Borderlands

Irony: my entire last trip into Cao Bang for ADRA was a first. A first to travel to Ha Giang and enter the province from the west. A first to travel to the China border in Ha Quang district – our first year working in this new district. My first Noong ethnic minority market. My first time traveling around Cao Bang on motorbike completely solo. My first time to go on a Vietnamese picnic. My first time to stay in a hotel instead of my home.

So, yes, it was bitter sweet.

Erica calls her own project's counseling hotline to help her get through the transition...

But we’ll start with the adventure.

Field visits were organized in and around the usual routine of meetings and office work.

This trip up to a commune on the China border almost resembled more of an invasion than a field visit: a border guard accompanied five of us on motorbike and four more in a car 60 km through fields and then up mountains and down rocky hairpin turns until we arrived in a place that probably hadn’t even seen foreigners before. The road started out normally enough and I chose to ride pillion so I could take pictures while not overly endangering myself or others.

Markets abound on this trip - we came to yet another market on the way to our commune, but we didn't have time to stop - only drive-by shooting: After that, however, the road went downhill even as we climbed uphill. We switched to riding individually at this point - for safety and comfort's sake. The road was challenging to say the least, and when we went to deliver our baseline survey, we discovered that this was probably the most remote area we had worked in yet.

Invasion begins - our team (L to R: Irene, Giang, Oscar, Huong) at obligatory pre-work meet-n-greet with authorities, complete with tea.

Nga explains survey to local women.

The level of literacy dropped off dramatically and we soon realized we were going to have to revise our way of working in order to continue having valid results in these areas.

After we finished with the survey we had just a few minutes to wander the mountain market.

Ethnic Noong Women.

These women knew how to hold their tobacco! They just kept taking hit after hit.

Camera? What's that? Never seen one of those before!

Then it was back down the mountain to home. Going up might be tricky, but going down can be downright dangerous.

This was the easy stretch.

I took my first major spill of my motorbike driving career on one of the gravel-strewn hairpin turns. Fortunately I was well-clothed and more-or-less prepared for the fall. Bruises and scratches and a lot of dust – no serious damage done. And we were traveling individually on bikes at this point, so nobody else was at risk.

The "shortcut" home.

Then, it was a rush back to town to get back to a 3 PM government meeting – could almost cause cultural whiplash!