Long Overdue!

HI everyone! Jenny Here!

First of all I want to apologize for taking so long to update again. The pictures below, of Friendship Village, were added by Lauren last week. Friendship Village is the home for disabled children that is about a 10 minute bike ride away from our dorm outside Hanoi. We live in a neighborhood called Tay Mo, which has a small village of shops and markets, next to a series of different farms that we’re assuming grow rice, because the squares of land are for the most part under water. This makes for a really interesting bike ride from the dorm to the Friendship village past Tay Mo…a mix of unattractive concrete houses and shops, some houses made of more traditional materials, huge buildings off in the far distance, factories nearer to Tay Mo, and all along the road these rice paddies that can look really beautiful minus these other industrial surroundings. The people moving around could be walking carrying baskets and wearing traditional cone shaped hats, or riding on motorbikes or trucks spewing out visible exhaust. This mix of old and new is all over Vietnam, and it can often seem that the more modern aspects of the terrain outside the city was rushed in its creation, or it can be interesting that some older aspects have lasted through it. Although we sometimes wish that our dorm was closer to our work (Lisa and I), or at least closer to the city center where we like to hang out, Lo and I were talking the other day about how it’s kind of cool being on the outskirts. For one thing its closer to Friendship village, and can be a tiny bit quieter during the week than the city, but also because if it weren’t for our volunteering placement we probably would have never gotten to understand what it’s like 17km away in a seemingly obscure suburb/village down a half concrete/half dirt road off of the highway, haha. Interesting to say the least, and I think we have taught at least 20 cab drivers how to get there (they never admit they don’t know where they’re going…ever)

My work at my NGO has had its ups and downs these past few weeks. As I mentioned before, I am the first foreign volunteer they have had. Working in a small office of three permanent staff (who speak English but not well), it can sometimes be tough to be on the same page about what I need to be doing, or what kind of direction we can give each other on projects. In the first few weeks, I concentrated on building up their list of sponsorship opportunities. I hadn’t done too much research for this before, but once I got the hang of it I found some really cool organizations and grants that MSD could possibly apply for, and I helped create a decent list of proposals and letters of inquiry that we could work towards. Just to remind everyone, MSD is short for Research Center for Management and Sustainable Development, and the organization was formed in 2008. They concentrate on 1)consulting other CSOs (civil-society orgs) on better ways to plan and manage their organizations, 2) environmental protection and community development, and 3) connecting small enterprises and other NGOs with each other for the benefit of everyone in the NGO community in Vietnam.

I’ve been working mostly on the 2^nd focus, environmental protection and community development. MSD conducts a few different projects aimed at educating particular communities on ways to cut down on pollution and better manage their resources. If this seems like a weak way to work for the environment, you don’t know how they handle trash here. That is, they don’t. It’s everywhere, and there’s not really a set system of picking it up. Sometimes people just burn it in the streets, even in the middle of the city. When the three of us see this, we like to imagine if someone were to do that in the middle of New York, and how many violations they’d be committing, haha. Anyway, this type of behavior varies according to where in the country you are and can have completely different impacts depending on the area. For example, one of MSD’s projects is already in its 2^nd stage in Thinh Long, Hai Hau, Nam Dinh, a province outside of Hanoi. There, MSD has facilitated the creation of different clubs made up of community members and volunteers from WRU (Water Resources University), to educate the entire community about protecting their sea dykes from deteriorating. The deterioration is being exacerbated by activities like dumping trash on the dykes, running boats onto it, cutting down trees near it, which has resulted in several cracks forming, which can lead to dangerous breakdowns.

The project I’ve been working more closely with however, hasn’t begun yet. We are still writing proposals and applications for funding for it, but I’ll tell you a little about what the plan is if its funded. In Ha Long Bay, which is the famous World Heritage Site about 3 hours away from Hanoi, there are 4 floating fishing communities, comprised of about 400 families, totaling about 1,900 people. These families live on boats or on raft-houses, and make their living off of fishing and aquaculture. I need to learn more about it, but aquaculture refers to fish farming and growing other underwater plants, which we actually saw some of this past weekend on Cat Ba island… but I’ll talk about that later. Anyway, it’s clear to outsiders and inhabitants alike that these fish populations will not last forever. With a combination of pollution, sea-level rises, and their own over-exploitation, the natural resources they depend on are not sustainable. MSD wants to survey the villages to find out what the current outlook is towards environmental protection, fund the building of a community raft-house in each of the floating villages to serve as venues for different educational and cultural activities for the people, set up clubs to discuss the changes that need to be made, and reinforce these goals with various community events. The aspect of the project I like the most is the fact that it sets up these community engagements to be led by the people themselves, so that there is a system to go by for any future community decisions. If the community fisherman come up with and agree on strategies themselves, then they’re more likely to stick by it and see an improvement in the environment. Also, I think it’s a good idea to build the community centers. Right now each home is separated by water, and having a place for people to meet and either celebrate their culture or talk about changes to make is good. My role in this whole thing right now is just approaching different organizations (often American) to tell them about the project and why it is worth funding.

