Noisy Fertility

As I sit here cosy under our mosquito net, we are serenaded by the flowing of the nearby River and the multitude of night time Tropical insect and animal songs. There is a cacophony of mating going on out there, the tropics certainly are lush and fertile!

It is hot and balmy this evening. We had rain all of last night and some of today, the river is in flood (although not up to the banks yet – the rocky flats have disappeared under water) and the water has changed to the colour of the subsoil which shows how much is being washed away from the ever depleting forest being slowly felled tree by tree. Yesturday we were swimming in the river when two loggers came by dragging their prize from the forest (roughly hewn in two) over the stones with Water buffalo. Once they had cleared the rapids, they let the logs float freely down the river. One logger slowly made their way over the rocks with the buffalo and the other chased the logs down the opposite side of the River, freeing them with a large stick whenever they were caught up on large stones or snagged in the river bank. Later on in the day we saw more loggers riding slices of a huge tree down river. This was incredibly dangerous, both for the loggers and those of us refreshing ourselves in the water – we all had to make a hasty exit!

We had a live link up with the ecoshow in NZ yesterday. It made me yearn for home. To everyone who jumped up and down in front of the camera when it was my turn, I couldn’t tell who you were (you were a blur of kiwi mania) but it warmed my heart all the same. It was such a treat to make out familiar shapes in the audience and I really was wishing I could be there with you all. It left me quite melancholic for the rest of the day, missing you all and NZ terribly!

Ron asked me if I would recommend this experience to other Permaculture students. Something I neglected to share at the time was the value of the cultural exchange. I am able to share so much from NZ culture – both Maori and Pakeha (or gringo as Geoff calls us) and also I am learning so much about Vietnamese culture, history and language. I have learnt so many new words that they are going in one ear and out the other! Vietnamese is quite tricky to learn as there are 5 (or 6?) intonations so if you get the tone wrong you could be saying something completely different. Everyone is very tolerant of our foibles and it was a great lunch time joke when I said I was being careful as I didn’t want to tell anyone that their mother was a buffalo.

Also it is an experience of humility. I am embarrassed by my western lifestyle and while much of this week has been difficult adapting to the lifestyle, it has taught us much about how little we need to be truly happy and how much we take for granted in the west. This evening before coming to bed, I was squatted over a basin for over an hour doing our washing by hand. It is amazing how conservative and water conscious you become when you have to carry the water from the river. The rinse water becomes the wash water for the next batch and so on. It was actually quite hard work and has resulted in me making more of an effort to keep my clothes clean, not that I can do much about the sweat situation – did I mention it is hot here?

Much of today was spent indoors as it rained most of the day. We spent the afternoon reviewing the mindmap that Geoff, Nadia and Mrs Lanh have been working on for the last week. It was very interesting and I am very inspired by what has been achieved to date and even more inspired by what they are aspiring to over the next few years.

This evening I showed the students the Rainbow Valley Farm country calendar documentary. There was no sound but I have watched it so many times with every single one of my classes last year that I nearly know it verbatim, so I was able to talk about it as we went and paused it while Huan translated my narration. It always makes me feel immensely proud of Joe and Trish and their work over the last twenty years. It struck me tonight as I looked around that Joe would have been proud of me here in Vietnam sharing the passion that he helped to ignite and kindle in me (I will let Trish speak for herself!) I am deeply humbled by the opportunity to be here. The students loved it and were very inspired by the top soil that Joe and Trish created and asked many questions about they do things on the farm.

We have to be up, scrubbed and presentable at 5am tomorrow as we are all going on a field trip tomorrow to visit other project sites. So gooooood night Vietnam!