were more meaningful then I expected, especially since their class has a much lower level of English than others.

One group asked, “Why did you come to China?” Thirty students looked at me, waiting for my answer. This class has behavior issues, the worst of any of my classes. Usually I can’t get them to keep quiet, but the room was silent for this question.

“Well, I wanted to learn how to live in another culture,” I said. “I wanted to see what life was like here. And I wanted to become friends with college students like you.”

A few faces brightened -- the few that understood what I had said.

Then came the question I wasn’t ready for: a member of the last group stepped forward and asked, “Do you love us, and why?”

She had to repeat the question for me. She’d said it perfectly the first time, but I thought I had heard wrong. I hesitated to answer. Last semester, due to their low level, behavior issues, and large size, I dreaded their class more than any other. Now, they were waiting for me to offer some proof that I cared about them. I felt challenged – the tone of the question was unmistakable. These students had seen my worst moments of frustration and impatience, had watched me stumble through poorly crafted lesson plans. A part of me was not surprised that, when given the opportunity to ask me anything, they chose to ask me if I cared about them. They must have been wondering.

I stalled at first, tried to think. Somehow the first few words that came out sounded more like an apology. I told them I knew that sometimes I make mistakes, but that I do want to know my students, and that the more I know my students the more I love them. Their looks told me that either no one understood or no one was impressed by my answer.

“Yes,” I said quickly. “I love you.” But that was easy to say. They wanted me to give them a reason. I had to prove I was telling the truth.

“I don’t know all of you very well,” I said. “But I like to talk with you.” I still wasn’t giving them a reason. I finally gave in, and stated the simplest, most tangible reason that came to mind.

“Well yes… yes, I love you. I love you because you are much better students than I know I would ever have in America.” I didn’t have to wait to make sure they understood. The room erupted in applause. After class, four of them came to me, assured me they loved me too, and asked if they could visit me.

The Bribe
Parents, apparently, don’t need encouragement to be open with me. Last Monday, a student made her first appearance of the semester. Halfway through class, I noticed that she was limping. She came to me afterward and said she’d been missing class because her leg was hurt. She wanted to visit me, and catch up on all the material she’d missed. I wasn’t thrilled at the thought of a private tutoring lesson, but I figured she had a good reason, and I was happy to see that she wanted to catch up.

I scheduled a meeting with her, and just as we finished talking, another woman entered from the hallway. I saw the resemblance immediately. She carried bags of food. I introduced myself. She took my hand. She had better English than her daughter, and asked me to sit down at one of the desks and eat lunch with them. She offered me a spoon in place of the chopsticks, punctured a bag of yogurt with a straw, gave me tissues, and kept repeating that I should “Eat much.” I didn’t really want to eat. I knew it would be a mostly silent lunch. She insisted, and I thought maybe it was good for me to stay.

I sat sideways in the row in front of my student, reached over the back of the chairs and picked rice, tofu, and sprouts from the bags that sat on the built-in desk. The mother told me I was beautiful and young, that I could learn Chinese very quickly. I didn’t know how to respond, but to keep telling her she was kind, and to obey each time she pointed to a bag and said, “Eat this, eat this – very delicious.” Her daughter sat quietly the whole meal, and looked at her mother for help each time I asked a question.

When I convinced the mother that I was full, she insisted I take the food home with me. She gave me more napkins, took my empty yogurt, and tied each plastic bag.

The student will come to my room this Friday, and I will spend an hour reviewing the lessons and practicing pronunciation with her.

The Southeast Asia Journals: Part Two

1.15.10

There are moments when I begin to strongly dislike Asia. Just now, our bus stopped at a roadside café. The tourist busses always stop at these places to let the tourists use the bathroom, and lure them into buying expensive coffee, snacks, and souvenirs. When I walked down the dirt road to the waterfront behind the store, a woman in platform shoes tried to sell me the trinkets she carried on a tray. She was very loud.

“Where you from?” She said.

I told her, and she threw her head back and laughed.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Americans are not lucky. I don’t like Americans. They always angry.”

I didn’t look at her. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Actually I have American boyfriend.”

I wondered if she was drunk. “You have an American boyfriend?”

“Yeah, but I think I don’t want him.”

“Oh.” I looked at the ground and kept walking. She decided she would get nothing from me, I guess. She went across the street to a group of Dutch tourists and began to cry and say she could sell nothing.

The people in the tourist areas of Vietnam, and later in Cambodia, were more determined to sell to me than many of the street vendors I’ve encountered in China. In Vietnam especially, there were times when I was almost made lonely by the feeling that no one spoke to me unless he or she had some ulterior motive of getting something from me. In Cambodia, I talked with a taxi driver outside a ruin. I was waiting for my friends, and he was waiting for his passengers; he was lying in a hammock in the shade. I assumed he’d have no reason to sell to me – he had customers already, and I had clearly gotten transportation to the ruins. I thought maybe we could have normal conversation. He asked where I was from. Then he asked what I would do the next day. I told him it was my last day in Siem Reap – there could be no selling now, I thought. I wouldn’t be needing a driver the next day. I tried to ask him about his family. While I talked I sat on the bike I’d rented to ride out to the ruin.

