Towards the end of my stay in Viet Nam in 2005, I lost awareness of my status as a foreigner living in my birth country. By the end of that summer, I had forgotten that everywhere I traveled, I was perceived as the foreigner -- the American. Perhaps my ability to speak, read, and write Vietnamese gave me a false sense of security. Perhaps my jovial personality and the friendly faces lulled me into believing I was just a regular resident in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). I was confident. I was relaxed. I had no qualms haggling with the street vendors. I walked briskly through my streets and marketplaces. I ate food without hesitation or consideration about sanitation or health concerns. I didn't worry whether my stomach had gotten used to the iced tea (ice being a big problem for some travelers/visitors). I lived without much added precaution that one would normally wield due to a heightened sense of concern as a visitor. I could argue politics, arts, religion, academics with vigor and excitement. I found myself slipping in and out of idiomatic expressions easily and with great confidence.
I was a regular. I felt shielded. Then one day, my confidence cracked and shattered over the simplest thing. It wasn't even traumatic but it left quite an impression on me. I was going to church. My old nanny told me to change my shirt because what I was wearing wasn't appropriate.
A lot of things can be said here about this incidence. One could say that the church culture is different in this context, and many conservative churches elsewhere in the world wouldn't like parishioners wearing certain outfits either. It could be that my old nanny never paid attention to what I was wearing and just that day happened to notice. Or, what I was wearing that day -- and I can't remember for the life of me what it was -- must have triggered something. Whatever. It wasn't that significant except for the fact that some how, for some reason, having her tell me that I should change made me feel suddenly naked. One minute I felt like I'd been there all my life, knowing exactly what to do. The next minute, I was the awkward, oversized, over-westernized, too liberal, tongue-tied, improperly dressed American. It was instantaneous.
What I felt may not be justified, but the experience made me feel that the entire time that I felt comfortable in my own skin, the entire time during which I felt like I was accepted as "one of the gangs", I was merely "tolerated" as a foreigner who wanted to "pass" as a regular. Many of my friends, some relatives, and all acquaintances perceived me as a Vietnamese born American who has been too Americanized but who is clinging to her roots.
The whole business of "lost roots" is ridiculous and is for discussion on another day, by the way.
And, that experience reminded me of earlier in my stay when I went up to Hanoi in north Viet Nam and the locals in the Old Quarter where I was hotel-ing recognized immediately that I was (a) a tourist, (b) from the US, and (c) born in southern Viet Nam. Three strikes. Well, maybe not the first one b/c tourism is big in Viet Nam so tourists are often welcomed whole-heartedly (but more so if you're caucasian, European). No matter that I could speak in Vietnamese. I was speaking the wrong dialect with the wrong accents. No matter that I had tourism money -- I wasn't white or European. I realized that for every person who acknowledged me as a person, there was someone who only saw me as a foreigner. For every person who saw me as a local, there was someone who only saw me as a tourist.
I have, naturally, oversimplified the situation completely, and I've also reduced the complexity of my months in Viet Nam to what some may consider detrimental, grossly myopic proportions. But, at that time, I felt all of this, and more. It was visceral.
Perhaps what I've been beating around the bush is something that is quite easy to state. I did not want to be perceived as merely a traveler -- a passerby -- who did not throw down roots, establish friendships, recollect relationships, share memories, or build community. I was a traveler who did all that. I was not just a traveler. I did all that and was a part of many communities. I became community. I observed, understood, respected, participated in, and built new meanings of community, family, tribe. That's what I cherished, and perhaps that's what I felt was taken from me by a simple statement.
Or, perhap, it wasn't at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment