Charity Interview with Will Peach

See below a short interview I was recently asked to give about the work of the Disabled and Disadvantaged Children's Charity of Ho Chi Minh City.

From Market to Mouth

Asian Cucumber-Pineapple Salad

Salad Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups fresh chopped pineapple
1 large cucumber diced
3 green onions sliced
2 red bell peppers cut up in medium sized chunks
1/2 cup peanuts (salted or unsalted)
1 cup fresh cilantro cut up
1 handful fresh basil leaves (not cut)

Directions:
Dice and put in bowl. Refrigerate until ready to add dressing.


Dressing ingredients:
2 cloves minced garlic
2 chili's diced
1 TBSP soy sauce
1 TBSP fish sauce
1 squeezed lime (just the juice ;)
2 tsp brown sugar (could do with regular sugar too)
Dash salt and pepper

Directions: Mix in separate bowl and pour over chilled vege's and fruit from above.
Put all back in fridge for 10 minutes. Serve and ENJOY!!!

Sidenote: In Vietnam, these ingredients cost you LITERALLY $1 at the local market. Quite a steal! ;)

A social experiment

Well, now I've really done it. Adorable, impatient Vietnamese youth, pink printed American dollars, and stickers/candy to kill a horse...you might as well don me with an Uncle Sam hat and print me on a poster with the caption, "Uncle Carly wants YOU!"

Teaching children is a tough job, and having spent the last 8 months with 4 year-olds who can't even write or read in their own language, let alone the one I am attempting to force on them, I thought up a quick method to the madness that is teaching: a dollar system. Now I am sure this isn't an uncommon idea, but being the frazzled "teacher" that I am, I felt pretty good about it. Trying to make it a little cultural exchange as well, I printed out American dollar bills and on the first day of my 5 most recent kiddy classes, I announced they would be encouraged to "earn" dollars through participation and practice, and would "lose" dollars for disruptive behavior or an unwillingness to try. Each child was given a "money envelope" to decorate with their English name and was given their very first dollar.

Well, let me just say, participation has been fantastic! Not even knowing what their "money" could get them, all of the kids have been STRIVING to earn those little pieces of pink paper with Washington's beaming face all over them. I seriously cannot keep their grubby little hands down!

I planned to spend a little personal money on some candy/stickers and chips every 6 weeks to encourage their earning. Who ever said money can't buy good behavior? ;)
2 weeks ago was the first "treat bank" where they could spend all their hard earned "cash." I stocked the teacher's desk with treats, had the students tell me how much money they had and started with the child who had the least amount of money. One by one, they came to the front of the class and "bought" stupid sweets which only sent them home with enormous sugar-highs, and a daring headache for me. There were tons of smiles, lots of excited little tykes running around, and finally... inevitably... eventually bragging, fear and tears.

It dawned on me that while I've successfully managed to maybe even just subconciously show the kids a small amount of what incentive and hard work can do, this whole project might also be teaching a bunch of socialistically raised kids the greed and money-based culture surrounding capitalism. I know, I know...it likely doesn't have the real impact and drastic effects on these kids that I dread, but it's crazy! It's a social experiment gone awry! A kooky laboratory of sin! A terrible trial of contradiction!

It really just makes me laugh to think I've taught something literally on accident, something that must be so hard-wired in me...yet challenges everything I believe in. Of course! Let's teach a bunch of kids who grow up learning Uncle Ho's values of sharing and equality, that if they don't do what "the man"(aka Teacher Carly) says, they can't enjoy the fruits of their little classroom society. Good idea! Not. Ah well, it remains (and continues to benefit ME in this little world of EFL education)...he who holds the money holds the power, right? :)

Ahhh Halong Bay

Mom and Liv left Vietnam yesterday morn, bright and early on a jet plane back in time! What a wonderful vacation we had..site seeing in Saigon (which I haven't done much of myself!), bus-ing it to Cambodia to visit the killing fields in Phnom Penh and the dusty streets of Siem Reap, waking up to watch the sunrise over the temples of Angkor Wat, getting hustled in Hanoi, sleeping in a "junk" on Halong Bay, eating great food, and talk talk talking our heads off. It was superb!

