Shame

On the night that Huyen's Great Grandmother died, I had tea with a 68-year-old man wearing a green jacket and a traditional Vietnamese bamboo army helmet. The man shook my hand many times and then began to tell everyone who would listen a story. The man started to talk about the war with America and how he had served in the war. With great pride he told about how he had given two American P.O.W.'s sandals because they had no shoes.

Two days later, at the funeral, Huyen mentioned to me for the first time that her Great Grandmother had just two children. One of her children was Huyen's Grandmother who I have spent lots of time with. Her other child was a son who was killed in the war with America. Like Huyen's Uncle who died fighting America, his body was never found. When I learned this, it was a kick to the gut. Huyen's Great Grandmother was always so good to me -- she would hold my hand as we drank tea every time I would visit her -- despite the fact that my country killed her only son. In Vietnam, having a son is of the utmost importance. A son is the person who will take care of his parents when they get old. America changed Huyen's Great Grandmother's life for the worse and she held no bitterness towards me.

At the funeral, Huyen's Grandfather and some other relatives took me over to the cemetery where many members of their family are buried. They pointed out who people were and lit incense on their graves. As we started to leave, I saw that one headstone was missing the ceramic box that contains the deceased person's bones. I asked why the box was missing and Huyen's Grandfather's brother told me that the person had died from the effects of Agent Orange. The government had recognized those who died from Agent Orange as deserving to be buried in a military cemetery and had thus moved the box. If you're counting, including Huyen's uncle, that's at least three relatives of Huyen's who died because of America.

One thing that I learned in Japan is that the Japanese have a great shame about War World II. One time over lunch with my Professor friend, talk of War World II came up. Basically the conversation went from me living in Vietnam, to the Vietnam War, to me saying something like, "Many countries including Japan have a history in Vietnam" (referring to the Japanese occupation of Vietnam during WWII). The Professor looked at me and with great sadness in his eyes said, "Japan has a great shame."

It occurred to me at the funeral that the majority of Americans don't feel a sense of shame about the Vietnam War. When Americans talk about the war we often say how it was a tragedy that nearly 60,000 Americans died and hundreds of thousands were injured for an unnecessary war. The media usually references the Vietnam war as what the American military shouldn't do again. i.e. Get in a war we can not win. Rarely do the majority of Americans or the media talk about the millions of Vietnamese we killed and frankly, the countless war crimes we committed like the use of chemical defoliants that have poisoned the ground here for decades. America has a great shame when it comes to the Vietnam War and shamefully most Americans don't feel it.

In America we have a saying, "Proud to be American." Frankly, there have been many times while living in Vietnam that I have not been proud to be American. I have a great shame about what my country did to the people of this country.

The Funeral: After Party

(PICTURE: Huyen and her Great Grandma.)

Being white and a half a foot taller then everyone usually gets me a lot of attention when I leave Hanoi for the countryside. To be honest, I usually like this attention. However, at Huyen's Great Grandmother's funeral the last thing I wanted to be was a distraction.

Before the funeral I got lots of puzzled looks from the older generations that gathered at the house. I can say with 99% certainty that I'm probably the first foreigner to come to this village since the American P.O.W. that Huyen's Grandmother told me about in September (that story is here: http://ahoyhanoi.blogspot.com/2009/08/war.html). A couple of people waved me over to drink tea with them but besides that everyone let me blend in. Although there was one funny moment when Huyen's Uncle -- who her Great Grandmother had lived with -- turned to me and said, "My Grandmother [the deceased] told me that she's happy you came today." Everyone around us got a good laugh.

After the funeral, it was another story. It was as if a light switch had turned on and the sadness temporarily ended. The women who were wailing stopped shedding tears and the men quickly replaced the tea with wine. Everyone sat around eating food prepared by the neighbors, catching up and having a good time. For those who had been paying little attention to me it was as if all of a sudden this giant awkward foreigner had materialized in order to cheer everyone up. With my one-year-old Vietnamese child's vocabulary in hand, I proceeded to smile a lot and play my role as a special guest. Everyone wanted to have a drink with me and hear me use my limited vocabulary. After a couple of hours of eating, drinking and shaking hands, people went back to their homes and started their days at work.

When I think about it, a Vietnamese funeral has many similarities to a Western funeral: Family and friends gather, they make their way to the cemetery and afterwards gather at the grieving family's home and try and temporarily alleviate the sadness with food and family stories. It's moments and experiences like this that remind me how similar human beings are everywhere in the world. We may do some things a little bit differently but when you scratch the surface we all care about our families and hurt to see someone leave us.

