Friday, July 7: The Way “They” Live

***At long last, here are the posts from our Central and Highland Region exploration two weeks ago. A brief post about our Hanoi trip will follow soon, as we're now frantically preparing to depart for the rural province where we will work for 3 weeks with little to no connection to the outside world. Thanks for reading, and please leave some feedback for when I'm back to the city next month!***

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We are back in Ho Chi Minh City now, after an eventful trek through the Central Highlands and a night in a traditional ethnic minority village ceremonial house, replete with bamboo wine, gongs, dancing, and 10 kilometers of trekking through the mud.
Eighty percent of Vietnam lives in rural areas, so despite our trip’s focus thus far on seeing all the major cities, our night in the village was really far more representative of how most Vietnamese actually live.
The Central Highlands of Vietnam are a rugged, mountainous region home to the majority of the country’s ethnic minorities, known as Montagnards. There are a variety of tribes living in hundreds of small villages in the region—Kon Tum province alone has 650 minority villages, only thirty of which have been visited by foreigners. While it would have been fascinating to be the first foreigner in one of the unexplored villages, the reason no one has made it there is because they are hidden many kilometers from any sort of road in deep, dangerous jungle. Even so, the village we visited, Kon Kotu, despite being one of the most popular village destinations, still only gets one or two Western groups a month, so our arrival was a big event!
The village is about 3 kilometers from Kon Tum, the small city that serves as the capital of the large province. Until three years ago, there was no electricity or permanent road leading even to this village so near the city, but the provincial government has been working hard (at least by Vietnamese government standards) to extend some infrastructure to the villages, and in 2003 they completed a paved path that nearly reaches the village, allowing motor scooters and carts to make the journey from the village to market year-round, even when the dirt paths have been completely washed away. The path is not a road; our van certainly could not make it near the village, and goods are still carried on horse-drawn cart, but for rough wooden carts, the smooth path makes a world of difference. We, however, walked the old dirt paths to the village, immediately covering ourselves in mud, but getting to watch adults and children of all ages working in the rice fields, tending crops, playing, or carrying traveling between villages.
The village was a small collection of houses arranged around the rong; the central feature of each village is their community longhouse, known as a rong. (There is even more potential for great puns here than the Thai “wat” temples!) Like all traditional village houses, the rong is set on stilts and covered with thatched straw. The floor is tightly weaved bamboo. The straw ceiling has a very steep pitch, towering high above any other village structure. The rong is the site of village meetings, community business, ceremonies of all sorts, and the “hotel” for honored visitors. Embracing the few tourists who make it out this far, the village has partnered with the government tourist office to make the stay comfortable, providing a few mattresses and mosquito netting to keep out the ginormous flying termites and persistent mosquitoes and flies.
Near the rong was the one village bathroom, containing a few toilets, but no running water. Interestingly, I learned that if you dump enough buckets of water into a toilet, the water pressure will cause the flush to happen even without running water! The one tap for running water is fed by a well and water directed from a mountain stream several kilometers away. Both sources are stored in a large tank to get the village through the dry season. Apparently, at some previous point in village history there had been running water or at least the expectation of such, as a number of pipes had been constructed, but it had been awhile since the water had flowed.
The houses themselves were a motley combination of straw and bamboo or poured concrete. Most of the dwellings were one large room, though sometimes there were a few rooms. There wasn’t really any defined arrangement for the houses, set in a few small clusters. The furnishings were simple but comfortable, and many times we wondered how large pieces of what appeared to be second-hand urban living room furnishings had made it out to the village. Also in the village was a Catholic church. The French missionaries did their jobs well, at least in the areas very close to their comfortable missions, and the people here are quite devout, praying together daily even though there is not a resident priest in the in village.
After depositing our backpacks in the village, we set off to trek to the suspension bridge that crossed the province’s large river and led out to most of the remote villages. The ten kilometers was the muddiest hiking I have ever covered in my life. We are in the middle of the rainy season, and pockets of rain drenched the land daily. Much of the trail was completely washed out; with every step through the brown goo, I would sink promptly. My shoes got stuck and I was forced to go bare-footed, wondering timorously about various parasites. I had nothing on my back, but we passed streams of peasants herding animals, carrying large baskets, or pushing bicycles, and I could only shake my head in astonishment. At times, progress was excruciating (but definitely a major thrill to become completely covered in mud), but our guide said that this was nothing compared to the rainiest months. After awhile, various shoe and stamina limitations reduced our group to just me, Jim, Scott, and our guide, and we sped up to nearly a run to reach the bridge and still get back to the village by nightfall.
