Cycles

On a rainy afternoon a few days ago, Paul and I went into a cafe. I was seeking out wireless connection so that I could upload images and he settled with a magazine at a table nearby. After unsuccessful attempts to get on the internet, I came over to where he was and he showed me this article. It is from "The Guide" which is a Vietnamese Magazine. I found it an important piece and would like to share it with you.

"Life as it is"

Nguyen Ngoc Tu wrote a story about an old man in Ca Mau Province who became angry with tour operators and travel companies because they wanted him to stay in his weather-beaten old thatched cottage at the southernmost tip of the country so they could bring tourists to take photographs of him.
In other words, the tourism sector tried to keep him in as humble a way of life as long as possible. The old man was angry because he wanted to be able to enjoy the same benefits of civilisation as everyone else.
Life keeps moving foward and modernisation is surely changing everything, including traditional cultural values. But the changes are not just one way. They are full of parodoxes. As change is natural and beyond our power to resist, there is no way to prevent it even if we wanted to. On the other hand, change can create new and special things.
I have a French friend, Boris Lojkine, who is both a professor of philosophy and a talented producer of documentaries. Recently, he came to Vietnam to make a film about ethnic minorities in Central Vietnam. I went with him on a survey in the highlands of Quang Nam Province.
He was very disappointed because the picture in his mind of the special cultural features of minority people have changed. Stilt houses have become bungalows; thatched roofs have become metal; forests and mountains have been destroyed and the land is barren and terribly hot; the young men roar their motorbikes along the rough mountain paths like maniacs (without wearing helmets).
I spent a night sitting and talking with him. And finally, we realised one thing: the changes are entirely natural, and such is life-life that struggles with change every day, trying to find a way to move foward while still trying, with great difficulty, to preserve itself as it is but at the same time trying to avoid being left too far behind.
It seems that man is nostalgic by nature. But beauty exists in the constant movement of life. I mention this story because I was wondering whether we really want to introduce tourists ot a tourism "product" in the Mekong Delta that is a false copy of a natural feature that is disappearing naturally. It is just something intended to decieve tourists.
I wonder whether we should take international tourists to see and understand how hard it is for a culture to experience natural changes, and how brave people in the Mekong Delta are in their struggle to remain what they really are-typical of the area, but also at to be as modern people in other places.
Of course, their are are successes and failures everywhere. Both are significant, and I believe that it is important to take tourists to see and understand reality. I believe the people of the Mekong Delta, who are naturally simple and quiet, know how to find their own way to move forward on the road of modernisation.
There will be a new and unique type of culture in the Mekong Delta. It will be no less special than it was in the past. Tourism, as always, is about culture and cultural exchange.
It should find out about change and the formation of a new culture in this area. It is necessary to find a new way. And in my opinion, this should be the direction of culture in its most profound sense as well as its more contemporary features.

-Ngyuen Ngoc


I think the message of this article is a very imporant one. Being here as a foreign photographer, I find myself constantly thinking about what is being portrayed by the images that are made. Clearly, it is vital to be an honest witness-not assuming to understand what is being observed, nor to over-glorify a certain way because it is novel to what we are conditioned to see or experience. I must admit, that when I first arrived to Ho Chi Minh, I was eager to get out of the city as soon as possible. Not only because I don't consider myself a big-city kind of girl, but because I was eager to see the "real Vietnam." I wanted to see the "simple" (poor) farmers, rice paddies and open spaces. But in truth, the "real Vietnam" is all of it-from the motor-bike chaos and lit up billboards of HCM to the dirt roads and thatched structures along the beach in Phu Hai where we delivered food. This country is quickly devolping, and it is clear that people want change. Just as the use of the word "primitive" can be problematic, so is the use of the word "traditional." To assume that people are living in certain circumstances because of "tradtion" is unfair. Many of the families we spoke with in Phu Hai live there because they have nowhere else to go. The land is sand. Nothing grows. They live along the water in structures that need to be rebuilt several times each year as they cannot withstand the winds and flooding of the rainy season's typhoons. School cannot be afforded until families have enough to eat, but education is vital for changes in the community. Litter is everywhere and as we walked in Phu Hai, we passed a huge landfill nestled in the dunes of the beach. This is not tradtional. People did not choose to live here based on thier cultural practices, they are living here because they have no other option.

I am reading a book right now called "The Real Environmental Crisis," by Jack M. Hollander. It is timely to read this now. Hollander's central argument for the book is that "essential prerequisites for a sustainable environmental future are a global transition from poverty to affluence, coupled with a transition to freedom and democracy..."
To be an "environmentalist" can be viewed at as a luxury that can be afforded since basic necessities are taken care of...
"People living in poverty perceive the environment very differently from the affluent. To the world's poor-several billion people- the principle environmental problems are local, not global. They are not the stuff of media headlines or complicated scientific theories. They are mundane, pervasive and painfully obvious:
-Hunger-chronic undernourishment of a billion children and adults caused not only by scarcity of food resources but by poverty, war, and government tyranny and incompetence.
-Contaminated water supplies-a major cause of chronic disease and mortality in the third world.
-Diseases-rampant in the poorest countries. Most could be readily eradicated by modern medicine, while others, including the AIDS epidemic in Africa, could be mitigated by effective public health programs and drug treatments available to the affluent.
-Scarcity-insufficient local supplies o fuelwood and other resources, owing not to intrinsic scarcity but to generations of overexploitation and underreplenishment as part of the constant struggle for survival.
-Lack of education and social inequality, especially of women-lack of education resulting in high birthrates and increasing the difficulty for families to escape fromt he dungeons of poverty."

Hollander suggests that by breaking the poverty cycle, the self-perpetuating cylce of environmental degredation will break as well. He says there is a human obligation that must be recognized by people everywhere to lift the poor out of poverty-to to catapault every person into a level of affluence that is focused on consumerism and excess, but to realize that all people are entitled basic human rights in terms of access to adequate housing, enough food and water, and education.

I am probably preaching to the choir. But I found the article and the message of the book to both be good reminders that change is a constant and given that it is inevitable, why don't we work to make mindfull, compassionate change.

I hope that the work we are doing here can have some lasting impact, even if for only one family, one child.

love, eva