Halong Bay has to be fave though...an immense natural harbor of limestone karsts and rocks, one being Cat Ba Island, where we spent 6 nights. While Mom and Liv relaxed on an unoccupied beach, Jake and I did a 10 mile hike to find the endangered Langur monkey (did NOT spot one). And later rented motorbikes and toured the island, Mom and Liv gripping our sides til they learned of our excellent motorbike skills :)

One night, we rented a big boat (called a junk for reasons I still don't understand) with 2 cabins, a sundeck and dining room, to take us around Halong Bay. We swam in the warm, green water, kayaked through sea caves, visited sea farms, ate fresh fish, lounged on the deck chairs, and enjoyed the general quite. Due to a panic attack, brought on by the fan-less cabin rooms, and dreams of suffocating to death (at least this is what was happening in MY head), we all ended up wrapping ourselves in sheets and sleeping under the stars...and a thunderstorm in the wee hours of the morn. It was FANTASTIC!

And I gotta say, Mom and Liv are real troopers. At one point, our boat drivers took us to a cave, appropriately named "Surprise Cave" where just upon entering, my mom slipped while trying to listen to the breathy mumble of our non-English speaking tour guide. Looking down, she realized her finger was bent HORIZONTALLY (no exaggeration), looked at us and said, "I think I broke my finger, but let's keep going!"...Liv saw the fing, and nearly puking, screamed, "NO MOM! We have to get out of here!" Well, let me enlighten you...Vietnamese tourists may be some of the worst--no understanding of line formation, no comprehension of patience or the politeness of waiting--and we had to get Mom out of this populated "SUUUUURPRISE" cave quickly! Long story short, we made it back to the boat and they drove us back to Cat Ba Island, where NO doctors/hospitals were listed, but we found the man who rented us the boat. He took one look at her finger and said, "You no need doctor, you need Jackie Chan! You know Kung Fu?" Ummmmm....really? Her RIGHT hand, sir? Vietnamese Island?? Scary. Finally, he convinced a toothless, wife-beater wearing, 'kung fu' friend to come look at her hand. His friend touched it and with 2 cracks (REAL kung fu!!), the finger was back to vertical! No tears, no complaining, my mother kicks ass!

Back on Cat Ba we found a great little place to sleep, $10/night, harbor views, FANS! And were able to relax a bit. But it was only HERE we met Henrietta. The Vietnamese (and many Asian cultures I have learned) have a special way of keeping birds caged and happy simultaneously. There are several birds in our alley in Saigon that are SO cute and sing sooo beautifully, I heart their very existence! But none are as great as Henrietta, the caged bird at our hotel in Cat Ba. Jake spent a good long time bonding with this bird, to the point where any time we entered or exited, the xe om (motorbike taxi) drivers would call him over to watch him 'attempt' to communicate with her. What I have attached here doesn't do justice to her voice, but it DOES reveal what a couple Tiger beers and beach cocktails can make a natural born bird communicator do. Enjoy! :)

The Joads

I recently finished reading The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck and now, not only am I constantly referencing it in my day to day experiences in Vietnam, but I'm also having an incredibly hard time picking up another book. I tried reading Grapes back in 8th grade, but didn't get more than 80 pages in before putting it down. Maybe age, maybe context, maybe relevance to 12 years ago. But this time through, I couldn't put it down! I have read and savored other Steinbeck novels since then, but none like Grapes. I simply cannot believe how before-his-time Steinbeck was when writing and publishing Grapes in 1939. It still shocks me how relevant and foreword thinking this book is, especially in regard to the last 30 years of financial and social disaster in the United States (and other Western countries for that matter). It sheds a whole new light on just how much havoc greed and unchecked capitalism can wreck. More than anything, the following entry is simply a way for me to analyze what I have read and will continue to re-read; as well as a way to keep track of pages that literally blew me away. This is not to say, however, I wouldn't appreciate thoughts, opinions or comments, especially from those who have read it.


