Co-Existing with Chameleon Cousins

 

Okay, I know I should be editing the employee manual for Habitat Vietnam and learning logistics for the Carter Work Project, but I can’t seem to focus on anything but the lizard on my coffee table.  Since we will be hosting 800-1000 volunteers during the five day build in Ke Sat, and I have only a few days to digest material on volunteer coordination, I need to over-come my newly emerging reptile phobia.  Yeah, yeah, I’m not a full-blown phobic, but I clearly need to co-exist more comfortably with my chameleon cousins. 

Several people have pointed out my failure to blog regularly since arriving in Vietnam.  And, yes, clearly this is an issue worth writing about—so you have it, folks, a blog in the making.  At least, I pray to God, it turns out that way.

So the question remains—why have I not been doing this?  And the answer is a big, fat “I don’t know.”  How’s that for insight!  Brilliant observations about the beauty of Asia—not from this chick.  No sir –y—-so it turns out to be a blog about nothing—a non-blog, if you will.  I just don’t feel I have a damn thing to say—a problem I alluded to in my last post.

It makes no sense, really.  I listen to chatter below– in the alley, outside the only micro-brewery in all of Ho Chi Minh City.  I don’t understand a word of it.  I hear children playing, squealing in the street—a motor bike approaching.

Mostly though I think about my dogs and how much I miss them.  I think about how I don’t feel well.  I’ve been nauseous for days.

I AM glad that S. has returned from Indonesia.  She’d been in Java for disaster response training.  Now she doesn’t have to take any more side trips until we return to the states next month—only two weeks from now, actually.

In the mean time, not knowing what else to do, I’m making myself type whatever occurs to me.  Clearly that does not a blog make.  Sorry—————To think they pay me to teach writing.  Scary—————-

I chewed pepto-bismol to settle my stomach.  I’m willing to share.

I haven’t blogged in over a week—not because I have nothing to say—but because I have too much.  I’m overwhelmed with stimuli.  Each time I try to write what comes out sounds silly or clichéd.  I’ve drafted but gotten nowhere—several starts.  Perhaps, I’ll post the pieces—these nudges toward nothing I can name.  I’d also like to post a few of the photos I’ve taken—several of Saigon—many of my trip South to volunteer with a building project for the poor–a good hour and a half drive into the country from Rach Gia.  It seems I’m struck most by the faces of children—the eyes of cows and water buffalo grazing.

We carried bricks from where we parked, to the building site—balancing on narrow paths through the rice patties—shouldering heavy sacks—so god-awful hot we sauna-ed even in the shade.

Sara seems stressed—works ridiculous hours—well into evening—early mornings—weekends.  I don’t see how she does it all—so many people, places, programs—details out the ass—the bulging bigness of it all.  It’s clear why she rarely shares with friends or family what she does.  You have to live it to understand, to appreciate the enormity of the task.

Like Sara, I have trouble pronouncing people’s names—so many sound the same to me–probably because my ear is unaccustomed to the tones—so many combinations of vowels—the words for watermelon and several other fruits differing only in the dipping, the sinking of the sound—or rising at the end.  I used to think I had an ear for languages but not anymore.  I can do European sounds—but the tones of Asia—it’s like I’m deaf to them—can’t hold them in my head.  I’m muted by a Babel I can’t untangle for the life of me.

I know next to nothing about Vietnam.  Only that I am pleased to be here—curious, eager to learn more, saddened by my own ignorance of the place.  I do know, though, that I feel a stirring in me, a creative impulse to make—what?  I don’t yet know—only aware that it’s there, nosing again my consciousness, like a cat marking territory, putting down its scent.

And it rains here every day this time of year, sunny in the morning with clouds thickening toward afternoon—the air heavy even in the early hours—first hints of light just after five, full sun by six.  It’s just now begun to drizzle again, the rainy season soon a downpour. 

I try to go out in the mornings when it’s still dry, before the heat intensifies, boils over into wet, one that doesn’t help to tame humidity.  It sucks all oxygen from the air well into evening, when I hear our landlady pull the garage door down, signaling a close of shop—a metal rattle rumbling our small stack of flats.

So, today I’ve encountered my first unscrupulous cab driver, certainly my first in Vietnam, probably my first ever, but then again I’ve not taken a lot of taxi’s anywhere in the world, and when I have, I haven’t tried to use a currency I can’t get my head around.  Am I dumb about this whole “dong” deal, dumb about taxis or just damn dumb about both?  Whichever way you have it, it doesn’t bode well for my future in Vietnam, as getting beyond my difficulty with the dong and learning to read meters and deal with drivers are essential to my success in Saigon.  I’ve got to figure out foreign currencies and make my way around exchange rates, or I’ll be stuck in the States and bored beyond belief—not to mention far from S. and lonely as hell.  Not that the US is by definition dull, but once you’ve encountered Ben Thanh Market, Macy’s may amount to little more than tedium and pretension.  But I DO know how to get home from Fayette Mall.   I suppose there’s something to be said for that.

