Third Blog – Last Month – At a Crossroad

"Life always creates difficulties. You must move forward and not be afraid to make mistakes. But don’t allow mistakes to go on too long. And don’t cover up the difficulties…" - Attributed to Ho Chi Minh

To say I am sorry about my lack of blogging is an understatement. The overall excuse, which may be a lame one, is that it took me a really long time to understand what was expected of me at work and for me to feel comfortable with my life in Vietnam. I couldn’t get myself to write a blog that was meaningful until now. The first few months were a continuous battle of breaking down my own personal walls, cultural barriers and language frustrations. However, this internal confrontation and continuous reflection led to a blossoming and fruitful experience in my placement and in living in Vietnam. I’ve finally reached a major crossroad from being in the uncomfortable unknown to being actively aware and reflective of what I have done, what I have seen and who I have met over the last few months. I’ve returned home hoping to carry forward what I have learnt from this experience into my next life journey.

What I've done:

Now in its ninth year of existence as a local Vietnamese non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO), MCD has grown quickly in terms of grants, staffing, coastal project sites and overall quality of work. While still working extremely hard on their current committed projects, they’ve managed to utilize this growth rate and develop a 2011-2015 strategic business plan. For the first time ever, they’ve outlined their vision and critical themes for the next five years and I was fortunate to witness and participate in this new development.

While I worked on communication initiatives attached to this strategic plan for MCD, I was also able to work on its expansion into three separate branches. Whereas MCD works directly with the poor coastal communities to help manage coastal resources for the community’s livelihood and protection of the environment, one of the other branches will focus on creating business models that the communities can adopt and use as their own business model. This branch will be called Ecolife Enterprise. The other branch will work to help other NGO’s improve their information, communications and technology to be sustainable in the future. This branch is called Vietnet-ICT.

At the end of my placement I found that I was working, not only for MCD, but also, for the two other newly developed branches, Ecolife Enterprise and Vietnet-ICT. At MCD, my main project included updating their communication guidebook to fit their 2011-2015 strategic plans. This included updating their branding story, media initiatives, publications and updating their website. At Ecolife Enterprise, I was lucky to help them chose their logo – “Ecolife Enterprise – A journey to green living” and help them with their branding. And lastly at Vietnet-ICT, I helped Ms. Hue, the founder of MCD, directly with creating a proposal for helping other start-up NGO’s build their media initiatives and campaigns with free services.

Additionally, together with the other two CAPI interns, Caitlin Devlin and Susie Miller, we helped an affiliated association called Vietnam Association for Conservation of Nature and Environment (VACNE), update their English website. The people at the association were wonderful people and we were happy to meet with them monthly for different events. We also conducted an English class for all the employees at MCD. It was a great way to chat and talk about our experiences with our colleagues while helping them learn another language.

By the end of my placement, I began to build an NGO network in Hà Nội for MCD so that they could share experiences and help create stronger contacts and initiatives. Through networking, I really began to understand how MCD was positioned in Vietnam and what their resources were to achieve their goals to help coastal communities be sustainable. For a while I felt lost but by the end of it, despite the language barriers, I felt like I was part of the organization.

What I’ve Seen

It would take a lot longer than just one blog to paint you a picture of all the things I have seen in Hà Nội. It was an adventure just to leave my house in the morning and try to dodge traffic on foot, running between motorbikes loaded with families who were dropping their children off to a nearby school, while the children sang songs before they went to their classes outside in the playground. Going home was just as exciting, or stressful, depending on how you look at it. The bus sometimes took strange routes and decided to miss a stop or two, or drive on the sidewalks or even keep driving when I was getting onto or off the bus. On my way home, there were teenage boys who would scream out to anybody who was walking by to come into their street food shops and eat snail, French fries and fried meat that looked like spring rolls. 

I can probably go on forever about what I saw daily, from the motorbikes and what they carried (i.e. BBQ dog, bagged live rabbits, full grown trees etc.), to the hundreds of stacked narrow houses or the numerous coffee shops, karaoke bars, food stalls and Bia Hois (beer halls). On a good day, Hà Nội was so alive and charismatic and on a bad day, the smog and traffic was a bit hard to handle. However, the city always kept me captivated and entertained. That was something I could never complain about.

