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!

Hanoi to Ha Giang to Bao Lam to Cao Bang

My last mission trip with ADRA took me back to Cao Bang - but from the long way around. We had a meeting back in Bao Lam district, which is 6 hours west of Cao Bang Town. If we were to travel by our normal north-south rout from Hanoi, we would need to spend four full days in the car - two just to reach Bao Lam via Cao Bang, and then another to return to Cao Bang and last to return to Hanoi. So instead we described a rather choppy circle via Ha Giang to the west. Sunday morning we drove northwesterly to Ha Giang province where we spent the night, then set out early Monday morning to reach Bao Lam district in time, we hoped, for a 9 am meeting.

This was my first visit to Ha Giang Town. Ha Giang is generally considered a poorer province than Cao Bang, but for reasons that were explained to me later, the infrastructure actually seems quite a bit better. The town itself is similar to Cao Bang - same same but still different. It has all the normal acoutraments of a mountain province town (government buildings, market, banks, shops and stores, traffic in and out, etc.), but everything arranged within the local landscape, which generally mirrored that of Cao Bang. If anything, it was less dramatic.

We arrived late in the evening on the full moon mid-autumn festival. Mid-autumn festival is traditionally the "children's festival" - or very similar to Halloween.

Children dress up as devils and creatures and run about banging on drums and blowing whistles and carrying star lanterns. Special meals are prepared and candy is shared. In fact, many of the plastic masks and pre-made Spiderman and fairy suits that invade our Walmarts at this time of year have infiltrated the markets for the mid-autumn festival here.

The next morning we started out early in hopes of making our morning meeting, but thanks to some poor signage we wound up on the not-so-well-beaten path. It was quite the scenic route, but it added a good long bit of time to our travels.

Neither the right road or the right vehicle for it.

We're supposed to be on that road - down there!!

So we were late to our meeting and didn't get to meet with the authorities we had hoped to.

So, you might think that we were being punished when we showed up to lunch only to discover that today, grubs are on the menu!

Meals in Bao Lam are always an adventure – this is where the real Vietnamese food comes out on display. Bao Lam boasts a large variety of fresh forest foods, and they are not at all hesitant to include their foreign visitors in the daily specials. So what started with amusement when I admired the crackling paper honey combs of the freshly harvested hives, alive with little wriggling bee larvae soon became our apparent entrée.

Soon the choicest of the thumb-sized wrigglers were sizzling in the wok with bamboo and ginger.

So yes, we ate bee larvae – and a few fully fledged bees. Can’t say it was yum – really it was more wanting for spices than anything else.

I found the whole dish very, very bland and a bit on the simultaneously gooey and grainy side. But I was assured that after eating a whole plate, there was enough protein to make sure you didn’t get hungry again for a good long time. Yeah, I’m pretty sure of that.

After lunch we were off again – to start the 6 hours in to Cao Bang with one stop to visit a highlands market. It was a smallish market, but native enough to be of interest.

Here we had a chance to talk to a few flower H’mong people:

Including a mother and her 22 year-old daughter, mother of 4, the oldest of which is 8 and in the second grade. She was exceptionally well-spoken, although if you had asked me I would’ve put her age at about 16…

The rest of the trip brought us further into ethnic Tây territory, with great valley views and Tây architecture.

And finally through the dark and into Cao Bang itself. Home…but not quite home, at last.

The End (of another era)

October 1, 2008 marks one ending and the beginning of a new era for me. As of 5 PM local time last night I officially completed my contract with ADRA Vietnam. It was probably the best last day of work of my life – our strategic planning retreat brought us to Hoi An for five days and on Tuesday morning the rest of the staff flew back to Hanoi. Seeing as my contract was ending and I was already in a vacation spot, I chose to stay beyond the last day (as compensation time for the hours worked over the weekend) to continue to enjoy the pleasures of this seaside resort town.

So, here I am, gainfully unemployed, sitting in an almost-paradise garden on the banks of a river in Vietnam’s Little Venice. Certainly could be worse!

That said, I’m not certain that the Vietnam chapter of my life is fully written yet. I still have 25 days on my visa, and I am thinking about my next career moves. I have a couple of interviews starting Friday for some short-term positions (6 months or so) that would help me step up my career beyond the field work that I have been doing to this point. Any of them could potentially help me transition to a job in the US – where the job market isn’t looking so hot for the moment and I am still very much an unknown quantity. If six more months in Vietnam would help save me six months of job searching Stateside, then it will probably be a worthwhile investment.

In the short meantime, I am enjoying simple pleasures of life: a sea breeze, good food, sunlight and gentle rains. I’m also doing my best to catch up on some long-neglected correspondence – first and foremost on my priority list is this blog. In coming posts I would like to share some photos and stories from my last weeks in with ADRA in Vietnam. I have been truly blessed for having this experience and for working with such people. I have learned and grown a lot during my year and nine months with the organization, and I leave it with hopes for its future development – and for its contribution to Vietnamese development.

Vietnam has been a good place for me – and I hope I have given it something worthwhile of myself!