From: hy@ucsee.Berkeley.EDU (hY tRuOnG lAm)
Subject: [VN-story] Back Home (Part 2 of 2)
Reply-To: hy@ucsee.Berkeley.EDU (hY tRuOnG lAm)
Organization: University of California Society of Electrical Engineers (UCSEE)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 02:33:21 GMT

				Back Home
			      (Part 2 of 2)
 
     While I was talking to Hung, my dad sent my niece over to tell me that I
had to go home for lunch.  I was so eager to talk to my friend that I totally
forgot about lunch.  Suddenly I looked at my CASIO quartz watch and saw that
it was 11 AM and an hour ago I was told to go home to have lunch!  Hung said,
"You better go home to have lunch with your family or your parents will be
unhappy."  I said good bye to Hung and walked home. 
     As I walked through the dusty street I noticed that the neighbors
popping their heads out of the windows and doors, looking at me.  I smiled
and waved and bowed to them.  My, never in my life had I drawn so much
attention from the neighbors.  Suddenly I saw a small muddy pond right under
my feet.  There were many of them but this one I got to avoid.  I jumped
clumsily to the right and the next thing I knew, my right foot landed on
something soft.  I looked down and was shocked to realize that my sandal was
embedded in pig droppings!  Gross!!  Embarrassed, I dragged 
my sandal on the ground and most of it scraped off.  I heard a woman said,
"Heavens, poor you!" 
     I got home and felt very sorry to see my family was waiting for me so we
could eat lunch together.  My father, as usual, began to lecture, "This is
Vietnam, not America.  You must know when to go home to eat lunch and dinner."
I made my first mistake by arguing back.  I grumbled, "But I haven't seen my
friends for a long time and now that we meet I just couldn't..."  My father
shouted, "Just couldn't what?  You have a whole month here.  You have plenty
of time see your friends.  Am I wrong?  You are spoiled!  What have your
brothers taught you in America?  Family's first.  How can water 
overflow if it's not full?"
     My younger brother also complained, "And you have a lot of relatives to
visit but you visit your friends first.  You didn't even talk to me, after
thirteen years away."
     I broke into crying.  I didn't know what got into me but I cried like a
kid.  I never thought crying is weak but humiliating.  Oh yes, humiliating it
was, now that I think about it.
     I was mumbling in tears, "What have I done wrong?  Look at people around
you.  Look at Mrs. Uc Ni's family with dozen of kids.  They are the poorest
in town and they have survived all these years.  What happened to the money 
we [brothers] sent home?  Compare to other rich people we are probably
nothing but compare to these poor people we have got everything."
     I said it all in frustration and without thinking much.  I had wanted to
say that I wanted to help the other people, but the words did not come out
right, and now It was too late to shut my mouth.  I didn't know what to
expect.  I didn't blame my family for being so strict.  I knew they love me
and miss me a lot.  If I were them, I too would have reacted that way.  It
was hard for them to be ignored by someone they loved.  I wasn't ignoring
them.  I was so excited to be home and there were so many things I wanted to
do that I didn't know what to do first.
     My younger brother said, "It's not that we don't care about other people.
Many people came to borrow money and rice and we gave them and very few paid
back yet.  Do you think our family can feed every single one of them?"
     I couldn't say a word.  I didn't know where I got such an ambition, an
idea of trying to turn this town into one of the greatest town in Vietnam,
someday.  It was not simple.  The more I thought of ways to help the town 
the more I found how tiny, hopeless, and confused I was.
     My mom turned blue and said worriedly, "Come on, forget it.  The food is
getting cold already."
     I stopped crying and said, "I am sorry.  Please forgive me.  I...I...I
won't do it again."
     My father felt better after my apology.  We gathered around the table
and ate and forgot what had just happened.  I thought that I knew my family
and that they knew me well enough.  As it turned out, we had a lot to learn
from one another.  Thirteen years of separation had changed everyone of us.
I think that applies to everyone, not just my family alone.