“Why you ride bike?” He said.

I knew why he was asking. “It’s more fun, it’s good exercise, and… it’s cheaper.”

He laughed. “You can’t take your money when you die.”

I felt angry at the assumption, at the accusation, that I was stingy. “The Americans you meet here," I said, "they don’t want to spend money do they?”

He nodded.

I had to prove to him now that I had a good reason for not spending money. “Well, I don’t have a lot of money.”

He smiled lazily. I knew he believed me no more than I believed he didn’t want money from me.

“You should take a car,” he said. “Bikes take too long.”

“I’ve been on a long trip,” I said. “I don’t have much money left.”

“You have money in a bank account?”

“Yes, but not very much.” But I sensed that having money in a bank account was enough to prove to him that I was rich. He kept trying to tell me to hire a driver instead of taking the bikes. Oddly enough, he invited me to come to dinner at his house, too, but he’d dogged me about the bikes so much I didn’t feel I could trust him. Up to that point, I’d been offered nothing by a Cambodian that was free. I’d talked to him long enough to think that he wouldn’t be an exception. Maybe I was wrong. His passengers came eventually, and he rolled up his hammock and went to his car. My friends and I got back on our bikes to ride to the next ruin down the road.

1.17.10

I hit hurdles today. I just now read a five-day-old e-mail from a Vietnamese contact of Benny’s, telling me that the government will not let foreigners go to the Cheo Reo village, the home of Lap’s sisters. The contact said we can try to meet the sisters in a town outside the village. Even worse – she told me that the translator I’d asked for would not be able to come with me. I tried to call the contact. All this time I’d been thinking she was just a friend of Benny’s, someone who wanted to help us. When I finally got through to her, I realized I had misunderstood the situation. She was a travel agent, ready to book us a hotel, sell us a tour.

We were on our last day in Hoi An at this point, and had that morning decided we would leave for Pleiku the next day, thinking we would meet a driver and translator there and go together to the village to see Lap’s sisters. Now, we found we could not go to the village, and that we didn’t have a translator. Neither did we have any information in our guidebook about Pleiku or the Central Highlands. As I sat at the computer reading the five-day-old e-mail, it was already approaching evening. I could e-mail another contact of Benny’s, someone who could be our translator, but who knows how soon he would respond. Our travel group had to decide: either wait in Hoi An until I secured a new translator, or go straight to Pleiku in the morning and hope that things would work out there.

The other contact Benny had given us was Mr. Ng – I’d e-mailed him once before and been frightened by his response, and by Benny’s warning that Mr. Ng would try to get an extra cut from any meals we ate while going around with him. Here’s a sample of one e-mail I’d received from Ng:

Tue, 5thJan 2010

hello ANNE and your friends

thanks for reply me soon. i am understanding all whats you wrote in this email .

yes, you can take a bus from HUE to PLEIKU . pleasecall or email me whenever you arrive in PLEIKU bus station , i will pick you up from there to the hotels , would you like i help you to booking the rooms … about a van , a driver , a guide ? ! don't mind nothing ! i will help you like i have ever did with BENNY before [ i have read your email , that you sent to BENNY ] .

you asked me that; you need for a permit ! no , you not necessary to use it , don't worry nothing

about ! not problem nothing for travel in the highlands [ i knew what i do by myself for help you ]...

...i will provide more information for you when we meet each other . so, please tell me where would you like to traveling and how many days you can stay in the highlands ?!

please give me your plans in advance so that i can charge for you

long journey plese show me and we can continue ........wherever........

ANNE- remember: give me your plans in exactly .plese reply soon. sincerely.

NG'S TOURS

The exclamation marks and broken English told me I shoudn't hire this man. But now we needed a translator, and he seemed to know where the sisters were, and how to get to them. He lived in Pleiku. I e-mailed him again, asking for his price, and my companions and I took a bus to Pleiku the next morning. I hoped that by the time I arrived in the city I would have a reply.

1.18.10

We are in a cramped van headed for Pleiku. The city is not mentioned in Joe’s guidebook. We have no maps and little information, only a few numbers and addresses of some places we might stay.

The Joes have decided they will not try to see the sisters, so if I do get a translator, only Rachel and I will go. If I am to go, I really must hear from Mr. Ng today, or find a translator at some tour agency in Pleiku. I need to be able to visit the sisters tomorrow or the day after. I don’t think my companions will be willing to stay in Pleiku any longer than that. I’m praying that I’ll find an e-mail and a fair price from Mr. Ng on the computer tonight. I think the town where I may meet the sisters, Phu Bon, is about an hour from Pleiku.

