Orange Dust

Well, another eventful day. We awoke early to meet for breakfast at 6:30 for 7 am departure to the work site of a teen center being built in Hue. Upon arrival we load and unload heavy orange bricks, about five pounds each, that are hulled up flights of being constructed walls, or wheeled from the tiny mountains of surplus piling bricks to neat organized structures where the bricklayers can reach them with convenient ease. Some of us pick and shovel at the clay like dirt, triumphantly with hope for making a long foot deep trench along side the building. This is a morning of intense physical labor. While our clothes are drenched with sweat and carpeted with orange dust, our muscles are screaming and our minds are meditating. After working hard all morning we leave the work site at 11 to return to the hotel for showers and lunch. Following is an hour or two of sleep and R+R for most. After, some of us go to the high school to teach English to the summer students who want to learn more about American culture and improve their English. They are eager to learn American songs so we teach them to sing “Up on the Roof Top” which they learn quickly. At 3:30 we teach at the street children’s house until five. Today was a testing day for my class on questions like “How are you? What is your name? How old are you?” and their reciprical responses. After we break and return to the hotel we have a group builder comprised of stuffing and sewing ‘Hug a Planets’ to be handed out as gifts later in our trip. This is a calm peaceful time upon the roof of the hotel as the dusk descends and the techno music radiates from the street below. “Have any stories Jill?” someone asks. Jill seriously responds “Yes…actually,” after we laugh. The story unfolds as she explains a conversation she had with a local reporter who came to interview us that day while we were working at the teen center. The Vietnamese newswoman commented on how much dirt and filth was on our pants. Jill had laughed and said something along the lines of ‘yes we’re dirty’ when she noticed the woman’s lip was trembling. “It just makes me so happy…no words can explain…” the woman replied before breaking down in tears of happiness. We silently listened to Jill’s story, I think all of us felt both a bit surprised and humbled by the account.
After our Hug a Planet party up on the roof, we’re all starving and craving nourishment. Nhi takes us to a Vietnamese style sports bar where we get French fries with garlic and hot pots, one filled with tofu/vegetables and the other with seafood. The place is a scene of entertainment as we walk in to a long table of about 20 drunken Vietnamese men watching the home football team (soccer to us) play a game on TV. With mirth and song, they raised their glasses and cheered loudly. Ten minutes after we were seated for dinner, their group changes tables so the waitresses can pick up the array of Huda and Tiger beer bottles scattered on the floor. Once at a fresh new table, we watched as the beer bottles pile up again on the floor by their feet.
Following dinner everyone dispersed for the night, some to get shakes from our favorite shake restaurant, some to check email and some to bed. I checked my email and walked back to the hotel where Nhi was sitting on the steps outside. “Want to go for a drive?” she asks me. Though I am physically tired from the long day, its still only 8:30 and going for a drive on her bike sounds fun. We drive past the Citadel where people are playing sports and games in the field, and past Forbidden City, whose presence feels different to me now then when I had been there a few days earlier in the day. Dark, deserted and seemingly haunted, I imagine what it was like two centuries ago when the king and royal court would have filled the place with life. We drive through the streets to Nhi’s brothers house. It’s nice and her family is very hospital as we sit in her living room drinking water and sipping homemade frozen yogurt (yum!) I meet Nhi’s niece who, as it is explained to me, took her senior examination today, a very big deal for a Vietnamese. This exam will greatly determine the course of her life and because of its pivotal importance everyone in the family calls for support. “She’s born the same year as you!” Nhi says sitting next to me on the couch. We both smile shyly at each other as Nhi translates bits of conversation for me with her family. However, despite the enjoyed company and time, it’s weighed on a sad note: one of the family dogs was poisoned and killed earlier that day. When Nhi’s husband, Hugh, arrives I ask him why someone would poison their dog. “They poison dogs with rat poison and steal the carcass for meat to serve at restaurants…Something’s,” he says, “I don’t like about Vietnam.” I nod thinking how much I like tofu.