     A few flies landed on the food, so I had to keep alert, ready to chase
them away.  While eating, sweat began to trickle down my cheeks and soon my
T-shirt became soaked with rigid sweat.  The weather was so humid and there
was no air conditioning.  My father suggested that I take off my T-shirt, and
I did.  I felt much better after that.
     Then, I discovered something that almost cause me to scream out loud.
There were a dopzen red spots on my stomach!  I was terrified, I kept staring
at those swollen spots, speechless.  I then looked at my hands and legs and
thought I would die soon.  They were all over my body.  I estimated about
thirty red spots on my stomach, legs, hands, and neck!  I looked at my
parents and brother for an explanation.  My father said, "Oh, they are
mosquito bites.  You probably didn't sleep in the mosquito net.  There are
lots of mosquitoes around here.  They are harmless."  I did not feel very
sure that they were harmless, though.  I probably crawled out of the net when
it got so hot, and I was too exhausted to feel the bites.  I tried to gorget
about it and continued to eat.
     Suddenly, I heard a deafening sound above my head that almost made me
jump.  Rain!  It rained so hard that water kept pouring onto the tin roof of
the house to make such a loud noise.  We could hardly hear one another
talking without screaming to be heard.
     After lunch I took two Tylenol pills and walked to the front of the
house.  There I watched kids, ages six to twelve, taking showers in the rain.
The little boys were naked.  The memory of my childhood suddenly flashed in
my mind.  Oh, how wonderful it was.  I felt the urge to join them running up
and down the street and playing with mud.  There was one little kid standing
in the middle of the street, biting his lips and trembling like a baby
chicken.  He refused to go inside.  His mother stood in the house across
the street screaming at him, "Tam, go inside son.  You're cold."  The boy
kept shaking his head and eventually ran away to join the others.  Once in a
while, it thundered and pulses of lightning flashed across the sky.  It was
beautiful.  It seemed like there was an invisible force pushing me and urging
me to jump right into the rain to join the group.  I resisted the temptation
and promised myself that next time, I would... take a shower in the rain with
them.
     Later, it stopped raining, but the street was so muddy.  I walked to the
back of the house to take a good look at the river.  It was at least fifty
meters wide and who knows how long and deep.  The water now turned from its
usual light blue to light brown because of the muddy water streaming down
from the streets.  To the people it seemed that the river was the cleanest
thing the town ever had, but not to me.  There were all sorts of things
floating on the river.  After the rain, trash that once lay on every street
corner now drifted down the river.  I just could not believe that people used
this water to pre-wash their food.  Of course they rinsed the food again with
clean water.
     There were houses along side the river within my focus and the houses
scattered out further and further to a point I saw nothing else beyond but
blurry tiny jungles of trees and bushes. 
     As I looked up the river, there came a little boat sculled by a young
girl.  Her father was standing in front of the boat with a net in his hands
waiting for the right time to throw.  Then he threw the net up and it made a
beautiful perfect circle on the surface of the water.  As the net sank down
and the rope on his hand loosened, he began to pull.  I watched carefully
without blinking and hoped to see a lot of fish.  He pulled the net,
alternating his right and left hands, and then shook his head and squared,
"Damn it.  Nothing."  It was disappointing to see no fish, not even a small
one.  I peeked at the tin barrel on the boat and saw two little fish about
the size of my middle finger.  I wondered what else they did to survive
besides fishing, which seemed unproductive for them.
     As I sat staring at the river, millions of things crossed my mind.  I
felt very frustrated, not at my family, but at myself for being different.
I wondered how long I would be able to stay in Vietnam.  The idea of not
fitting in scared me very much.  I kept on telling myself that it was me who
had changed, not them.  I had tried very hard to control myself and to remind
myself that I am one of them, not anybody else.  That helped.
     I never thought I would have any problem living in Vietnam; I was wrong.
Things have changed.  The town got bigger, the streets got narrower, the
river got wider and dirtier and the fish vanished, the weather was so hot and
humid, the people were getting poorer and poorer and hopeless, teenagers
married at a very young age, and more and more bony children with big fat
stomachs were born.
