International Bulletin - August 2002
The Poor Children Of Vietnam Also Learn
I live in a handsome four story building of French design in the first district of Ho Chi Minh City, in my opinion the most exciting city in the world.
HCMC-Saigon is a bustling metropolis of 7 million people and it is in the midst of a stunning transition from an agricultural economy to a global one.
Each day thousands of Vietnamese pour in from the countryside seeking opportunities for greater wealth and advancement. Few find their dreams.
Without education,however, there is little chance for poor Vietnamese from the the Mekong Delta countryside or the central Da Nang area to change anything.
Many young Vietnamese in their twenties and thirties work while taking courses at HCMC University or at technical schools in the city. They waken at dawn to study before departing for a humdrum or perhaps laborious job for which they are paid very little. The average income in Vietnam is $400 per year;there millions more never see that much money for work that prematurely ages them and endangers their health daily.
Millions of women labor on highways, their faces bundled in rags or swathed in muslim to protect their skin and lungs from the biting particulates of dirt, dust and tiny pebbles that ravage their complexion and contaminate their organs. If they do not get an education before they are out of their thirties they will be abandoned to this kind of life and an early death.
The lucky ones are able by fierce determination and the support of their famililes to achieve. These are the Vietnamese, both men and women, who learn well and quickly and advance themselves through the university and the serpentine halls of the corporate world, using the ancient rules of modesty, courtesy and self-denigration that mark Southeast Asia to please the boss.
The children of the rich in Vietnam get to go to Australia or the United States or Germany to study in universities there. They are aware of the experience their parents endured during the American War, but it is still foreign to them and long ago, and they revel in the toys their parents give them or they earn: cell phones, Honda motorcycles, the flotsam and jetsam of their generation. They think there is no tomorrow and everything is possible.
From my perspective as an American living in Ho Chi Minh City-Saigon, I see transitional Vietnam with a clarity I would otherwise not possess. I live comfortably in my elegant home which I rent for far less than my apartment costs in center city Philadelphia, in the United States. I also can afford a half day cook and housekeeper six days a week for about thirty dollars a month. Houng is a great cook and is devoted to me. I am very lucky: this luxury would be impossible for me in my own country, even on a combined income of social security, investment interest and part-time counseling.
But I am sensitive to the poverty all around me, in the streets where children beg for 10 or 20 or 30 cents for post cards or raffle tickets. I see beautiful smiling faces, staring up at me with a charm I cannot resist, and I think, what do these children have to feel so happy about?
The answer always comes and it is always the same, from the villages of The Gambia to the villages of the Mekong: the all encompassing love given by parents for whom there are no precious jewels more valuable than the ones they hold in their arms everyday, their children. The love they lavish on their offspring from the day they are born is so profound that it forms a rock on which these children can stand free while life tries to beat them down. If you refuse the wares of these seven, eight and ten year olds, they smile and walk on, with dignity and nonchalance. Their twin inheritance of poverty and nurturing have already taught them how to maneuver in a global economy that will take every ounce of intelligence and hard-earned experience to manipulate in order to survive. The children of Vietnam's poverty are given an elite education every day, unlike that of affluent children. As long as they are protected by family wealth, there should be no problem; but in these uncertain times, when fortunes of both individuals and nations, rise and fall with an alacrity that is alarming, the graduate education of the poor children of Vietnam is not to be shunned but envied.
What they also deserve is the very best elementary, secondary and undergraduate university education the country can afford.
Last Modified: November 29, 2002