Our van slowed moments ago to pick up more passengers. There is one empty seat now. The van slowed again a little later and passengers leaned out the open door to spit onto the road. I was happy that they weren’t spitting inside the van, but then the man in front of Rachel leaned over and dropped a wad somewhere by his feet.

There is a box under my seat, so I don’t have much space. Vietnamese talk radio blares. Nine hours to go. We will arrive in the city after dark, probably late.

...I was wrong – there were two empty seats left, one was a folded metal chair in the aisle. The van just stopped again, and now there are no empty seats. The new passengers brought a big yellow sandbag, and the driver placed it under the seat in front me; my feet are wedged between the box and bag now.

...We’ve been driving on for four or five hours. We just picked up another person – I didn’t think there were any seats left, and maybe there weren’t. He was holding a puppy in his arms when he climbed in. Now there are twenty people in our van, the puppy, and two ducks we’ve discovered are packed behind our seat in the very back. The ducks have been quacking for the last twenty minutes at least. We’ve had two bathroom breaks – just pulled to a stop on the side of the road each time. I sat still for the first one, to observe. The men got out first. One barely took two steps from the van before he unzipped his pants. The women hung back for awhile, then got out all together and walked to some bushes a little further away.

At the second stop I would’ve gone, but there were no bushes. The men went, and then one woman climbed out of the van. I watched her carefully to see where she’d go. She walked a good distance away, but then dropped into the grass right by the road, barely covered. Rachel and I looked at each other, and Rachel said, “That’s not gonna happen.” Neither of us have gone since we left the bus station. I’m holding out for big, leafy bushes.

...Twenty-one people in the van now. I can’t make out from back here what everyone is sitting on…and not everyone is sitting. A bus employee is standing on some unseen ground. I can see his head popping up as if from a box of crayons – a little higher than all the rest.

We got to Pleiku at nine forty-five and booked the first hotel we entered. I found when I got up the next morning that Gia Lai Tours, the only Central Highlands tour company we’d seen mentioned in a guidebook, was across the street. I was anxious that morning. A woman at the tour company spoke good English. She said I could hire a translator for thirty dollars, but thought the only way I could see the Siu sisters is if I asked them to come to Pleiku. I left to find an internet café. I wanted to see if Mr. Ng had written me.

We didn’t find an internet café until late morning. Mr. Ng had written: he offered a van, driver, and translator for ninety U.S. dollars. Too much for me.

I went back to the tourist company and this time had quite a different experience. The lights were off, and one man sat at a table inside. He was dark-skinned. He reminded me of Lap, so I thought he might be Jarai. I found out later that he was. I didn’t think he would speak English, but when I told him I had spoken with a lady there that morning, he said perfectly, “What was the name of the woman? Everyone was still out to lunch. Rachel and the Joes were with me now. We sat down at the table, and I started to explain to the man what I wanted. Workers began to trickle in, still wearing their facemasks and motorbike gloves. Just as I began to explain, a woman spoke to him in Vietnamese. She didn’t speak English, but she had been there when I first asked for help that morning. She was explaining for me. I nudged Lap’s pictures closer to the man, and he began to look at them. A half-hour or more of conversation followed, a half-hour in which I felt questioned and tested. He was Jarai himself, which I hoped would cause him to sympathize with me. I showed him the pictures and the dictionary, I told him Lap hadn’t seen his sisters in fourteen years. I asked him if I could hire a translator from the travel agency, and go to Phu Bon by public bus.

He first asked why I could not simply ask the sisters to come to Pleiku. I struggled to give him a direct answer. Saying that I didn’t want to be rude to the sisters wouldn’t convince him, I knew. I tried to tell him that I didn’t think it would be right to ask them to come two hours by bus the very next day.

“They don’t know me,” I said. “I don’t want to be rude – I think it would be easier for me to go to them.”

But he repeatedly suggested that I ask them to come to Pleiku. He said that I could pay their bus fares.

Maybe that would work, I thought. But certainly it wasn’t ideal. Up to this point, I hadn’t personally contacted them at all, though Lap said they were expecting me. They would have no warning.

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” said the man. “So, in Vietnam, do as the Vietnamese do.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“We have laws. I think it would be better for you to ask them to come to Pleiku.”

“Is there a public bus I can take to Phu Bon?”

“If I authorize my translator to go with you there, and you go into the village, who has the problem? I have the problem.”

I had thought this was why he didn’t want me to go there – he was afraid I’d try to do something underhanded.

“But I won’t go to the village,” I said. “I will stay in the town. I just want to see Lap’s sisters.”

