More than just a host-family in VN!

So apparently I have some real family here too! (Though I should say my wonderful host-family is feeling more and more family-like all the time.) I actually knew this before coming but was just recently introduced to these relatives who live in Ha Noi.

The relation goes something like this: my mother's brother, Steve, married Therese, who is a Vietnamese woman born in Ha Noi. They met in France and continue to live there today. Therese's brother, Khang, also born in Ha Noi, now lives in Luxembourg and has a job that involves traveling to Viet Nam quite regularly. So last Friday Khang invited me to have dinner with him and his (and Therese's) cousin, Khoi, and his family. We had a lovely time and I hope to be in touch with them more in the future!

Khang also showed be around the neighbourhood where his family once owned most of the property. There home is long gone (following thier departure from Ha Noi around 1954), but we walked through an alley-way under part a new house that is now there, and he pointed out some still visible tiles where the floor of their kitchen once was! Wild.

Special thanks to Steve and Therese for making this new connection happen for me!

From left: Ly (Khoi's niece), Van Anh (olderst daugter), Khang, Khoi, me, Van (Khoi's wife)

Minh Chau (3rd daughter) and her father switch places behind the camera

JustPeace in Nepal

Between October 23 and 31, I traveled from Ha Noi to Katmandu, Nepal and back in order to attend a workshop put on by the Centre for JustPeace in Asia (http://www.daga.org/justpeace/index.html), a regional civil society organization. The group as basically a loose coalition of NGOs based in about 10 Southeast Asian countries. Representatives of these NGOs gather semi-regularly to share strategy, show solidarity and generally network. The theme of the 2008 workshop was “Our Stories, Our Challenges” and it focused on finding common ground through personal stories, moving from there to identify common challenges, which in turn led to discussion of future collaboration for the common goal of a truly just peace in SE Asia.

Half of my SALT assignment is working as an administrative assistant to Max Ediger, a long-term MCCer who has lived in SE Asia for the past 30 years. (And who incidentally is an old Bethel friend of my dad’s. It’s a small Mennonite world, as usual.) He was one of the main organizers behind the workshop, and so I got to tag along as the official note-taker and future report-writer (which I am now in the midst of) and also had the opportunity to take part in group work and discussion. SALT continues to be full of wonders!

Along with enjoying the beauty of the Katmandu valley as featured below:

The view from the lovey mountainside guesthouse where we stayed and held meetings

Lots of gorgeous Buddhist and Hindu temples everywhere

Me, Max and Co Bay (one of the national MCC staff) at the top of a very foggy mountain

…The workshop participants also spent a lot of time listening, presenting, discussing and, in the case of the photo below, singing in this conference room:


For me, the workshop was all together terribly interesting, rich and challenging. It was such a new and fascinating experience to be interacting with “primary sources” concerning peace and justice work. Not a professor or North American service worker coming home to share about their experience, but people who have actually experienced torture and been refugees and child soldiers, and yet they go on living and have a personal investment in working for peace for their people. The whole week was a quite a jumble of intense learning, which I could not lay out nicely for you even if I tried. So I will offer you some select bits of journaling…

29 October
…Bobby from Mindanao, Philippines talked about this square red, green and yellow scarf that his ethnic group has traditionally used for a variety purposes. It is usually worn around the head and then can be removed to shelter it owner from rain or sun, to use as a rug on which to offer Muslim daily prayers or to bind the wound of a comrade. Bobby was explaining different ways it can be wrapped around the head, but as he was attempting to demonstrate, he had to admit that he did not remember how to do any of the wraps besides the basic one because this tradition has been all but been replaced by the wearing of cowboy-style hats. Point about the loss of traditional cultures well made. So this was making me think about how frustrating it is that even those who desire to preserve “minority” wisdom are often so estranged from it that they cannot follow its teaching even though they want to. It is lost.
And I was thinking about this in context of the conference – how the “workshop style” is based on so many “majority” assumptions: Western intellectual style (critical, linier, systematic thinking), the masculine norm (the assumption that participants are free to leave home and family in order to attend), wealth (money necessary for international travel), citizenship status necessary for international travel (which many indigenous groups do not have), proficiency in English (the common language here, though it is no Asian person’s native language)... and I was thinking about how rotten it is that I can not even think of other ways to go about this kind of event. I was thinking about it especially in the context of the marginalization of the feminine in such a form but how the “alternative” wisdom is just not there, or at least not accessible to me. And so, like Bobby and his scarf, even though I want to use my tradition, it is lost to me. How can we ever recover these things once they slip unpassed though a couple of generations??…

30 October
…My conversation with Lek (see Lek and me in photo) and Saw Mort and the week altogether has been making has been making me think about how important it is not the get stuck in theory… which I get the
feeling (at least for me) might be a tempting thing to do. Like it seems easier to critique and lament the loss of “other” cultures as the West moves in with other Western folks, as opposed to actually talking with the “others” and having to realize the complexity of the issues that comes when one is working with multiple perspectives… especially when you are the majority person attempting to analyze the situation of the minority.
I feel like it’s easy to self-aggrandize, for example, believing that Western culture has the power to destroy Eastern culture. So even as I am being saddened and outraged by this situation of domination, I am also able to feel comfort in the power of my own culture. However, this self-important delusion is destroyed when I interact with people like Saw Mort and Lek who say actually, we like some parts of your culture and want to takes these parts on and work for our own goals; in claiming these, they reject the notion that Western culture is being imposed upon them. Whoo. So even as I’m dis-ing theory, there’s a load of it! Good to have both theory and practice, I suppose…

Plenty of thoughts bouncing around and contradicting each other nicely. I guess that’s what happens when you’re learning a million new things everyday! Seriously, I wish I could just take a break sometimes. So it goes. I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity to attend this workshop, and I hope the new ideas and feelings it stirred up with continue to stew and germinate... who know what will come out in the end… whenever that is!