To begin, Steinbeck's writing style paints beautiful imagery of the transition from mid-west land owned by men who cared and felt for their work, to the hard cold reality that became machinery, banks and money-making at the start of an age of agricultural change. Page 35 quotes tenant men crying, "...It's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it..That's what makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it," and moves easily to colder imagery of the land being taken 3 pages later, "The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love...And when the crop grew, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers...no man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayer or curses."

He moves on to explain how individuals came together on page 165, "One man, one family driven from the land: this rusty car creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and I am bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out... Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other...For here 'I lost my land' is changed: a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate-'We lost OUR land.'The danger is here for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first 'we' there grows a still more dangerous thing: 'I have a little food' plus 'I have none.' If from this problem the sum is 'We have a little food,' the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor become ours. The two men squatting in the ditch, the little fire the side-meat stewing in a single pot, the silent stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down...this is the beginning, from 'I' to 'We.'"

Steinbeck touches on the growing fear of the Western Land as banks and owners begin to realize the change from 'I' to 'We': "The great owners, striking at the immediate thing, the widening government, the growing labor unity; striking at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things are results, not causes...The causes lie deep and simple--the causes are a hunger in a stomach, multiplied a million times; a hunger in a single soul, a hunger for joy and security, multiplied a millions times. The last clear definite function of man--muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need--this is man...And this you can know--fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive of universe (164)."

Again on page 313, "The companies, the banks worked their own doom and they did not know it. The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads. The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic, and the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides. The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment."

I just read an article from the BBC dated June 19th, 09 (5 days ago!) stating how prominent an issue world hunger currently is: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8109698.stm
and it made me think. In a time when world hunger is insanely high--1 out of 6 people are considered 'silently starving'!--this novel seems an increasingly important piece to read, analyze, and assess. It's one of my all-time favs, one I have dog-eared like a crazy person, waxed lyrical about, and would suggest to ANYONE trying to wrap their minds around the world today. Damn, it's a good one.

Motorbike, me??

I did it! I have officially overcome my irrational fear of driving a motorbike (all alone) in Saigon! Upon arriving 3 1/2 months ago, there was no way in hell I could wrap my mind around even fathoming the chaos of these streets...I had trouble just sitting on the back of Jake's bike when he bought it after 1 week! This whole time, I've been idling sitting by, watching the traffic while making an art out of keeping my arms and legs tucked as close to my body as humanly possible without beginning to sweat like a waterhose with a leak. Playing frogger and diving away from motorbikes on foot has been my mode of transportation; and while I really do enjoy a great walk, this is NOT the city for it.

I have ALWAYS had an irrational fear of accidents. Even in the States, driving over the pass on a perfectly sunny day scares the living tigers out of me. I don't know what it is! Hearing about accidents spooks me and learning about the deaths of acquaintances and friends only furthers my completely irrational terror. Perhaps it was that faulty car I bought in college...hmmm...oh Babushka! But seriously, all of you close to me know you have either driven my ass around in my car more than I have, or have watched my car begin to rust out in front of my house because I simply hate driving!

BUT tonight. I was tired. Sick of walking (better known as dodging). Bored of being a chicken ass. And too miserly (shocking) to pay for a xe om (motorbike taxi). SO. I dropped Jake off at work and did the unthinkable...kept going! It was the longest, and most fun, 8 minutes of my life! I did down and upshifting in the middle of traffic! I did stoplights! I did 4th gear! I did 2 traffic circles! I did 3 left hand turns into on coming traffic! I did an in-between-a-bus-and-taxi maneuver! All the while, swerving and tipping (and squealing to myself like a newborn piggy). Only ONCE, did I have someone turn around a stare at me when I started up at a recently turned green light and almost tipped the entire bike onto my left foot and the happy couple next to me. But ahhhhh, the freedom of it all! No wonder they say "Riding a motorbike in Saigon" is one of the things to do before you die. Now I can check it off the list!

And from now on, whenever I hear a xe om driver ask me, "Motorbike, you?" I can confidently turn and say, "No! Motorbike YOU!"

