Pardon my “french”, but sometimes shit happens. Shit like someone stealing your iPhone on the first day of your round the world trip; finding out that the person you are still in love with has fallen in love with someone else; or receiving a pink slip in early January, mere days after your Christmas credit card bill arrives in the mail.
As you may know, the first couple of weeks of this Adventure of Hope have tested my resilience. Moments like when I got stranded in Hong Kong for two days, when my iPhone got stolen, and when terrible stomach cramps had me camped out in the bathroom this morning (at least my host family has a western toilet and I didn’t have to squat over a hole like I did while the railway ties galloped along underneath me during my 16-hour train ride from Ha Noi to Da Nang).
But, my time in Vietnam is teaching me that on a scale of 1-True Resilience, I have a long way to go. On my train ride, I read “The Girl In The Picture” by fellow Canadian Denise Chong. In the book, Denise profiles the story of Kim Phuc; the famous photograph taken of her; and the Vietnam War. I have included the picture for you and on the jacket of the book, the following sentence opens the story. “On June 8, 1972, nine year old Kim Phuc, severely burned by napalm, ran from a misplaced air strike over her village in South Vietnam and into the eye of history.”
Here is the excerpt from the book that is still running through my mind, “Dear friends. I am very happy to be with you today…As you know, I am the little girl who was running to escape from the napalm fire. I do not want to talk about the war because I cannot change history. I only want you to remember the tragedy of war in order to do things to stop fighting and killing around the world. I have suffered a lot from both physical and emotional pain. Sometimes I thought I could not live, but God saved me and gave me faith and hope. Even if I could talk face to face with the pilot who dropped the bombs, I would tell him we cannot change history but we should try to do good things for the present and for the future to promote peace…”
That my friends is Resilience and a whole lot of Grace. Here in Da Nang, I have had the pleasure of celebrating Tet (Vietnamese Lunar New Year) with my generous host family and they, too, are teaching me about resilience. For the past two days, I have journeyed with them to the villages around Da Nang and watched as they lit incense and said prayers to their departed ancestors. Unfortunately, some of these “ancestors” are siblings who were killed in combat during the Vietnam war and whose remains were never recovered. When I asked my host father (who by the second day took to introducing me as his Canadian daughter) whether he felt any animosity to the American soldiers of the Vietnam war; he simply tilted his head to the side and smiled his wide toothy grin as he told me that he doesn’t believe in living in the past. “To harbour hate is a waste of energy”, he said; he prefers to look to the future.
He and his relatives invited me into homes ranging from modern detached houses to dilapidated open air structures with no running water and no heat. During each meal, family members handed me a set of chopsticks and motioned for me to help myself to more, long after I passed the point of being full. During each visit, the younger people would take intermittent breaks from their laughter, games, and rapid-fire Vietnamese to ask me questions like, “how old are you?” and “where do you come from?”
So although I won’t minimize how hard it is to go through cancer or the challenges and culture shock of traveling in a foreign country (what I wouldn’t give for an easy conversation in English and a bowl of yogurt or a gluten free pizza right about now), I will continue to be grateful for the lessons in resilience that the people of Vietnam are teaching me and to GeoVisions for helping set up this cultural immersion experience for me.
So, Chúc Mừng Năm Mới or Happy New Year as they say here in Vietnam. I hope the Year of the Dragon brings you much luck, success, and happiness.
Here are a few more pictures from my time in the villages outside of Da Nang.
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