On Being Here a Year
I’ve been in Vietnam for a little over a year now and I feel very conflicted. 2022 was a tough year. I lost both of my maternal grandparents, very quickly, suddenly, and dramatically. I am grateful I was able to spend a bit of time with my grandmother when I came back home to help her pack up after my grandfather had died. Needless to say, there has been lingering family grief and I am on the other side of the globe. When choosing to do research in Vietnam, and preparing to come here, I knew to prepare myself for the personal sacrifices that would come along with it, but in the end you can’t prepare yourself for the emotions that you’ll feel when you’re thousands of miles away, alone, ‘doing research.’
From late November 2022, random strangers in Vietnam have been inadvertently helping me keep track of how long I’d been here.
“Bạn ở đây lâu chưa?”
“Chị sang Việt Nam bao nhiều năm rồi?”
“Khi nào em sang Hà Nội?”’
I remember the time ticking, as I answered one week. Then one month. Four months. 10 months was probably the most stress-inducing: “I’ve been here for 10 months and what have I accomplished?!”
To be honest, the first research contact I’d ever made in Vietnam over 2 years ago (pre-covid), I finally met in person only the other day. Qualitative research takes so much time. I think what’s called “parachute research” cannot even be considered research at all. What can someone achieve over 2–3 week trips with no experience in the country before? Or language? In the grand scheme of things, 1 year in a place is not long at all. On top of that, I’ve been able to sprint from answering only a few questions, to expressing my ideas and feelings in Vietnamese. This is still tricky, though. I can more often recognize how little I know about the language because I often equate it to scuba diving underwater. Especially when talking about things we don’t have in America (though, often my favorite things to talk about, even though I’m pretty clueless about them). I’m trying to use my skills but I often don’t feel confident in applying them. I usually think, “I’m saying these things but this is most likely not how Vietnamese think about this issue or how they would express this feeling/argument.” (Duh! It’s something new to me, what would a person say about something they’ve never seen before?)
Honestly, expressing my feelings is hard enough as it is. Since I decided learning a foreign language (and foreign culture) in the middle of PhD, as a 30 year old, would be a good, and feasible, idea I’ve realized that most of the time even in my native brain I have hardly a thought or a feeling (I’m still a PhD student, that is). Having long conversations with my Vietnamese teachers everyday, when I hardly talk to anyone other than my fiancee (over the phone), I think has transformed a bit of my personality. The PhD process itself has made me more introverted than I prefer to be. That is, because, I’m on the other side of the planet without the community I had a couple years ago, and most of my work includes reading and writing — this can get out of hand if I let it. Some days it’s easy to come up with or consider a new topic about Vietnam; some days, it’s really hard.
One year in Vietnam. I think I’ve learned a lot more than I knew before (especially about food and markets), but still have so many questions (about business practices and corruption). At least I have the tools to be able to find out more. Sometimes I doubt my decision to choose this place. Am I going to want to keep researching Vietnam? How does VN fit in with the global picture? After investing several years of in-depth knowledge and language training, would I want or be able to study any other place? I find VN hard to crack into. The political situation shapes so much of my framework here (it’s my research, so a constant thought). Sometimes I relate it back to Mississippi. I was younger then and thought I knew a lot about the place — and I could claim to be somewhat of a local! But in Vietnam, it is expected I become something like an expert-in-training about it after only 2 years of studying and living here. The demands are different, especially professionally.
At the same time, I’ve had the opportunity to go to villages, old alleyways, pagodas — and have at the minimum a basic idea of what’s going on. I can ask questions. 5 years ago when I first went to to Hội An, I remember hearing a Westerner in a cell phone shop speaking Vietnamese at what I considered a high level of fluency and confidence. It was the first time I’d seen that before and I always thought after that, I want to be able to do something similar. And I can say that my experience in Vietnam has been tremendously made better because I have studied some culture, history, and language. I didn’t have the chance to do this in university, but I’m still proud of myself for trying the challenge in my schooling second coming (the PhD). At the same time, my curiosity of Vietnam is stymied by the practicality — I have to collect data, I have to complete a thesis. Finishing the 1 year mark I feel worried, but still prepared as I continue the process.
What has 1 year in Vietnam (Hà Nội) meant to me? Grief, missing my friends and my parents. Excitement, and wonder, at learning things that are totally new to me, especially finding curios, streetside innovations, and folk beliefs (i.e. ghosts). Humility, when being in situations that are totally unfamiliar to me. Amazement, at the generosity of strangers and when relationships with my neighbors grow deeper. Love, stronger, for my life partner. Tired, when it’s all too overwhelming. I definitely crawled out of 2022 and crawling into 2023, and don’t yet feel it a proper new year because the country’s about to go quiet for Lunar New Year, Tết, for 3 weeks. (This month is all about preparing for Tết, having Tết, and resting from Tết). 1 year here is too much, and also very much too little.
