More about walking and knowing

[Tried to post this on Friday, then was out all day Saturday, so here it is, the belated story from Thursday]

Yesterday’s walk was all about the comforts of reiteration, the knowledge that comes from re-inscribing. I wanted to walk the same path I knew, so I could say to myself: there’s where the men were loading the corn onto the pony that the women had gathered; there’s where the the skirts of the Flower Hmong were drying on the wall, semi-circles of brilliance against mud and dust; there’s where the children ran out of the house to say hello. For a few moments I want to not learn something new; I want to already know something. This got me thinking about my relationship with learning and knowledge.

In academia we say we like to learn, to experience a new field or an unread book as an open prairie. An epistemelogical song of the lark moment. But, really, it’s temporary, or, rather, artificial, contrived. It’s like a carnival ride that simulates tumbling and falling and not knowing up from down, but we never genuinely lose our bearings. In a sense we come to know new things because we already know them, never truly losing our place on the map of the known and knowing world. We have access to powerful uses of language, unlimited resources, and people around us who know why we ask the questions we do. This, on the other hand, is real not knowing, and I am not used to it.

I did not know; I have not known; I shall not have know; I will not know. That’s my condition in all its conjugational permutations. I did not know, for example, when I got back from my walk yesterday, hot, and red as a tomato, how long the power had been off and when it would come back on. I deduced it was off in the whole town because the squawking loud speaker was silent. I tried to ask someone in the hotel, but couldn’t formulate the right question or understand the responses. So I just hosed myself off with cool water, closed my windows and curtains against the afternoon sun, and lay down on the bed to wait. As it got closer to sundown, panic crept in. What would happen when there was no more light even to read? How would food be cooked for dinner? Can I just go to bed in this stifling room at 7:30 and hope to be awakened in the middle of the night with the lights and the a/c coming back on? It’s not the heat, or even the palpable humidity, it’s the close darkness of aloneness and not-knowing. So, the sun went behind the mountain, and dusk came to the town, and the streets filled with families. The sun off my balcony, I pulled out my chair, got a Bia Ha Noi from the now sweating cooler downstairs and watched everyone adjust. Dinner came later tonight, the ladies who walk the circuit around town in their plastic sandals doing those wacky floppy Vietnamese exercise arm movements came out a little later. Everyone adjusts to what is there and what is not. It’s possible to be and to not know, but it feels like somersaulting through space.

The walk that was supposed to be about reiteration turned out not to be. A dog that didn’t chase me the first time, did this time; they are about to kill a pig up ahead and I have to turn back

Walking with myself

Today is the 4th day (is that all??!) that I've been on my own here, figuring out where and what to eat, eating alone, dong managing (that's the currency, but, oh, I never tire of the puerile jokes), filling the hours of the day, and holding back tides of anxiety that make me feel like I should always be doing something more or other than I am. One voice in my head says, you should be out there, in there, EXPERIENCING stuff all the time. But the other voice says, no, that's the tourist impulse, to collect and fetishize experience, to skim across and sail around the daily rhythms of life in a place that is, after all, to the people who live here, ordinary, home. There's no avoiding the sensation and the fact of being strange, of course, and I can't make myself at home here, but I can try, well, to live deliberately, to be both self-reliant and alert to the moments of connection that come unbidden and pass so quickly. But unlike Thoreau, I want right now less to get away and more to come back, to be a little less in my head: I want to be a swinger of birches, not a hoer of beans.

And so I have been taking walks. The first day, down the hill, through the outskirts of town and into one small village after another, then back up into town the other way, men staring and some glaring, women smiling and waving, children waving and shouting "hello goodbye." See, that wasn't so bad? The next day, a little more courage is required to take the major road going the other way, following as it narrows and begins to climb into the hills. I pass a Hmong family and their pony: stares all around, and one shy smile. Where am I going so purposelessly and why am I not carrying anything? Why am I so sweaty?

The third day, a little more courage still. I stop at a cafe that says they have tourist information, but all they really have is a hand-drawn, 4th-generation xerox of a map, with three things in the legend: Bac Ha, the Hoang Yen Cafe, and The Road. Not helpful, but I take it anyway. I decide I can do the Ban Pho village loop, the walk that I did with Thanh last week and that all tourists do when they come here for their one day because I think I remember the way. But there will be no one else here this early in the week. When I get to Ban Pho I pass the turn that makes the loop and just decide to keep going a little bit, following the road as it begins to switchback up the mountain, opening views of terraced rice fields and small stands of corn on the high slopes. At the top of the pass where the road turns to mud there is a village of a few Hmong houses and a scary dog, so I turn back: about time anyway, as it's taken me over and hour to get here and I don't have much water. I keep thinking, I've always wanted to be the kind of person who can do this, but mostly I feel like I'm pretending -- or practicing? -- to be her.

