Larry Fisk's collected photo essays on his recent visits to Vietnam as part of the Canadian Volunteers Abroad organization.
UPDATE: These presentations have been postponed.
Larry Fisk will be presenting on two occasions in Ontario this November:
Friday, November 6, 7pm at the White Rose Coffeehouse & Peace Café at 307 Durham Street East in Walkerton, Ontario.
Thursday, November 12, 7pm at the Bread & Roses Café (another Peace Café) at 27 King William Street in Hamilton, Ontario.
Both events are free, but donations are accepted.
Bear with me! I’m about to give you a “word picture” firstly of a trip I and five other students took to the home of Mai (the harmonica girl) in Bam Lau in the Xuyen Moc district of Viet Nam. For reasons that I won’t go into I’ve lost all the really great photos I took that day, but I’m rising to the challenge of recall. This was a breezy bus-trip of about 20 kilometres followed by a scorching walk of about one km which tapered into what some would call a “jungle path”. I’m learning that our English colloquialisms don’t really describe realities so don’t take “jungle path” in the way you’ve always understood it.
Adam Tran’s cousin Ngoc practices dentistry in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and serves three clinics in which she provides free service to the poorer members of Vietnamese society. On a visit last week I complained of a tooth which bugs me by collecting its inordinate share of stringy substances, be they vegetable, meat or fish bones. This was a family gathering but within moments I was ushered upstairs while a masked and fully prepared professional was ready to examine my teeth. Forty-five minutes later she had replaced a cracked filling, filled a gap on a receding gum and cleaned the plaque and done a bit of polishing. All this effort was accomplished without the assistance of a dental assistant or technician, without freezing (and for me largely without pain) for the special family rate of 250,000 dong or $16.00 Canadian. I was back drinking tea and eating sweets within moments.
For the first time since I discovered the beauty of this country and the gentleness of its people I have encountered the conflicts which exist around different traditions of Buddhism, a lack of knowledge, or seeming distrust, of other faiths, and the deeper conflict between dissenting Buddhists and government authorities. Prudence advises that I take care in reporting the events which provided the venue through which I met these heated differences of opinion. My goals here remain unchanged, that is, to come to understand and appreciate this people and their culture and to quietly discover paths by which “good-hearted Canadians” can come to help even the most disadvantaged of Vietnamese to practice English. My own political savvy over the years has been augmented by the advice and confirmation from my closest friends and advisors on this journey “to be careful”.
I am safe and sound in Long An, Vietnam staying in the quiet green rice-fields of this near-traditional rice-farming community. Adam Tran and I have been the guests of Kim Oanh's incredibly hospitable and immensely loving family. There are plenty of children around at all times and we have gone on at least one family trip where 17 of us squeezed joyfully into a van designed to hold about 12. We visited another family member (a devout Buddhist as it happened) who worked on a coconut plantation. I slipped and slid on the mucky path back to the modest highway. Lots of TLC from everyone.
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