He was talking with just three of us now, Joe M, Rachel, and I. He asked us to move to a small table, where he served us tea. He began to ask us simple questions, as if he’d entirely forgotten my request for a translator. Where were we from? What were our jobs? Where in Vietnam would we go next? He gave us bus information to Dalat, and a small map of Pleiku. He answered our questions about the city and joked with us.

I wanted an answer from him. I was beginning to see that I may not be able to go to Phu Bon. Fine. I was willing to let him call the sisters and arrange for them to go to Pleiku. I tried to express that. But still he evaded giving me a clear answer. He said that the government had laws concerning his tourist agency, that he had a tour program he was to abide by. He did not know if he could lend a translator for something so personal.

He kept taking calls on his cell phone, and I wondered if he was trying to get some sort of permission. Sometimes he would be off the phone, and still there was a lull in the conversation. Then he’d ask more personal questions or questions about our trip. Sometimes he’d return to the issue at hand, as if he’d suddenly thought of a new question. How did I know Lap? What was my purpose in seeing the sisters? Finally he said, “I’m trying to think of what I should do, whether or not I can help you.”

I could see that he was. During all his slow questioning and small talk, I knew he was mulling over the situation, and sizing me up.

I never could get an answer from him. He took H’Blu’s number, and mine, and told me he’d call me or come to my hotel. At first he didn’t even want my phone number…said it’d be easier to discuss with me in person. I should have seen then that he wasn’t going to do anything about my request, but I was hopeful. I made sure he would tell the sisters that I’d pay their bus fare, and as I left I asked him when I could expect to hear back from him. I think he said that he’d call them, and then consider it, and after that talk to me. He patted my back and said, “Please understand. As much as I can, I will help you.”

I went back to the hotel. Mr. Ng wanted an answer to his ninety-dollar offer. He wanted to come to the hotel and work out a deal with me in person. But I wanted to hear from the Jarai man at Gia Lai Tours before I saw Mr. Ng. I thought maybe the Jarai man was more trustworthy. I waited at my hotel for the next hour and a half, but he never came or called. I told myself I’d wait until four o’clock. At one minute after, I called Mr. Ng. I told him I would meet with him. I didn’t even have to tell him which hotel I was staying in – somehow he already knew.

He puttered up thirty minutes later on his motorbike, and when he took his helmet off I was surprised to see so many grays. He wore aviator sunglasses. We sat down in the lobby, and I asked him how he knew which hotel to come to. He slapped my shoulder, and said, “Small town!” His eyes got wide and he laughed – he gave that manner of response to almost all my questions. He liked dramatic facial expressions, shrill tones, and laughter. He often said to me, “You don’t mind nothing!” or “It’s easy,” and he’d spread his arms out every time as if he were giving a sermon.

He wouldn’t go lower than eighty. At one point in our conversation, I was ready to give up.

“Mr Ng, I don’t think I can pay you more than sixty dollars.”

But he wasn’t coming down. I found hope when he started giving me alternatives. He could bring the sisters to Pleiku, he said, and then I’d pay him to translate. Not quite what I wanted, but something.

He knew he was my best option – who else knew where the village was, and what the Siu sisters looked like? And even though his English was difficult to understand, it was much better than what I would likely find around town. He kept telling me how easy it would be for him to take me. He knew the sisters. He had taken Benny to the sisters.

“If only one person come, I can even take you to the village,” he said. “I know that village – no police there.”

“You could take me inside?” I said.

“For sure! If one person, I take on my motorbike into the village. No police. It’s not legal…” He shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

“You could take me to Phu Bon on your motorbike?” I said.

“If just you, yes.”

“How much?”

The laughing stopped, the smile disappeared. He became motionless and stared out to the street. He did that sometimes when I asked him a question, or if he needed to think of the right words to use. Finally he said, “If only you, on my motorbike…thirty dollars.”

It was the lowest price I’d heard for anything. But should I go alone? He’d already told me the town was two hours away, not one hour like I’d thought.

“What if my friend comes?”

“It’s easy! I get my son to drive another motorbike. You pay sixty dollars for two motorbike.” He thought again. “If you take two motorbike, I charge you fifty-five.”

I told him I’d think it over, but I already knew what I would do. Even if I paid sixty dollars for one of the guys to go with me, I’d be paying less than for a van and driver. I ran it by my companions later and we settled on it – I’d go with Mr. Ng and Joe M would come with me. I’ve no doubt I would have been fine by myself. I wasn’t afraid of going alone, but some part of my mind thought it was smarter to take Joe with me. I knew that once my mom heard the story she’d be happy to know that I hadn’t gone alone.

Mr. Ng and not his son, but his nephew, came to the hotel the next morning and drove me and Joe the two hours to Phu Bon.

(Video from the back of the motorbike)