A view from the Cong Fu

They are constructing a building next door to my hotel, almost right outside my room, and I am watching it from my balcony. Like all VN buildings it is narrow and extends far to the back. Because it is also built into the hilly terrain of Bac Ha, there are two stories in the back below the one that will be street level in the front. You can see the storeys are supported by unmilled poles from one of the many deforested hillsides surrounding town. Today they are pouring concrete despite intermittent light rain and saturated humidity. Here’s how they’re doing it.

An ancient cement mixer throttles away at a small makeshift ramp at the front. From time to time it sputters to a stop, coughs, and gives up. A guy comes over with a big crank and winds it up like a Model T. Then the hive of workers also cranks back into motion. On one side of the mixer is a big pile of rough gravel, on the other a mountain of sand. A man shovels gravel into beautiful shallow woven bowl-shaped baskets, then he and the carrier together lift it high enough for carrier to swing underneath it, rest it on his head, walk the few steps to the mixer, tip it in and come back for another. The same process is repeated on the sand side. A man carries 10-gallon buckets of water filled from a hose across the street from which buckets are dipped and added to the mix in whatever proportions someone deems appropriate. One of them must be in in charge of the mix, but who knows according to what engineering principles: more master baker than science.

The mixture flows out to be shoveled by another stooping man into the waiting bucket of one of the two-person carrying teams. They lower their pole, unhook the bucketand if they are lucky the timing is right, someone else shovels it full. If not, then one of them bends over and fills it. Then they pivot, lower themselves to a deep squat and shoulder it, walk up the uneven ramp, tightrope across the naked rebar and deliver it to the men pouring the slab at the rear. Each trip will get incrementally shorter but the load no lighter. One of the teams’ bucket only gets about ¾ of a load because they are very slight people. One of them is a woman, possible a teenager, but I can’t tell because her conical hat is tipped low and she is wearing a cloth over her face in a futile attempt to protect against dust and fumes. Her partner is a whisper-thin teenage boy, possibly more like a child. Most of them are walking across the rebar and steering around heavy equipment in flop-flops; a few have rubber rain boots. No one is wearing a hardhat, though a few have green pith helmets. Most wear baseball caps. There is a choreographed beauty to this, and a egalitarian peasant purity that would make the socialist architects proud, I’m sure, but the ideological virtues are surely lost on those doing this dangerous, loud, filthy, and underpaid work. Is this someone’s house? A new hotel? Will someone make money with this building, whatever it is? Will they ever set foot in it?

A 10-minute break comes at 8:45. The mixer arrived on site at 4:45 -- I know because it woke me up. During the break the woman who runs the little shop next door serves them from a large jug of bottled water. Even local people can’t drink water that comes from the tap, if they are privileged enough to live in a house with plumbing at all. One thin middle-aged man retrieves the 2-ft long bamboo bong to dip in a bucket and have a hit or two of tobacco. A Flower Hmong woman walks up to the shopkeeper, her extravagantly colored clothes a contrast to the dust-coated workers, unloads fresh corn from her reed basket backpack, sells a few ears, loads up, and walks on. The mixer belches back into life and the rough ballet of shoveling, lifting, and toting goes on.

Bac Ha, the beginning

July 4, 2009, Bac Ha
First morning waking up in the Cong Fu Hotel, where I’ve committed to staying and writing for the month. It’s 5:35 and a couple of hotel employees are having a lively conversation about something and just basically yelling their asses off, the voices bouncing up the marble stairways and rattling around the building. If I understood more than a few words of Vietnamese, I’d be able to understand them as if they were standing in this room. And then, coming in from outside, the propaganda loudspeakers have just started. Is that the VN anthem I hear? And some inspirational words about work? Warnings about social evils -- one of which is apparently sleeping past 6:00. Perhaps some deal could be arranged whereby loudspeaker sponsored the now moribund wifi service. I could take it, I swear.

So, the promised wifi service is “broken,” and “needs a part from Hanoi, we’re told. I had no idea wireless routers had “parts.” What do need here, a flange? Bushing? a timing belt? Sheesh. I’ll be able to plug my netbook into their connection for a few minutes a day, but will have to sit in a corner in the lobby and shove aside one of the two big computers they available for guests (and teenage boys from town). On the bright side, the internet on these two didn’t work at all during the days we were here last year. Progress.

Arrived last night in hour 40 of total elapsed travel time since I left my house in Austin, and had a bit of a struggle getting a suitable room, one that did not have two tiny twin beds, had a/c, and a balcony. I ended up on the front side of the building, which isn’t ideal (see loudspeaker), but I do have the other features, and a bed no softer than the well-padded dinner table. I had remembered the Cong Fu as more luxurious than it is, but it’ll be okay.

