Durban, JoBurg, Viet Nam

"Shawty's like a melody in my head that I can't keep out got me singing like na na na na everyday, got my I-Pod stuck on replay." (Official IHP song- or so it seems)





Dousing your body with adrenaline
cues like stones with that Malcolm X spirit
gully and eloquent
extracting the adoration from every pebble of reluctance
savoring the bravado of the one annointed a revolutionary
his flesh between your pelvis
and mouth tasting the aureoles of
his sole revolutionary woman

-Figured I would start with a poem since the last blog was so long ago and there is much to catch my loved ones up on. Since the last blog, I've left my homestay family in Bushbuckridge, vacationed in Durban and found my way to Ha Noi. But besides travels to places, I've also reflected a lot about myself internally.

In Bushbuckridge, my roommates and I left with much sadness. The family had been overly hospitable to us, and at least I felt that I was becoming part of the family. Because of homework, workload, and my need for me-time in those 2 1/2, I didn't get the opportunity to know them as closely as I would have liked. But they are people with good spirits, each of us came home with a package of homemade peanut butter and a traditional blue cloth which I made into a dress.

Junot Diaz has a chapter in "The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao" called "The Gangster We're All Looking for." The book has really made me think and breathe when I feel overwhelmed.

And so I headed to Durban for vacation with eleven other IHP members. The World Cup will be hosted in its brand new, eloquent stadium this summer. Ticket and jersey prices are already soaring, even with my understanding that the South Africa team is not doing so well this year. Everywhere we went, there were jerseys, and like Viet Nam, men selling everything from cologne to shoes to clothing on the street. My foreign look garnered a lot of attention I did not want but the beach, the club, the spa, and the extremely generous people who took us around and made everyone feel at home, made Durban an experience that was culturally beautiful. I think all the women got proposed to at least once on the trip.

Unlike Johannesburg and Bushbuckridge, within Durban there a more complicated dynamic then simply Black and White, evident by the large Indian/Colored population who runs the Indian Market downtown where people can find everything from beautiful paintings, to jewlery, to scarfs and bags-- almost somewhat similar to Chinatown.

Coming back to Johannesburg, my friends and I visited the Aurum Institute, a clinic near the food markets and where the city's taxi drivers reside, where we were offered the opportunity to take our HIV test. I took it, but waiting for the results and questioning how life would change if I were to have a positive test, were some of the most surreal minutes in my life. This, after we had learned that 1 in 3 people testing in that area were positive, and I'm sure, like everyone, I thought I was immune to it. As a health student, I suppose the next step that should be taken should be to test for STI's and to know my status for present and future partners. I thought I wouldn't be afraid but the test and the questions scared me shitless nonetheless.

I think Viet Nam deserves a separate blog altogether because there are too many fears, too much pain, too many emotions in just the first few days alone. It's a love/hate relationship-- and though it is the country I am from, it may also be the country I struggle being in most during this trip. That blog is forthcoming.

But in South Africa, I began really understanding what I should do my senior research and grad school projects on. It is a selfish project, but I feel it must be done to help me feel whole as a person. It might also be a lifelong project. I want to know about the experience of minority soldiers during the Viet Nam War and the experience of their children today. Most of the men are today in their 70s and 80s, so the window is closing on such a project but it has always been a lifelong goal of mine to know my grandfather, or at least know how men like him survived and were treated during that period. It ties together what I consider the essence of me, minority issues, gender dynamics, my Vietnamese struggle, my Black struggle, my mixed struggle, and the history of the people who made me who I am. What are the experiences of a mixed child in Viet Nam after we lost the war and his American father has left, and what the experiences of those men afterward, the PTSD, the regrets, the emotions about the war and to come to back to the U.S. as a country still very much divided, still very much racist after serving it for several years. I just want to talk to these people and listen to a little bit of their lives and how a war half a world away affected their lives.

As a last note on race. The majority of people on the Malaysian Air flight to Hanoi were middle aged and White, which I find more then a bit intriguing. My mother laughs when I say every global conflict in the past 500 years have been created by White greed. I think my family thinks I'm a bit radical. But the Northface jackets, and the poofy blonde hair, and lack of makeup on hippie middle aged White woman traveling to Viet Nam, for either vacation or charity work does send a strong message. Their lack of make up sends the message that they're martyrs or serious about global issues and though that's great, and they may think highly of themselves, the message being sent is that because White people still hold the majority of wealth, property and power, and are socially well perceived (relatively of course, there are people like me), have the "privilege", they thus have more power than others to be martyrs.

Then there are those overweight men in their Ralph Lauren polos (unflattering), wasting the effort of the young girls in poor countries who make them, texting on their blackberries, either going to Viet on vacation or on a fancy business trip. I find it intriguing, I don't know why it erks me so much, but it undoubtedly does.

This country has been somewhat hard for me thus far. Hanoi will really test my identity and patience and I hope to come out of it stronger.