On top of all the amazing experiences I had in the city I lived in, I was also very fortunate to travel all around Vietnam. In the north of Vietnam, I got to visit one of MCD’s beautiful project sites in Giao Xuân commune, in Nam Định province, for a week.  I also got to visit Cat Ba Island in Hạ Long Bay, which is surrounded by huge limestone hills jutting out of the water, and Sa Pa in Lào Cai province, which has an altitude of about 1600 metres and is surrounded by beautiful mountains. In central Vietnam, I stayed in one other MCD project site in Van Hung commune, in Khánh Hòa province. Khánh Hòa is infamous for its pristine powder-sand beaches and beautiful weather. In the south of Vietnam, during Tet holiday, I stayed in Phú Quốc Island and in Hồ Chí Minh City. Witnessing the sunrise on the island was one of the most beautiful and memorable moments I had in Vietnam.

The best part of all my travels was the amazing people I met during my stay.  Whether they were local Vietnamese, or expats or travellers it didn’t matter. The local people, even if they didn’t know English, were able to share their lives and make a big impact on me. This leads me to the next section, the most important section.

Who I've met

From the start my Vietnamese colleagues made me feel at home. We shared meals together and even celebrated each person’s birthday. However, two months into my placement, even though I was participating in meetings, parties and lunches, I still felt like I was an outsider. I found it very hard at work to gain insight and access to information for my projects when I spoke to people in meetings. Some of my colleagues only started speaking to me in the fourth month of my internship, whereas before I didn’t even know they spoke English. This really made my work difficult and I was worried that I would not be successful with my projects.

It was not until I changed my approach and began to sit with my Vietnamese co-workers individually and talk with them about things not related to work that they started to warm up to me. We began to confide in each other and I began to learn things about the organization that I would not know otherwise through reading documents. I realized that it wasn’t enough to just do my work efficiently and on time. It was essential to build relationships at the same time in order to get a deeper understanding of the functionality of the organization and who makes up the organization. Although, I knew beforehand that the Vietnamese culture places importance on collectivism and community, I didn’t realize that relationship building was at the heart of integrating myself into the culture. Family is a high priority for Vietnamese and I found they were delighted when I asked about their health or about their family. I often found that the HR manager spoke about the organization like a family. I also realized these relationships were not hierarchical but almost like a web of connections, promoting each person at work to speak up and contribute at a meeting.

Towards the end of my placement I also made an effort to network with other expats and travellers from other countries. We began to share experiences of what we found hard or easy working or travelling in Vietnam. In the beginning, I didn’t make an effort to meet other people who were foreigners but I found that when I did, it made my life in Vietnam a lot better and easier to identify because I was able to talk about my experiences.

The relationships I formed over the five months living and working in Vietnam truly defined my experience. Yes, I was able to do a lot of meaningful work and yes, I was able to travel a lot, but creating friendships and connecting with people from a different culture was truly the highlight of my trip. At this junction in my life, or crossroad as I had said earlier, I hope to carry the value of relationships into my next journey.

Here is just a quick summary of what I wrote above and a few more tips on how to form relationships in Vietnam based on my experience, hopefully it may help anyone who wants travel or work there:

1. Relationship building is the most important thing to have a fruitful life in Vietnam.

2. Networking with other Expatriates from other organizations will give you a source of information about other people’s experience and learning basic Vietnamese language. However, do not be confined to these relationships only.

3. If you are asked by a Vietnamese colleague to go out after work, always try to say yes and try not to speak about work if it isn’t a business meeting.

4. If a Vietnamese friend offers you tea or rice wine and you do not feel like drinking it, say yes anyways and sip it extremely slowly, or else they will keep filling your glass when you are not looking.

5. Always prepare three songs you can sing just in case you and your colleagues randomly rock up to one of those fine establishments called a karaoke bar.

This experience has been life-changing and I will cherish all the friendships I made and everything they taught me with the good people at MCD and in Hà Nội. I hope to visit or come back soon one day! Thank you so much for taking the time to read my blog! Good luck to everyone!

Sincerely,

Danielle Castellino

Danielle Castellino is working for five months as an Environmental Communication and Outreach Specialist with the Centre for Marinelife Conservation and Community Development in Hanoi, Vietnam.