The Funeral: Process

(PICTURE: A Vietnamese funeral. The graves you see are not where a person is buried though at a funeral. Read below.)

Let me take you through what happens to a Vietnamese person after they die:

Step 1: The day that a person passes away they are laid out in the family home. Friend, neighbors and family come to the house to spend time with the person grieving (This was my blog two days ago).

Step 2: The day after the person passes away they are put into a decorative wooden box. This box is kept at the family home and has a glass window that allows you to see the person's face.

Step 3: Two days after the person passes away everyone gathers again and has a procession to the rice paddies. The person is then buried in the rice paddy.

Step 4: Three or five years (depending on what a psychic says) after a person is buried in the rice paddy, their box is dug up. The box is then opened and all of their bones are washed. The washed bones are then placed into a small ceramic box and laid to rest in a cemetery or a nice tomb in the rice paddies. The picture above shows these nicer tombs.

As I mentioned yesterday, a lot of people -- mostly family -- gathered together two days after Huyen's Great Grandmother passed away. It was pouring rain on the Thursday and there were so many people that they could not possibly fit in one house. All of the neighbors set up tarps and put out tables and chairs for people. The neighbors also cooked food for everyone to eat after the funeral.

Huyen's Great Grandmother was in the box, still inside the house. It was like two different worlds: inside the house women were wailing and hysterically crying. Outside of the house people chatted away and tried to stay dry. While all this was going on a six or seven person band played traditional Vietnamese music on very old instruments. The instruments gave off an eerily beautiful sound that could be heard underneath the crying.

An announcement was made and it was time for the funeral procession to start. Men gathered and lifted up the box and placed it on top of a wagon. In front of the wagon were dozens of women from the local pagoda who carried colorful flags. The band took their places in front of the wagon and played as we walked out of the village and into the rice paddies. We walked about 3/4 of a mile, constantly stopping on the way. Eventually we came to the rice paddy where Huyen's Great Grandmother was laid into the earth. Like in Western burials, the coffin was placed completely under the ground. However, unlike Western burials, a giant mound of mud and dirt was piled on top of the coffin. The workers dug out a moat of sorts around the grave. All around us were other giant piles of dirt with incense burning on top of them. We were literally surrounded by everyone from the village who had died within the last five years.

The Funeral: Family

(PICTURE: Men wearing headbands at a funeral.)

Just when I started to think that I understood Vietnamese culture pretty well, I realized once again that I'm totally a foreigner. Two days after Huyen's Great Grandmother passed away, we went back to her village for the funeral. As I packed to go I deliberately left my camera on my desk. Usually my camera goes everywhere with me but my Western instincts told me it would be rude to take pictures at the funeral -- boy was I wrong. As soon as I arrived at the house, I was asked by multiple relatives if I had brought my camera (After taking pictures at many family events and printing an album for Huyen's parents I'm now associated with my camera). When I told them I didn't have my camera I could tell they were a little disappointed. Apparently taking pictures is the thing to do at funerals. Luckily Huyen's family wasn't counting on me to be the documentarian because they hired a videographer and a photographer to capture the event.

At first I thought this was odd but it soon started to make sense to me. A funeral, more so than any other event including a wedding, brings out the whole family. I would estimate that there were roughly one hundred relatives who showed up for the funeral. At a wedding you get a bunch of relatives but you mostly get friends and coworkers. Maybe you're asking yourself, "How do you know people were family and not friends?" Well, it's easy to tell who is who at a funeral because family all wear headbands and shrouds. At a funeral, like many things in Vietnam, there is a hierarchy and distinction between ages:

Immediate Family (children, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives) wear white shrouds and headbands.

Second Generation Family (grandchildren) wear white headbands.

Third Generation (great grandchildren like Huyen) wear gold headbands.

Fourth Generation (great great grandchildren like Huyen's nephew) wear red headbands.

One of the things that was really interesting to me is the age differential between people wearing the same colored headbands. Sometimes people who were 40 years apart in age were wearing the same colored headband. The reason is pretty simple: before most people had only two children in Vietnam, families would have lots and lots of children. Huyen's grandparents for example had 8 kids. Someone else I met had 12 children. Sometimes the oldest child would have their first child before their mother was finished having her last child. This means that sometimes in one generation a nephew is older than his/her uncle or aunt. Its one thing to wrap your head around that in theory, but it's another thing when Huyen is calling someone just ten years older than me the title of "Grandpa." It is even weirder when Huyen's father has to address this same person who is twenty years young than him as "Anh" which men say to another man older than them.

It didn't take long for Huyen to turn to me and say, "Don't ask me who people are because I have no idea who they are." I would say half the funeral people spent introducing themselves and figuring out how they were related and what title they should call one another. The point is though, nearly the whole family came out for the funeral.