I was nonplussed at first sight of the river crossing that we had hiked so many kilometers to reach, but then I realized that I was only seeing the lead-up to the actual bridge, which looked like something straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. Wires connected trees on both sides of the river, suspending narrow planks of wood between bamboo rails. The whole contraption swayed violently, with the ominously flowing rapid currents rushing beneath us. We stepped out gingerly to begin the crossing, doing our best to avoid looking down. It seemed that as we moved further and further out, the planks became narrower, the holes in the wood become larger, and the creaks became more pronounced. When the planks reached their narrowest width, the bridge suddenly became uneven, swinging dramatically to one side. I reached to grab the wire suspensions, only to notice that they were made from sharply studded barb wire. “Why on Earth would they do that?” I asked my guide. The reply—“Oh, there was no more regular wire,” left us just shaking our heads in amazement.
Step-by-step, we made our way across the water and all the way back. Every step was a rush—talk about natural highs! But what was an amazing adventure for us is everyday existence for anyone in the hundreds of villages on the other side of the water who wants to visit the region’s only town. Our guide told us of unlit crossings at night, crossing with small animals carried on backs, and of produce carried in baskets to market. I was most impressed by the story of the woman who clutched her child to her front and carried an enormous basket of produce on her back—I’m not sure what extremities were used to grip the bridge, but I would have loved to see that feat!
While there is something somewhat seductive about living so far away from “modern civilization,” there is also the sobering realization that if something goes wrong, you’re pretty much on your own. There’s no hamlet ambulance or fire fighter, and the idea of getting something “quickly,” takes on a very different meaning. Births take place in the huts unless there is some sort of extraordinary circumstance. Acute health crises almost certainly mean death; getting someone to even the small Kontum hospital could take a full day, and to get to the country’s only critical care facilities in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City’s would take days.
To get back to the village, we hiked back to a place where the river was not so menacing, where we met villagers who had brought dugout canoes to paddle us back. In their simplicity, the boats looked so strong and solid. Each craft was made from one very large tree trunk, hollowed out completely. We sat low in the water and just glided on back, guided by the villager’s bamboo rod. Almost too soon, we reached the village again, where we had a chance to rest and relax before dinner.
The government company did not permit tourists to eat the village food, fearing that if we were to get sick from the mostly root (with some mice) diet, prepared without concern for finicky Western sanitation standards, the results could damage tourism. Thus, our food was actually brought by motorbike from a local restaurant a few kilometers away, but there were plenty of interesting wild animal dishes to experiment with. While we waited for our meal, we had a bit of time to just lounge. At first we were all sitting around in the rong, but it felt odd to separate ourselves in the ceremonial house from the “real” village life, so I pried us away from our rest to stroll around.
We were quickly and warmly welcomed into a number of houses. Chris, Gideon, Jim and I found ourselves sitting and chatting with a few girls about our age. The girls had learned a bit of English in school, and amazingly, Chris really is conversational at this point, so he was able to keep the ball rolling! It would be easy to succumb to the temptation to write about “going back in time” or visiting a “primitive people,” as life in some ways has fewer complications in the tiny mountain hamlet. After our chats, though, it struck me how very similar we actually are. One of the girls asked for our help translating the latest Bryan Adams song that she had on DVD, and men, women, and children gathered to watch a dubbed Japanese soap opera that was not so different from its American counterparts. The men gradually drifted in from working to share a few sips of rice wine. Later that night there was to be a party, as a young cow had fallen into the river and drowned—seemed like kind of a stretch as a reason to let loose, but they were excited. The kids our age talked of school, and one told us how she was going to attend university next fall. Mothers watched while the children ran around and waved “hello” to the funny-looking white people. We were invited to drink, watch World Cup, eat, pray—without hesitation we were welcomed to make ourselves at home and it was easy to forget the hugely opposite worlds we were coming from.