At any rate, S. left for Hanoi this morning, and I’m on my own, trying to make it alone in a brave new world, a country whose currency confuses me, a place whose language I can’t comprehend.  Despite these handicaps, I decided to walk across District One this morning to shop in a market I wasn’t sure I could find and spend money I wasn’t confident I could count.  But–Ben Thanh Market did not disappoint, thrilled and enthralled me, sickened and saddened me—beaded bracelets bedazzled despite dim light, suffocating humidity–fresh fish killed in open stalls, eels bucket hopping, hoping to save themselves, I suppose, slithering on sidewalks to escape being butchered on the spot–the aroma of newly baked bread, the fragrance of freshly picked flowers, the stench of ocean creatures not satisfied to be sea food.  I bought only shoes—two pair—because clearly a closet full in never enough.

Why must colonial, turned corporate corruption make Asia the scapegoat of the West?  Am I guilty as an East India Company of the past, a WalMart, Nike, Gap of the present?  One University of Kentucky student recently wrote “Starbucks is the Devil!”   Is it the coffee company itself or the capitalist urge to make big “bucks,” we should blame?  Whether we count dollars or dong, are we all too driven to make it home from Fayette Mall or Ben Thanh Market no matter the cost?  Starbucks may be bad, but have we sold our very souls to devil?   

(More details on my driver tomorrow.)

It was one hell of a trip, but the arrival– truly divine!  Goodness, where to begin!  It seems I should be writing something genuinely profound, when in fact I’m feeling fairly speechless. 

But let me start by saying the travel got underway routinely.  At the Lexington airport I ran into Abby Tripp, a colleague from the UK Writing Program on her way to New York.  The trip to Atlanta proved uneventful.  I easily made my connecting flight to Tokyo–a mind-numbing 14 hours in the air.  However, upon landing in Japan my good fortune turned a little less lucky.

We had been warned in flight that Japanese quarantine officials would enter our plane to collect health documents we had all been required to complete.  What Delta flight attendants failed to mention, however, was that medical personnel would board in full HAS-MAT gear–respirators and all–take the temperatures of the over 300 occupants of our plane via a thermal scanner  and hold us at the gate until they felt certain EVERYONE was healthy.  Of course, the one suspect sicky sat DIRECTLY behind me, so our section was forced to remain on the plane for a good hour and a half after arrival at the gate.  Not surprisingly, I missed my flight to Vietnam and was forced to spend the night at a Tokyo Holiday Inn, which might have felt fun, had I not been so pissed and cursed with the most blinding of headaches.  Apparently SARS and Bird Flu affected the Japanese psyche more profoundly than Westerners might have imagined–flu-fucked, if you will.

To make along story, a little less lengthy, I caught a flight to Ho Chi Minh City, the following morning and am safely settled in our Saigon apartment.   To say it’s amazing to see S. again, sounds cliched, not to mention under-stated, but, God, I finally feel at home–safe–not so much in Saigon–but in the arms of the one I cherish–divinity, bliss, the biggest and most profound of blessings.  I breathe in, breath out, exhaling  two months’ separation, taking  in again the woman I adore!

Sadly I’ve neglected this blog in the past week, as I’ve prepared to leave on the journey the blog itself describes–so much to do, so little time.  I leave for Vietnam the day after tomorrow,  can barely believe my departure is imminent.  The excitement is killing me–a cliched description, I know, but sometimes a cliche is a cliche for a reason.  It works.

What my metaphor may lack, the experience  more than makes up for–even the anticipation itself leaves me breathless.  Goodness, I hope Vietnam doesn’t disappoint.  Wouldn’t that be sad!  However, the quality of my Vietnamese immersion matters less than my reunion with S.  My longing for her suffocates, so much so that along with the anticipation, my breathlessness doubles.  My lungs  refuse to cooperate with my heart.  I’m nearing  coronary collapse–bereft without my Baby!

Practically speaking, I’ve spent recent days packing and grading–failing still to get my luggage  below the fifty pound limit.  I can’t sacrifice a single sock at this point.  Every item, each ounce is needed.  The airline may charge me for overage, but at least I’ll successfully submit my grades by tomorrow.  That final fact comforts me, despite the excess weight I’ll be lugging around the world–an Herculean effort, no doubt, but not nearly as draining as longing for the one I love.