Did you hear the dog in the night?
Sh..It’s too early
‘It was singing
‘Sh.. I heard the rain
‘Really singing
‘ Yes, I heard it. And yesterday afternoon I heard Killing Me Softly from our kitchen window, in Vietnamese. But the rain, the rain, it never stopped.
All packed up and ready to go. There are 8 motorbikes and 6 pushbikes in our hallway; unusual at this time of day. And a special kind of quietness. The campus has flooded to a depth of 2 feet. We cannot leave the building. Yesterday we gave all our cooking pots and food to Luong and Hai-Anh who cooked us a marvellous going away hot pot so no food either. For us a temporary setback- for neighboring families much more than that. The rain is driving hard. Opposite I can see people in their house gathered round the candle-lit shrine of their ancestors. The 73 year old Japanese lecturer from the room above, who last year climbed the highest mountain in Vietnam, brings us two bread rolls and some cheese.
‘That is very kind
‘We must all help each other.
I am sorry that we have nothing to give. Phuong phones – he wants us to try and leave because we have a meeting arranged with the party officials in his province this afternoon. Could we wade out to Nguyen Trai with our suitcases? I don’t think so –I am loathe to cross the provincial powers but the water is dark brown and I can hardly lift my suitcase because it is full of books for the schools. We will stay and see if the water recedes tomorrow. I hope to have more energy then to help relay our luggage to firmer ground.
The female refuse collector sings as she wades thigh high through the water to collect our rubbish. Ye-ye-na nee nai
The electricity goes. The janitor of our block craftily diverts the electricity cable from the block opposite across the giant palm to the ground floor. People congregate amongst the motorbikes and Christmas decorations beneath the red flag in their pyjamas to connect their laptops. I am surprised by their apparent lack of concern.
In the evening the electricity dies in the block opposite too. An unknown man walks into my room as I lie on my bed in the dark and carefully places a lit red candle on the desk. Vietnamese students bring us some noodles. We rouse Benson, the softly spoken, thoughtful young American Vietnamese lecturer with strong social ideals, who lives in the adjacent room. He accepts our invitation to eat. I retrieve the discarded surplus vegetables of last night’s feast from the kitchen bin. By precious candlelight we talk about educational systems in this country – of Benson’s idea of engaging the university in liberating the boat people at Halong Bay from the tourist cartels, of introducing more independent thinking and less rote learning amongst the university students. The candle flickers. The wax has dripped and formed scarlet islands on the formica table. We finish the dregs of the sour Dalat wine. If we were of a different culture I would be dreaming of an arranged marriage between this inspirational young man and our intelligent beautiful daughter before you could say Bajvit’s uncle.