After dinner, the villagers performed a ceremonial gong show for us, with the men playing a large set of gongs while the women danced, all wearing traditional ceremonial attire. Our guide said that the people were so glad to have us (to be fair, this is at least largely due to the fee they receive from our visit—a much needed local supplement), and this show was “all they can offer,” but it was splendid. UNESCO actually has recognized this art form as an endangered art that symbolizes our world heritage and needs our protection. It really was a treat to participate in the dancing—I felt like a character in some kind of movie. I’ve tried “traditional” dances in all sorts of contrived American settings, but there I was in the village, doing the real thing! It wasn’t commercial-feeling at all—we waited a long time as the villagers slowly gathered, practiced, and prepared, and then when they were ready, they began to perform around a roaring bonfire.
After the ceremony we all shared a cask of fresh, local bamboo wine, a sweet liquid with a yeast that somehow prevents hangovers. Two long bamboo straws emerged from the clay pot, and we gathered with a group of girls in the rong to drink together. Chris called the event “some odd version of Sadie Hawkins” as each girl selected one of us to drink with and we would suck out as much of the wine as we could in one gulp. We drank and exchanged songs (they were far better singers than us) until it was time to crawl into our mosquito nettings, where I slept soundly.

We spent a fair amount of time discussing the past, present, and future of the Montagnards, and indeed all rural Vietnamese. Urban migration is a huge force right now, as most developing countries experience with the growth of cities. A decade ago, the country was 90% rural, so even if the current 80% seems like a lot, clearly change is happening fast. I’m not sure what the goal is—or even if there is a goal—for these villages to “progress.” What does globalization mean to the residents of Kon Kotu or any other village? Joining the WTO? The new Party leadership? The residents here really couldn’t care less. This isn’t to say that they are necessarily uninformed, but just that the “outside” political and economic world don’t have much affect on daily life.
The villages actually have some sort of limited autonomy, similar to Native American reservations, but they are still subject to pretty intense scrutiny, as the Communists found persistent resistance from the Montagnards for years, even after South Vietnam fell. As I said earlier, the provincial authorities do seem to be doing their best to help the villages develop.
At about the same time the paved path to Kon Kotu was completed, power lines were extended from the city to the closest villages. The main power line actually looks quite fancy, with a sophisticated system keeping the wires elevated and clear along the main path. When the lines deviate from this main line, though, it is a different story. The naked or thinly insulated wires sort of haphazardly stream down from the main pole to each house, sometimes supported by a rudimentary pole or stick, but many times just dangling. They usually drape over the dwelling before being tied somewhere on the roof and going through a crack between the walls and the ceiling. I have seen this primitive stringing in all of Southeast Asia, but for the first time, I had a chance to closely examine just how dangerous the connections were, and I shuddered to imagine the impact of a lightning strike.
However the power is getting there, though, it is reaching the villages. That being said, while it adds convenience and pleasure to daily life, I certainly would not say it has transformed day-to-day living. The biggest impact has to be the televisions that have found their way to many of the homes. The families may not always even be able to pay their electricity bill, but they find some way to get a television and capture whatever stations the antennas they fashion to their roofs can bring in. I can’t speculate on social cohesiveness prior to televisions, and no one has ever mentioned previous problems—but I can say that now the television acts as a great unifier, bringing together entire families and groups of families to watch shows and chat together in the evening. Electricity also brings electric lights to some of the houses and public facilities, although all is used sparingly. It actually isn’t so hard to imagine life three years ago without these new conveniences.
Most of the young people in Kon Kotu do make the daily trip to Kon Tum to attend school, at least through the high school level, although the numbers going on to university are extremely small. Beyond Kon Kotu, few could make it to school even if they wanted to. I’ve never really questioned the value of education before; experts pretty universally agree that it is the key to development. But if these groups are content with village life, education doesn’t have a lot of value unless it is practical training in agricultural yields or village plumbing. Should education really be a priority here?