It can be a challenge working with the information given to me in the first place, which is the frustrating part. Although my superiors speak English, they often don’t speak well enough to understand the kind of detail I feel like we should have on these applications, and sometimes I don’t know if they know the details anyway. I don’t want to disrespect them either, so when it comes down to the deadlines, it can be difficult to communicate on changes that need to be made without becoming flustered. Since I am also new at a lot of this, it’s difficult sending in forms that I’m not 100% confident about, but as my coworker said, “when we fail, I am no so sad, because good practice.” For the most part I think the organization is doing good things and I’m glad to be here. I think that even just the difference in the quality of the English on documents will help them in the long run.

Now, for a small segment on how I get to work…this part has been an adventure. The dorm is 17km outside of Hanoi, and my office is about 8 or 9 km between my dorm and the city center, slightly closer to the dorm. The options start with the bus, which happens in the following steps: walk 5 minutes to the highway, wait for my first bus, get off at Big C (supermarket), wait for my 2^nd bus, get off across the street from my office. This can be a MAJOR pain. While sometimes we can get lucky on the way to work, getting home always takes about 2 hours because the traffic is so bad. Another option is to take a Xe Om, which is a motorbike taxi. This can cost around 40-70,000 Dong, depending on how long you want to negotiate or how honest the driver is about how much change he actually has. Taking an actual taxi costs around 70-100,000, even without the problem we have where cab drivers drive the longest route to get the most money. Yes, the taxis cost less than 5 bucks to go to work, which is crazy cheap for how far they drive you, and yes the buses cost a total of 13,000, which is about 60 cents, but with all this hassle, I have decided to actually BIKE to work!!! It takes me about 30 or 40 minutes on the way there, 25 on the way home, I skip walking through the mud and waiting an hour for the bus where I get manhandled by anyone and everyone who would like to exit the bus before I do even though we’re getting off at the same stop. The only downside is thinking about how scared my mother would be seeing me bike across a Vietnamese traffic circle, but really it all ends up being funny in the end.

I’m not sure if blogger even allows me to write this much, but I’ll keep going. Two weeks ago, the three of us along with our Canadian, English, and German friends, decided to take a weekend trip to Cúc Phương, a national park about 4 hours away from Hanoi. We were so relieved to breathe in the fresh air and hear no horns beeping us out of the way. It also ended up being a beautiful weekend. We arrived to the park entrance, and arranged to stay in their cheaper cabins in the park’s center. Before being driven into the jungle/forest to our accommodations and trails, we visited the Primate Rehabilitation Center, and saw some awesome monkeys! Soon we’ll put up some videos of the monkeys swinging from bamboo branch to bamboo branch, which was very entertaining. Eventually, the center tries to help them reenter their natural habitat, so our guide explained some more about that process which was interesting.

Since we got to the park later than expected, we couldn’t go on any hikes until Sunday because the sun was going down, so we just hung out for a while in the outdoor restaurant, and eventually got to know some other travelers staying there as well. On Sunday we got up early, and hit the trail to see the Thousand Year-old Tree. The hike was great, and the trail was pretty well developed, so a lot of time we were walking up steep manmade steps, which was physically enhausting considering most of us hadn’t moved that much in a while. It was amazing to have a sunny day while doing this too, because there seems to always be an overcast over Hanoi. The tree was GIGANTIC, so we all hung out once we got to it for a while, taking pictures and just staring up. Then we went back onto the trail and headed further up to see the caves, which we weren’t expecting to be on the trail. The cave we came to was insane, I can’t describe it very well, but the beginning of it was huge to begin with, and we kept going further back and climbing further up through complete darkness until we reached a place where we could see the light poking through. Really amazing. That night, since there were so many of us, we hired a private van for a similar price of the bus to take us all the way back to Hanoi from Cuc Phuong, and the ride back was really beautiful. We saw some amazing scenery, which we will try to post as well.

 I’ll write about this past weekend in Cat Ba soon. First you can enjoy pictures once we load them in, and hear from Lauren about Friendship Village.