On Sunday, September 7th at 6:15am in the small island District Hoa Ninh in the city of Vihn Long, Vietnam I had a very interesting conversation with a man named Ong Vy. I had awoken to a cool breeze generated by a rusty fan blowing air upon my face beneath a mosquito net. There’s something I always find reassuring about sleeping under netting, perhaps the knowledge that malaria-inducing blood-sucking creatures will not feast on me that night is one of them.
My group of fellow Lewis & Clark students, along with a couple of other American students in Vietnam went on a two day excursion to the Mekong Delta, an area home to some 20 million of the 90 million Vietnamese population, with the goal of making observations into what we had gleamed from our brief Environmental Sustainability class so far. It was through this opportunity that my conversation with Ong Vy unfurled.
Over cups of Vietnamese coffee and French baguettes, Ong Vy politely pretended he understood my basic Vietnamese greeting sentences before we broke out into more serious discussions in rudimentary conversational English. He told me of his one trip to the United States where he visited family who had managed to emigrate to San Francisco and Huston.
Given his willingness to converse, and my focus on environmental issues, I focused the conversation on these themes. When inquired about the major issues that Vietnam faces today, Ong Vy gave me three responses:
- Air pollution
- The mentality of the people
- Water pollution
I requested for further clarification on the 2nd item that was mentioned. Numbers One and Three had been perfectly clear to me, yet I was slightly confuse as to what Ong Vy meant when he referred to “The mentality of the people.” While this is a slight paraphrasing, he mentioned the ideas of the “Me over the We” similar to those mentioned by Harms. Ong Vy informed me that the Vietnamese people only do what is right when they are being watched. This relates largely to littering and corruption. He said specifically that on the island of the Mekong Delta, garbage disposal is a substantial issue plaguing the region. While the people may not litter in front of police officers or members of the military out of fear of reciprocity, the second eyes are off of them sheer hedonistic desires reign free. People would rather place their waste on the ground — in the public space — over in proper waste disposal reciprocals due to convenience. The same goes for corruption in that the people will eagerly receive bribes as long as they are under the impression that their actions will remain unpunished.
According to the idea of this man long in the tooth, Vietnamese society today will not be able to progress as long as the people continue to prioritize their own personal wellbeing over the collective good of society.
This early morning talk resonated heavily with my Scandinavian ideas of “society over self.” Yet interestingly enough, I had trouble empathizing with his worries. While I am not able to speak on the levels of corruption in Vihn Long, I could take note of his references to personal pollution in the Mekong Delta.
Not many hours after our conversation I partook in a bike ride through the region with my colleagues. While rundown homes, and poorly maintained infrastructure were a heavily present theme of my short journey, excess waste was not heavily present compared to my previous experiences in Ho Chi Minh City, the largest metropolis in the rapidly industrializing nation of Vietnam. Please take not of figures Two and Three, comparing a short ride through the delta to simple photographic documentation of District One, the wealthiest area in the former Saigon.
I consider myself in no place to critique the options of a village elder on the issues that face society today: however, I can say that relative to the same issue in other areas of the nation, Ong Vy is likely prioritizing his fears in a different way than so many others would choose to do.
Shortly after our conversation came to an end, other members of my group began to filter out of their rooms, water bottles in hand and blood-shot eyes galore. While I would have liked to continue to learn of his ideals, the hullabaloo of our day began.