On our way to Halong Bay the bus stopped, both there and back, at the half-way point so we could all go to the bathroom and buy some souveneirs from a store that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.
Inside the store was a large warehouse space where they sold soft drinks, biscuits, crisps, ice-creams, postcards, clothing, hats, laquerware, embroidery and the like. There was even a factory with a few dozen people working on sewing machines putting all the stuff together. There were signs outside saying "No Photos" which I initially, and wrongheadedly, put down to the evil sweatshop bosses not wanting to be caught in the act of exploiting all the piece-workers who were doubtless working 19 hour days and sleeping under their sewing machines.
Wrong; so, so wrong.
The store was an outlet for - and I'm paraphrasing the sign on the wall here: "The survivors and families who were affected by Agent Orange in the American War. The sale of these goods helps support these victims and their families."
The guy who took my money for the bottle of water and peanut brittle I bought had no arms below the elbows. So many of the people working there were doing so quite happily with missing limbs and distorted features. On the return journey we stopped at the sister store across the road and I noticed the girl behind the book counter because she was beautiful with long dark hair and a smooth round face. When she turned her head her other eye was completely disfigured, as though part of her skull had melted beneath the surface and both eyes looked in differen directions.
I've seen a couple of beggars here who worked their disfigurement with aplomb. There was a woman by the main lake in Old Town Hanoi who walked around with a small hand-held placard in Vietnamese showing before and after pictures of herself - she'd been pretty, but then something had happened whereby her face had melted away and she'd lost her right breast - she had a topless photo to prove it that she showed to validate her story. There was also a guy by the hospital who waved his stumped thigh at me as he balanced on crutches and shook his bowl.
In the case of the woman by the lake, my initial and shameful response was to give her some money to make her go away so I didn't have to confront her ugliness (Her lower left eye lid drooped to reveal a red gash of inner eye flesh, her top lip was partly missing to show her skeletal teeth and gums). But I waited while she tried to explain her story to me in Vietnamese. I thought I could do her the courtesy of not throwing money at her and running away. Obviously she'd dealt with her disfigurement and her ego and had, in some way I still can't quite appreciate, learned to make it work for her. I guess from her point of view, if she can earn fat sums begging from rich westerners what does she care for our motives? But it struck me that in the west I'd never see begging like that. I know there are guys with no legs outside subways in New York but I can't recall any being so brazen and in your face with it. No bare stumps brandished to get the revulsion dollars; precious little burn-scarred skin shown on the #1 train at Times Square. I think it would maybe result in open hostility and disgust.
I'm not sure what my point is here, other than in a poor country a symbol of the poverty might be how little room there can be for sentimentality or middle-class niceties when it comes to trying to get by. Beggars can't just beg - they have to parade their afflictions and wounds to compete. What else do they have? Or maybe it's just a technique that works on sensitive Westerners - the same protocol as the street hawkers use when they ask you over and over if you'll buy something: if we could bear to be impolite from the get-go then they'd get the point, but somehow, we can be bullied through our own softness into a sale. How many times do people get caught after initially saying no only to tell the motorbike hawker their destination when he asks where they're going, and then to get drawn into a negotiation? How many times do we get into conversations with the guy selling crap postcards and become engaged instead of just ignoring him? It's an interesting social comparison that those who need the small amounts they earn from us to survive have obviously understood on some level. I've noticed since I've just started saying no and ignoring the hawkers they leave me alone immediately (whistling Queen songs seems to help, too). But when I've been polite and said "No thank you, I don't want a motorbike, thanks." and been less offhand and dismissive they've badgered me endlessly.
I also realised my pity is worthless to anyone except me. It's no use to a woman who's been disfigured unless I get my hand in my pocket. Pity is such a self-aggrandising, impotent feeling. It does nothing except for the person who feels it - and who wants to be pitied? (Btw, in the West the beggars I do resent are the ones who try to illicit pity and who display an affected simper and snivel. Not that I'm one to advise on the marketing of beggars but really, pity isn't a good angle, it's the whinging of begging and the flip side of pity for me is contempt, which is why I maybe don't like feeling pity myself, it's a dirty feeling--that may sound callous but if you've encountered the beggars I mean then you'll know what I'm talking about and if you haven't you'll just be thinking I'm a heartless wanker; which of course I am).
I'm trying to work out if there is a dignified way to visit poor countries as a rich westerner (and we are all filthy, stinking rich, every one of us, in comparison) without the trip being a twenty-first century version of Victorian "Slumming it." I was fascinated walking around Hanoi because, as I've said, people live on the streets. It's the culture. But it's not the culture for the rich Vietnamese - they're not sitting on small plastic stools and eating from a plate on the sidewalk only a few feet from the traffic like most of the people I've seen here. And I'm trying to work out which things are culturally viable differences (and therefore photographable), and which things are just a product of being poor - which is a universal indignity that doesn't need plump, rich white people pointing cameras at and digitising to show their friends over $5 lattes on their $2500 laptops. From what I understand the average Vietnamese person earns around $50-60 per month. Maybe the line of demarcation is hazy and vague, like the line between porn and erotica? I know it when I see it.
But back to the Agent Orange. The American War (as it's called over here) ended 30 years ago. It's a sin that people are still suffering and are living off in their own community outside of Hanoi (or that's how it appeared to me - maybe that's not the case). It's a timely reminder with the Iraq Invasion still in effect. Governments don't win or lose wars - people do. And Vietnam and the Vietnamese won theirs - it's a Communist country, which is what America was trying to prevent - and still there are young people with melted faces or who's every step twists their spine in awkward spasms a generation on.
But not on our streets. Is that just because we're richer?
I bought a book from the pretty girl. She was cute and I'm a dreaful flirt: A People's History of the War - printed and badly typeset in Vietnam. They were also selling some US Account of the tunnel warfare a Chu Chi and the blurb on the back went something like: "A Story about the brave US soldiers who climbed into tunnels so dangerous it was like crawling into Hell." I wonder if the girl with the melted face saw the irony that she should be making a living selling some jingoistic US account of a war that left her so scarred? I hope she was selling marked-up, pirated versions of those books.
I'm going to the DMZ zone in Central Veitnam next. I want to be a respectful witness to a terrible human event rather than a voyuer.
I'm genuinely not sure how to go about it.
