STORIES

Three Women

In Vietnam and Cambodia we met mostly men. They were our tour guides, travel agents, taxi drivers, and hotel staff. They didn't talk much- no matter how persistently we enquired, especially about the war. We heard so many answers that sounded rehearsed. The crap they tell tourists to make us smile and shut up. Of course, good humor and bull shit only goes so far when you are attempting to really learn about a place, its history and how the people survive. Remarkably it was three individual women in three corners of Vietnam and Cambodia that would allow us to dig into the truth about their lives.

WIDOWS

In the northern part of Vietnam, on the water, close to China is a bay full of thousands of small limestone islands jutting out of the sea. HaLong bay, the resting place of dragons, is a peaceful place. It's massive, yet still swarming with crowds of tourists all looking for the best priced boat tour around the bay. We were no different.

On board an old wooden boat we settled with 16 other tourists and half dozen crew members, only one woman among them. She was to prepare and serve the meals, do the washing, clean the cabins, and in her spare time, sell us pearls from nearby oyster farms. As we sat, one foggy morning drinking instant coffee and perusing her collection of fine jewelry, we started to ask about her life.

In between haggling for the lowest pearl prices we learned an all too frequent tragedy of Vietnamese women. She was 32, a widow, with two children living with her mother more than four hours from the nearest port. Her husband died several years ago in a motorcycle accident, leaving her with two kids and no income. She showed us worn snapshots of her two children, six and eight, standing next to a large photo of their father and a shrine surrounding it. The youngest doesn't remember her father. Two years ago, she joined this boat to work as a crew member for forty dollars a month, and one day off in-between to see her children. We stopped haggling over pearls.

Several days later we heard on the radio that 11,000 people die each year in Hanoi from motorcycle accidents. Hanoi has a population of 3.4 million. To put that into perspective, in the US, population 300 million, less than 3500 people die each year in motorcycle accidents. We could speculate for hours, the differences to cause these statistics, more drivers, smaller streets, less police enforcement, lack of traffic lights, but in reality there is only one cause. No helmets. Thankfully on December 15th 2007, Vietnam instated a new law requiring all motorcyclists to wear helmets. Why it took them so long, we can only wonder.

FAMILY

Somewhere in central Vietnam, we were traveling in a mini-bus, crammed full of travelers, just trying to get from one city to another. The Vietnamese lady sitting next to me was petite, dark haired, and snoring loudly on my shoulder. It was amusing- then she woke up and started talking. Her English was remarkably good. Without even asking I got her life story. She was traveling with her son and his new wife to Sapa in North Vietnam. She lived in Ho Chi Minh City in the south, but had never managed to travel north. Both her husband and herself we teachers, she of course, taught English and her husband, Mathematics. At age 55, she was forced to retire, government rules, while her husband continued working another four years. Her two sons, now grown up, had just married, and she was alone. I remember her saying, over and over, "I'm just so lonely now".

For the next three and a half hours we talked about her family, her dogs, and her house in Ho Chi Minh City. Somewhere towards the end she asked my religion. I stumble with this question. There really isn't a simple answer, so I picked the shortest one. "I'm Christian, and you?" Proudly, she exclaimed "Me too." She began reciting all the great parts of the bible, and how she loved Jesus and Mary so much. I laughed inside. She invited us to Christmas dinner with her family in Ho Chi Minh City. I tried to explain politely, that by Christmas we would be somewhere deep in Cambodia, but her offers continued. All her children would be there, with their wives, and her husband, and even her sister who lives in Texas. They were making a feast- Vietnamese style.

I remember thinking, what a wonderful place. This woman who I met three hours ago, who doesn't know more than two sentences about me, invited us to spend the most important day of the year in her house.

WAR & MONEY

The third woman we met at a restaurant in Phnom Pehn. It was quaint and right across from our hotel, built into the front of a house. They had menus, but we didn't bother. We asked for whatever was good. The waitress came back with three heaping bowls of curry in three different colors. One was Thai, the other Khmer, and the last one, chef's specialty. So we inquired, what's in this? Why is it so good? We couldn't stop eating. It was our first night in Cambodia and we didn't have a clue.

After we got through the ingredients of every curry, the markets to buy the spices at, and the best cook books to use, we asked about her life. Why was she here? How did she learn such good English? Where did she learn to cook? The restaurant was nearly empty. We ordered another round.

She was born the year that the Khmer Rouge regime had fallen, 1979. Her family barely survived the war. She told us a story of her parents, sitting in a town meeting just after Pol Pot had taken over. The leaders said they were looking for intelligent people to run the new communities. They asked anyone in the crowd with an education to raise there hand. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, all of them. "Write down your name," they said. There was a moment where her father started to raise his hand. He was a teacher. Her mother smacked it down. She said "Wait. Just wait and see what happens to the others." She saved their lives.

In the middle of the night the Khmer Rouge went through the town calling names. Everyone on the list, everyone with an education. Then they started the executions - one at a time with machetes and clubs. Bullets were too precious for humane killings. Our waitress went on, about the regime, how they survived, her eight brothers and sisters, and one other who couldn't survive the famine that followed the war.

When she was young she worked cleaning rooms and as a waitress in a small restaurant. Farm girls who had no farms left were forced to work cooking or cleaning for someone else, usually "a half-blood from China", she explained. She lived on a shack on someone's roof. There wasn't enough money to live with her parents. The commute was too far. She wasn't making enough to survive, and neither were her parents.

An American man came one day to the restaurant, someone she had seen before, but did not know well. He offered her a job as a secretary in his office. She had no idea why he picked her. She has no skills, no money, and could hardly speak English. She took the job and worked as diligently as she could. Her first monthly paycheck was $100. She said she was so happy she cried. For $100. It's nothing really, pocket change here. For us, a dinner out, a new pair of shoes, a cell phone bill. That $100 changed her life. Her family survived because of it.

I realized that week, her story wasn't one in a million- it was one of millions just like it.