work: part 2

So as promised (a long time ago), this blog will explain my work at Action for the City (www.vidothi.org/en). Yay! Action for the City is a Vietnamese NGO which I usually describe as doing "sustainable urban development" or something of the sort. Its mission is this:

To improve the quality of life for all in Hanoi and other cities by increasing community participation, bringing common voices to policy-makers, and using a variety of creative forms and media as tools for social change.

It works at this mission by focusing in three areas:

(1) Environment: We work to slow down the process of climate change and create a healthy environment for all. (2) Social development: We work to reduce urban poverty, promote equal access to social services and advocate for disadvantaged groups. (3) Creative urban living: We work to bring out and celebrate the creativity of individuals and communities for a sustainable lifestyle.

In practice, these goals take the form of projects like working with local farmers to produce and market organic vegetables (healthier for the farmers, consumer and environment and also increases income); organizing university students to evaluate the food safety at street food shops and spreading the information among their peers (though they're delicious, food poisoning from such places is quite a problem); holding workshops for local offices about "greening your workplace" led by foreign specialists on behaviour change; organizing a Green Transport Day on which people are encouraged to go by foot, bike or bus, as opposed to private motor vehicle; and running a massage clinic that employs visually impaired massage therapists.

My work with ACF for the past five months has been focused on the last two of these projects. For Green Transport Day, I have worked at creating the structure for the event and putting together invitations and educational material for the NGO offices that we are targeting this year. The day originally was scheduled in May, but has now been changed to September 22 in order to coincide with World Carfree Day. So I won't be here to see it happen. As usual, things change a lot and do not turn out the way I had expected. Oh well.

Me at the AFC office

The concept map for Green Transport Day, which I am attempting
to turn into a proposal for a potential partner organization

I also teach English to three recently trained massage therapists at Just Massage (www.justmassage.org.vn), which was opened by AFC in 2007. I meet with the students, Miss Hoa, Mr. Dan and Mr. Thang, and also Miss Dung, an older therapist who speaks more English and helps me teach, once or twice a week for 2.5 hour classes. Here, we practice the English they need to know in order to serve foreign customers (about half their clientele)--things like "please take off your clothes!" and other such helpful phrases--and work on basic vocabulary like introducing oneself, common adjectives and talking about dates, times, etc.

From left: Miss Dung, me, Miss Hoa and Mr. Thang. Mr. Dan was absent for this photo op

They are eager to learn and enjoy encouraging each other and laughing together. "Septovember," "twelveteen" and learning to sing and dance the "Hokey Hokey" provided some recent laughter breaks. Often I quite forget that they can't see, or not very much anyway. Like when we were learning colours, I asked them to name one thing for each colour and then they'd learn a new noun as well as the colour word (e.g., a tomato is red). Later I realized, Oh! Maybe they've never seen the colour of a tomato! Oh dear. But they didn't have much trouble coming up with items for each colour and didn't act offended by the task... so I hope it was ok. Mostly, there is just less pointing and pantomiming than in one of my usual Vietnamese conversation and more touching, like having them feel the proper index-finger-extended-skyward Hokey Pokey hands.

Perhaps because they are visually impaired, because they are massage therapists, because they are Vietnamese or a combination of all the above, they are very touchy in general. Which is great for me really, as I dearly miss my hugging buddies at home and sometime feel chronically under-touched. So I usually get felt up (just by the girls!) at some point during class. There are comments on what I'm wearing--Oh, what a beautiful skirt! Is it from America? Or Ah, today you wear pants like ours! (linen drawstrings)--they can't believe my hair is not permed, and recently we discovered belly buttons, which I explained in English by tapping the buttons on their polo shirts. Class almost always ends up being fun, even when I arrive grumpy about having to interact with people first thing in the morning. I usually leave with a smile.

So perhaps I'm making AFC sound like a really great organization... and (in my humble opinion) it really is. I am continually amazed by the inspired, committed, brilliant half-dozen young Vietnamese women who make up the regular staff. There are also local and foreign volunteers like myself who pass in and out regularly.

Staff pic from this fall (before I started). The guy... I don't really know who he is.
Sometimes I see him around, but his work remains a mystery.

From my perspective anyway, this group accomplishes that oft talked about but uncommonly achieved goal of integrating knowledge gained elsewhere into a local context in a healthy way. Most of the staff have studied abroad in Western countries and somehow have avoided acquiring that unfortunate disdain for their own culture, which is often the result of such education. And now have returned to their home community because they love it and desire to make it a more wonderful place to live.

Observing them and noticing how naturally their actions seem to flow from this place of love and understanding is inspiring. And makes me realize that, at least for a long long time, that will never be me in Viet Nam. Or in most other places around the world either.

I like my work, at MCC and AFC, and feel like it's generally helpful, but I always feel I am a guest, just passing through. Which is guess is the nature of a SALT term, as it's only one year. But with almost all the foreigners I know here, there is always this feeling when you're forming a relationship that, sooner or later, one of you is going to leave, and it will probably be sooner. Even for people who have lived in the region for many years, there's always this time in the future when you'll go back "home," a stash of your possessions stored at your "permanent address" or in your parents' basement, which you'll be ruined with when you return to your "real life."

There's something that feels unsustainable about such a lifestyle. But also... I'm learning so much. I feel I'm becoming a better person for my experience here. I begin to understand how people don't want to stop once they get started on traveling and living abroad. But do I catch a whiff of addiction? Always looking for your next hit of challenge, the kind that rocks the foundations of your beliefs. There's something exhilarating about it, like being caught exposed in a thunderstorm. Am I living vicariously off the thrill off others' "exotic" lifestyle? But is it also selfish to just "take" the experience and learning the I gleaned here back to my home community for its own enrichment?

These questions of HOME and ROOTEDNESS and WOULD I EVER WANT TO DO THIS AGAIN? tug at my mind as I take part in this ultra-mobile globalized lifestyle, available only to the small and highly privileged percent of the world's population I belong to.

So I guess this turned into a post about more than just my work. But my favourite times in life are when all parts of my life seem interconnected, each enhancing all the others. During the good moments anyway, I do feel I am living that way here.