Again, what is the goal for development? What is best for the country? Is urbanization something to fear and seek to prevent, or a natural evolutionary development that should be embraced? In either case, I think the limited infrastructure reaching the villages will be a major incentive for the young people to stay. Most seem content with their television and motor scooters, with few having traveled to any real urban area of the countries. I’m not sure they would agree with a Western assessment of what they are lacking. I could be wrong though—if more travel to the city and see what is happening in their own country, maybe they will be enthralled and leave their simple mountain villages. This would be an infinitely interesting ethnographic study that hasn’t really been conducted yet. Vietnamese anthropologists have worked to understand cultural traditions and record the histories and lifestyles of these ethnic villages, but I haven’t heard much in the way of future direction.
I asked our guide if he thought the more remote villages would eventually also get power lines and roads. He thought roads through the dense jungle would be impossible, but maybe power lines would reach further in five years or so. He certainly didn’t forsee any economic transformations or shift to a cash-crop economy, even with the WTO. Such thoughts seemed ridiculous there, actually, but back here in Saigon, and I’m sure in Washington and New York, such proposals are being drafted somewhere.
What could improve daily life? Each village actually has one or two Vietnamese stores with a non-ethnic Vietnamese person sort of functioning as the middle-man for trade with the village. These “outsiders” are not particularly appreciated, but are seen as necessary, as the villagers just have no experience in the business transactions necessary to turn a profit with their own produce. Perhaps someone could train the villagers to eliminate these middle-men. Historically, the government has blocked all NGOs from coming anywhere close to the Central Highlands, as the situation was politically sensitive and they feared international aid workers would pursue a hidden agenda of promoting rebellion. This fear seems to be abating somewhat, and there are even a few Vietnamese health workers trained by international doctors who are working with the locals to teach health and safety practices. I think more of this sort of program could at least somewhat help the current non-existent health care situation. The government actually has instituted a number of programs to offer scholarships and special training to the Montagnards under the condition that they return to their villages for a few years after their schooling. While they sound like great programs, in practice few have been able to take advantage of them, so here is another place for some expansion. Beyond these few rather obvious ideas, I think the key to designing any sort of future plan would be to make sure that it comes from the locals. I really have no idea what they would say, and it might differ dramatically among the 650 villages. There’s enough work here to employ a small army of anthropologists!
Leaving the village, we spent a little time wandering Kon Tum, an interesting town with a history of French and Montagnards, regarded today as one of the central cities for ethnic minorities, who make up 50-percent of the population. There were a number of pleasant coffee shops, wooden churches, and a seminary, but the most memorable visit for me was the orphanage run by the local nuns.
There are 200 children, almost all of whom are from the ethnic minority villages, with only 7 nuns responsible for caring for everyone. The orphanage gets a few donations from a German group, but most of the money is raised from the harvests of the small farm behind the building. The nuns seemed content to let us wander around freely, smiling but barely breaking away from their busy scurrying. There were babies all over the place; two nuns were trying to spoon formula into four crying mouths while another was changing soiled pants (diapers are not really used here). Jim and I found one baby lying alone in a crib room with a cleft pallet, distended stomach, and body parts that didn’t seem quit proportional. There were sores all over her arms and legs and she was barely responsive. The tag over her bed said she was more than three months old, but she struggled to even grip our fingers. I don’t know how long a baby like this will make it here—in America a few simple operations and proper nutrition could give this baby as bright a childhood as any, but here, with virtually no resources, it’s hard to say. The kids were adorable, playing with brooms and toys, clinging to our legs, and clamoring to follow me and Jim out of their rooms. I wanted to adopt them all (and I don’t even particularly like kids!).
A quick hour flight brought us home to Ho Chi Minh City. Arriving back to the guesthouse after trekking and traveling for two days without a shower, it felt great to just turn on the hot water and relax. I didn’t notice anything amiss in the bathroom until I was drying myself off and felt something pinch my stomach. All of a sudden my groin was on fire. I looked at my towel and saw it was crawling with fire ants—there must have been a hundred all over the towel, and to my horror, they were now all over my body! I jumped, turned on the water as hard as I could, and frantically slapped myself until I had rid myself of the beasts. Just moments later, I was swelling and scratching all over myself. Fortunately Rachael saved the day with her antihistamines, and I’m okay now!
The night concluded with a forth of July party—America’s birthday, celebrated sort of oddly with a unique Asian-American party. The hamburgers were tiny, the buns were enormous, and the spring rolls were definitely a safer bet, but it was fun to share our Independence Day with the Vietnamese roommates on the other side of the world.