BACK IN ’NAM
Keith Wilson finds new faith in the human heart through the eyes of the resilient locals
In 1997, suffering a major depression, I resolved to voyage to a place of sorrow in my despair: Vietnam. Every second local person back then had a tale to tell of the American War. In Ho Chi Minh City, I had pho (soup) in the café of the underground Communist leader of the 1968 Tet Offensive for the Saigon region; he was an elderly grey man and I wondered if he was good or bad. My tour guide was a bicycle-taxi driver whose dad had been an officer in the South Vietnamese Army, so he, the son, had been banished post-1975 to a Communist re-education camp, where his stomach had shrunk from lack of food.
In Hue city, I met two elderly Vietnamese war veterans who were very appreciative to sit down and chat with me.
In Manila, I met a Filipino medic who showed me the scars on his neck and shoulder from an RPG shrapnel wound he endured climbing into a casevac helicopter in Vietnam.
But the most interesting person I met in Vietnam would be about 60-65 years old today; a bit too young to have fought in the American War, but old enough to have been in the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in the late 1970s.
His face was ghoulish and a bit scary, with pale yellow skin and a frightening, toothy grin. We sat together in the blackness on a house boat near Cantho in the Mekong
Delta, despite his very heavy Vietnamese accent, we managed to hold a sensible conversation.
Like so many Vietnamese, his family name was Nguyen. He related how he still, 20 years later, suffered nightmares from seeing the dead bodies of Cambodian victims of Pol
Pot’s Killing Fields.
We chatted at length, then Nguyen did something that made me feel so much better, and better about humanity.
He selflessly removed his belt (surely a precious item to him, as the Vietnamese were very poor), and gave it to me as a gift. On the belt buckle were inscribed the words “Win-Win”.
How very kind and generous. I had nothing to give back, save money, which would have spoiled the spirit of his gesture, so I just said, “Thank you” — in Vietnamese, of course.
Imagine if we could all adopt Nguyen’s approach: win-win. — ● L S. © Keith Wilson “The Notebook” is about chance meetings and unforgettable encounters people have had on their travels. Send us yours — no more than 400 words — and, if published, you’ll receive R500. Mail travelmag@sundaytimes.co.za with the word Notebook in the subject line.