Huyen's Great Grandmother

(PICTURE: Huyen's Great Grandmother, Grandmother, Huyen and me back in August.)

Last Tueday, about ten minutes before Huyen was supposed to come home, she called me and said, "I have some bad news. My great grandmother passed away." My stomach dropped as I felt of the loss that Huyen and her family had just encountered.

Over the next couple of days I'm going to blog about the funeral and death in Vietnam. Yes, it's a downer of a topic right upon returning to Hanoi, but it is the single most Vietnamese experience I've had in my time out here.

When Huyen returned home we immediately got on her motorbike and drove an hour out to her grandparents' village. As we drove through the darkness I asked Huyen to teach me the appropriate thing to say in Vietnamese to a grieving person. She told me the sentence -- which roughly translates to, "Let me share your sadness" -- and I practiced over and over again during the hour long drive. When we pulled up to her Aunt's house (where her great grandmother had been living) there was already a crowd of people going into the house. Before I could even take my helmet off, Huyen's Grandmother approached me, wailing out "Oh God" in Vietnamese as tears streamed down her face. I tried to say the line that Huyen had taught me but it didn't come out right. Frankly it didn't matter though because she was inconsolable at that moment. Huyen's grandfather came out of the house, shook my hand, and escorted his wife back into the house.

A group of men called me into the house and sat me down to drink tea. As they poured me a glass I couldn't help but notice that only a few feet away were all the women standing and crying with her Great Grandmother's body which was laid out on the bed, draped by a mosquito net. Huyen's aunt (not the one the great grandmother lived with but another who lives around the corner who Huyen always tells me takes care of everyone) was laying with the body, wailing louder than anyone I have ever heard wail. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is the first time I can really say that I've ever seen anyone wail.

Huyen's great grandmother was 100 years old as of January 1st. No matter how old someone is, it's always too soon when somebody you love passes away.

(PICTURE: Huyen and her great grandmother last November.)

Happy Birthday, Huyen!!!!

Come on, everyone, sing along with me:

Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday dear Huyen. Happy Birthday to you!

In the last year Huyen cut off her hair, traveled abroad for the first time, changed jobs three times and moved in with me. It's been a pretty darn good year!

It's Good To Be Back

NOTE: I have been back in Hanoi for a week already but decided to let my Japan blogs play out as I settled back into life here in Vietnam.


(PICTURE: Huyen and me in our new apartment.)

After more than three months away, I can finally say, "It's good to be back."

Despite all its faults -- traffic, pollution, dirty streets -- I love Hanoi. Obviously Huyen being here is the cherry on top of why I love this city. I'm gonna take this first blog to tell an anecdote about how great my girlfriend is:

A few months ago, Huyen and I decided to live together when I returned to Hanoi. Her roommate was moving back to her hometown and it just made sense for us to live together rather than both of us finding a new apartment. As I'm sure you can imagine, a Vietnamese girl living with her boyfriend is extremely unheard of here. But, well, Huyen is without a doubt the most liberal thinking Vietnamese girl I've met so it made sense that she was willing to give living together a shot. On top of that, if we're going to take things to the next level I think it only makes sense to move in together. Its better to find out now about intolerable cultural differences than down the road when say there is a little Nguyen/August running around.

Over the last month or so, via the internet and friends, Huyen started to scout out apartments for us. As much as I wanted to live in my amazing house from last year, I didn't want us to live with strangers. My experience with the people I lived with before and after Ryan taught me that it is better to live in a smaller place than in a bigger place with disgusting slobs.

Huyen checked out a whole bunch of places and we finally settled on an apartment in a quiet neighborhood about five minutes from my old house (I'll blog about the apartment in the coming weeks). Before I left Japan, Huyen and I talked about our plans for the next week. First things first, we were gonna spend the day after I arrived moving all of our stuff into our new place. Huyen took a few days off of work so we could spend time together and get our house in order. Well, after picking me up at the airport, we headed straight to the new apartment. When we got to the apartment and the door swung open I immediately saw that all of my stuff was not only there but it was unpacked and organized. It only took me a second to connect the dots -- Huyen had single handedly moved everything into the apartment. Mind you, we live on the third floor of a walk-up and between the two of us we have A LOT of stuff.

I was in slight shock that Huyen had done this and can't adequately describe the look of pride and happiness she had on her face. I'm sure it was only matched by my feeling of pride for her and happiness that I didn't have to spend my first day back in Hanoi lugging boxes. By this act alone, I can safely say Huyen is gonna be the greatest roommate I've ever had.

It's good to be back...