SOCIAL(ism)

Have you ever chosen a restaurant based almost entirely on price? Thought about two delish choices? Two great burrito or taco places? But the price differential determines which one you actually end up walking into, ordering from, and devouring the product of? Well, I have. And being the miser that I am, price actually often acts in the exact same motivating capacity as taste, which is truly a sad state of affairs.

Here in Vietnam though, this problem ceases to exist. The food is both cheap AND delicious! :) I have found my heaven. My ultimate dream eating culture. I can get a bowl of basil and chilli-ridden pho, banana fried with rice & coconut milk sprinkled with peanuts, a ban mi (baguette) sandwich of egg, cilantro and cucumber, or crab legs and clams boiled with garlic for anywhere from $0.50-$3.50, but NOT more. Street food is honestly phenomenal here.

The problem then becomes: WHERE??? Not only is street food cheap and yummmmmmms, but it is EVERYWHERE. You can't walk 1/4 of a block without running into another food/vege stand that looks exactly like the last. My economics-trained brain cannot make sense of this. How can there be SO much competition on ONE street block??? These places are absolutely identical. In fact, a woman will be sitting in her Vietnamese pajamas (which are SOOO comfortable and worn by Vietnamese women--and me--all day, everyday) selling cucumber, carrot, tomato, Chinese lettuce, onion and garlic right next to a woman in Vietnamese pajamas selling cucumber, carrot, tomato, Chinese lettuce, onion and garlic. What is the sense in this? What makes me choose to buy from one woman over the other?


And it is the same with most business in many parts of Saigon-probably Vietnam! The backpacker district of Saigon is lined with hotels/hostels offering the SAME room, SAME breakfast, SAME rentals, etc. I cannot COUNT the number of tourist agencies that offer the SAME price for bus rides, plane tickets, tours, etc. I mean, WHY would you open shop next door to someone selling at the, obviously, lowest price they can possibly sell at to stay in business? Wouldn't it make more sense (at least in neo-classical economic theory) to join up with your tomato selling neighbor and have only ONE of you sit there ALL DAY attempting to sell off the small amount of fruits you both have in front of you? Then, your pal and previous neighborly fruitstand seller, can go look for work elsewhere and you will BOTH profit...this is simple economies of scale, right?

I got to thinking...maybe I am missing something. I MUST be missing something. Lots of this, I am sure, can be attributed to the fact that this is most definitely NOT an entirely open market economy...The Vietnamese people are limited on just how far they can undercut their neighbor to competitively make a profit. Having grown up in a socialist environment, there is no incentive to be the top seller as "equality" and "sharing" come first in the market (in theory). In addition, they are encouraged to earn their piece of the national pie--which is perhaps why you see so little 'begging for money' in Ho Chi Minh City. Anyone who wants to make a little money, finds something to sell, something to create, or something to shine/polish instead of simply holding out an open palm. This aspect of Vietnam has been difficult to understand (in practice) compared with my culturally forced view of capitalism and how we create "incentive" in the States.

I've only recently come to understand that it goes far beyond money/reward to the Vietnamese people. Not only is there a monetary network of trust and division among market vendors, but a life of community, relaxation and goodwill. I have rounded few a corner without encountering a group of women, relaxing, sipping their tea or coffee, chatting about the days events or gossiping about the men down the street. In the heat of the afternoon, parks and street curbs are filled with men coupled off playing Chinese chess. And I have NEVER come upon a Vietnamese person rushing around trying to determine how much he owes her, or she owes him. EVERY street is touched by a family, or community of people, recognizing the importance of life--FAMILY AND FRIENDS.

What the Vietnamese people appear to lack in the ability to make profits, they make up for in relationships and through this, longevity. And to a neoclassically trained economist this is not only shocking and awe-inspiring, but appetizing and freeing. Given the inability to undercut your neighbor or put the store down the road out of business has created a culture of compassion. These people have found a way to relax in the midst of all this chaos; it's inspiring and something we could all learn a bit from...