     I do not know how long I sat there feeling sad and frustrated.  Suddenly
I was shifted back to reality.  To break away from sadness and frustration, I
kept reminding myself that my purpose here was to have fun and to enjoy my
trip.  But no matter how much I tried to lighten my mind, the image of the
man and his daughter fishing in the river kept on troubling me.  I wondered
how many more families were as unfortunate as his family.  I did not have to
wonder for long.  Within a few days, I was to find out that too many
families were even worse than his.
     Soon after it stopped raining the sun came out, and so did the people,
into the streets.  The sky was clear and everything was freshly renewed.  My
brother and I walked to the coffee shop next to my sister's house, which was
five houses away.  The street was so muddy that if I walked fast, my sandals
would flick up mud right onto my behind.  I had to walk slowly and keep my
feet moving level and close to the ground.  Everywhere I went, people peered
at me with curiosity, happiness, and hope.  I could not just ignore them, so I
stopped here and there to chat with them.
     As I approached the coffee shop there were people old and young sitting
there drinking coffee and chatting.  When I came in, the conversations hushed
down to complete quiet.  I knew almost all of them, so there was no point for
me to introduce myself.  I smiled at them and sat down with my brother.
     "Hy, how's life in America?" asked one man.
     "Oh, okay.  Not bad, but boring.  I like it here better."  Was I lying?
I was not sure.
     "So what do you do in America, big boss?" the other asked.
     "Well, I am still going to school."  I grinned and continued boasting,
"I have been in school ever since I arrived in America."
     Tan, the owner of the coffee shop, said, "Wow, you must know a lot.
What do you study?"
     "Uh, hm, computer... computer science, dien toan?  I am not sure if
that's what we call it in Vietnamese."  I had a hard time trying to explain
in Vietnamese what was computer and what would be my future job.  Gee, what
a shame... and I had thought, I had hoped that someday I would be able to go
back to Vietnam to teach computer science--but I did not even know how to say
computer science in Vietnamese.
     "Haven't you done anything as a part-time job?" somebody asked.
     "Yeah, I did.  I washed dishes in restaurants for a while," I said.
People stared at me in awe and thought I was joking.  I continued, "Well,
washing dishes is the worst thing one can do in America.  I got paid only
about four dollars an hour."
     Their faces showed shock at hearing that one could be paid that much
just washing dishes.  One man said, "Heavens, my family works all day and we
can't even earn more than a dollar here.  No wonder American people are so
rich!"
     "Not likely," I explained, "there are countless of homeless people in
America.  And the cost of living is much higher there than here.  Here you
don't have to worry about many things besides food.  There you have to worry
about paying hundreds of dollars every month for renting your house, buying
food, car expenses and paying all kinds of insurance.  A family making less
than ten thousand dollars a year is considered poor in America.  You see,
with an American dollar here, you can buy at least six bowls of pho, but a
bowl of pho in America costs about four dollars, not including tip!"  Their
eyes and mouths were dropped in surprise as I continued to tell them tales
of America.  "Ridiculous as it sounds, even animals have rights
in America..."
     "What drink would you like?" Tan's wife asked.
     "Oh, please give me iced coffee without sugar."
     "With... huh?  With, heavens, without sugar?"  She was unsure what she
had heard.  Later my brother told me that the people thought I did not want
sugar because I thought it was dirty.  I had not even thought about that.
     While drinking and chatting with neighbors and friends, I saw my
brother-in-law preparing to go look at the farmland to make sure it would
not overflow with water.  I begged to go along and he agreed.  People were
laughing at the idea and wondering what I could do at the farm.  One of them
laughed, "Hm, an American engineer farming, huh?"
     I rushed home to tell my parents that I had to go farming with my
brother-in-law.  My father stared at me, laughing.  My mother thought that
was a crazy idea but laughed also.  With the same outfit, T-shirt, shorts,
and sandal, I came back to the coffee shop where my brother-in-law was
waiting.  I jumped onto the back of my brother-in-law motorcycle and said
jokingly, "Wait till I get a degree.  I'll go back here to be a farmer."
     My brother-in-law stepped on the pedal a few times, and then the
motorcycle gave out a lot of dark smoke and accelerated forward.  I held
onto him and felt very happy and proud to be back home.

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