Thanh and I had a light dinner at a restaurant we had visited last year, which appears to be something of a gathering place for locals and those working in the tourist industry. You notice ruddy-looking middle aged Dutch couples in specialty trekking pants, and other typical western tourists eating in one room, while their guide shares tea and other kinds of food and swaps stories with owners and other guides in the front room. Last night Thanh and I sat in the front room, but not at that “cool” kids table. But after dinner we did get up and move over there and talked some business about the school. Met Mr Sa, the man who owns the resort just outside of town, which we’ll go look at today, and Mrs [TK], an entrepreneurial sort who owns the restaurant and hotel, and whose brother, they say, is the minister of minority affairs for the government. He could be a big asset in negotiating some of our bureaucratic obstacles, and she, of course, owns a construction company. See how well that works together?

The plan for this raining morning is to have breakfast in the hotel and then take the motorcycle out to a market, then maybe meet with one of the school teachers, see Sa’s place, browbeat the hotel staff about the wireless service, and whatever else we can get into. Thanh is good at making plans, but I never seem to know what they are, so I’ll just dress for riding in the rain and mud and will see what happens next.

Aghhhh….the loudspeaker! You win: your music is most patriotic and inspirational, yes, it is best to work hard for the fatherland, work is happiness. Okay, now please stop. Where is Bart Simpson when you need him?

Returning and Beginning

I posted below the update on my involvement with a project to build an elementary school in northern Vietnam. It's the same thing I posted on facebook, so many of you will have already seen it.

I'm leaving on Weds, July 1 to spend a month in Bac Ha, where rumor has it the internet access has vastly improved since last year. I'll be using this space to share thoughts and photos, and will also write a brief version of how this school project got started in the first place and what we did and where we went last summer when technological obstacles thwarted my blogging ambitions.

An update about the school building project in Vietnam

Dear Friends,
I'm way overdue in sending this update about the project of building the elementary school in northern Vietnam that many of you have so generously contributed to. We have made great progress toward raising the amount needed for basic construction, and hope to have secured all the necessary permissions in order to build in November.

I'm pasting below an excerpt from a letter that Phil (Deering, my Minneapolis-based partner in the project) wrote. But first, an update to the update: I will be in the village of Bac Ha, the market town closest to the school, for the month of July, working with local contacts and writing about the process, the people, and the region. I'll be posting updates on my facebook page (be my friend, if we aren't already) as well as on my (now moribund, but soon to be lively) blog (www.brightenthecorner.blogspot.com).

Here's what Phil wrote:

We want to update you on progress (and some minor setbacks), so that you'll know that your money is being put to good use.

When we returned from Vietnam last June, we had our mission clear: to build a new school in the village of Tong Thoung. Here's what we've accomplished:

1. We've raised over $23,000 dollars – enough to build the two-room school as planned.

2. We have a complete architectural building plan, which has been reviewed and approved our friends at Sunflower Mission.

3. We have strong support from the local community

And here are the setbacks:

1. Phil was laid off from his job this winter. With tight personal finances,he wasn't able to go to Vietnam. As a result, we have to put the actual building off until November, 2009.

2. We've had consistent problems with the bureaucracy in Hanoi, and getting official Vietnamese Non- Governmental Organization (NGO) status for Sunflower Mission (our sponsoring US non-profit). This prevents us from some advantages that we would get from oversight by the federal government, but is really a minor inconvenience, since we are well positioned at the local level.

The plan is for Phil and Elisabeth to go to Vietnam in November of this year and work with a local company to build the school.

The children of Tong Thoung still need your help. Especially, help from young people in the US. Here's some things that would be really great:

1. If you or your school, religious group, or other group like Girl or Boy Scout troop would like to take on Tong Thoung school as a service project, please let us know. We have lots of support material to share and can promise an interesting and rewarding project.

2. If you want to make another donation that we will use to buy school materials or add to the basic plan to further improve the school with electrical generators, better hygiene facilities, etc. please make a check to: Sunflower Mission – BacHa School Project, and send it to Phil or Elisabeth (just ask for mailing address).

And now a final word from me (Elisabeth)...
Thank you for your interest and your support -- financial and otherwise. One of the greatest joys of this project for Bruce and me is witnessing the flowering of generosity from so many extraordinary friends, relatives, and colleagues. For more pictures and some video see www.bachaschool.org.

Yours,
Elisabeth and Bruce (who won't be able to go to Vietnam, but whose love and support make it possible for me to go)

Our friend and translator Thanh talking with a student at the school

Children in class

And then what happened ... eight months later

After letting my blog lie fallow for months, I'm back, and planning to use this space to write about a number of things, but especially about the amazing events that have transpired after my trip to Vietnam in July 2007. Along the way I hope to fill out and complete the narrative of that trip, while also writing about the one that begins on May 11 of this year.

So, stay tuned. The first tale to tell is about the school in the north near Bac Ha that I am helping to build.