Travel Diaries #38 - Cổ Loa
Teaching English in Vietnam - on the threshold between the city and the countryside, between the known and the unknown, between all that can be articulated through language and all that cannot
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Cổ Loa is a small village to the north-east of Hanoi, about 25 minutes by motorbike or scooter from the suburbs. Driving over the enormous Nhat Tan bridge and doubling back on the motorway towards Long Bien, the concrete tapers off quite suddenly into quiet countryside and farms flanked by drains and small rivers. Looking back from where you came, the farmlands gaze over the oppressive deluge of the Red River separating the urban from the rural, the ever-growing skyline of the city framed in the foreground by green gardens of fruits and vegetables between the river and the mayhem of the downtown.
I worked as an English teacher in Cổ Loa’s high school for a couple of months, one of my last gigs in the equal mayhem that is Vietnam’s public school system. The school building was painted yellow like all the others, every school in Vietnam conforming to the same standard building design: you driving your bike in through wrought-iron gates to an open courtyard, around which is a U-shaped two-or-three-storey building with open corridors overlooking the yard, lined with trees providing some shade from the blistering heat, which thankfully had waned into more autumnal temperatures for the most part. Hanging over the front door at the back of the horseshoe building was the mandatory large portrait poster of Ho Chi Minh.
The classrooms were also standard across the land: large green chalk boards, and depending on the school, dusters and small boxes of coloured chalks. Walking into the rooms before lessons you’d always find the boards with the most exquisite calligraphy reminding students of homework assignments, a shame to nominate an eager kid to wipe it away with the dusty cloth before English classes, even the most unruly kids conditioned to remain standing obediently at their desks until you gave them the nod to sit down. Beneath the chalkboard a raised platform for the teacher to stand over the 50-odd students who made up every class, who sat in traditional two-top desks with joined-on chairs, in the corner of the platform a simple desk, on which usually sat a roll-book, which we never used, and a vase containing flowers.
Before and after every class was the slowly accelerating pound of a booming drum, which serves as the school bell in Vietnam, and for the wider local population, a late morning alarm at around 7:15, if for some reason you hadn’t already been woken up by the chickens, the bikes, the construction and the sound of breakfast and the day’s commerce beginning to get going from around 6am.
The regular Vietnamese teachers would sit in the corner in the back of class observing the lessons, standard practice to prevent any improper behaviour, for quality control and to learn from English teaching practices. Most of the time it was a lady called Ms Tú, who wore her hair in a prim bob, dressed in cardigans and modest long skirts, and spoke with the soothing patter of a guided meditation tape. In other schools, teachers and school officials could often make the most frustratingly impossible and Kafka-esque demands, sometimes literally “we want you to teach the students better”, which would basically be a typically opaque local euphemism for “we don’t like you”. After my first lessons Ms Tú led me to the teacher’s room to offer some ‘feedback’, but despite me fearing the worst, she offered me sincere thanks, with some constructive criticism which, in a rare departure from the norm in the teaching world in Vietnam, actually helped and made sense.
Ms Tú was in charge of some of the Grade 11 English classes I taught on a Friday, and she became my de facto boss at the school, as out of half a dozen English teachers she was the only one who could speak English well enough to communicate with me. It helped though, that she really, really seemed to care: about her job, and as it became apparent, about me. She spoke in the fortune-cookie style English which you’d often find in East Asia: technically advanced and sophisticated, and with great fluency, though unable to shake off the abstract poeticism inherent to the Vietnamese language and culture which highlights the extent to which cultural differences can obscure meaning and inhibit direct translations. To the mind, it can be either endearingly or infuriatingly indirect, euphemistic and romantic; to open ears and hearts though it is a beautiful way of interacting with the world. As with all language, you can’t really translate it, you have to live it.
Along with the teachers themselves, the students across the hundreds of schools of Hanoi could very much be a mixed bag. It wasn’t their fault, really (mostly). The demand for learning English in the country was voracious in both bottom-up and top-down senses; the people wanted to learn English, and wanted their kids to learn English, and the government wanted the people to learn English. Many of the kids though, naturally enough, didn’t want to learn English themselves, or at least didn’t care whether they did or didn’t.
But more to the point: as with anywhere else in the world, they were just teenagers.
In Cổ Loa they were refreshingly enthusiastic, supportive, engaged, open to me being there. Even though we were only half a dozen miles from the capital city of Hanoi, a place you could see quite easily from the head of the road, most of my 17- and 18-year-old students informed me they’d never been there. Me being in the school was a novelty, one of their only exposures to outsiders from anywhere, which in Vietnam was generally something met with veracious enthusiasm and excitement, though in schools could often be met with eye-rolling indifference.
Again, they were just teenagers.
Clusters of students would stand on distant balconies and giggle and wave at me, the novel outsider, in between classes. Local adults would do the same in the streets of the village outside. Random kids would ask for selfies and flash the customary peace sign with their fingers, a habit I’ve yet to let go of when posing for photos myself to this day. Sometimes they’d ask for autographs, sometimes with genuine earnestness, sometimes taking the piss – I appreciated and obliged both.
It was still a challenging enough environment to deliver proper teaching outcomes, 45 minute classes with up to 50 students, most unable to grasp full English sentences, it’d be a success if you could get each of them saying a single English word in the time you had. It was generally the case that, for better or worse, the students would know as much as they’d know with or without your existence, and so instead the implicit expectation would be to cultivate enthusiasm for them to go and learn English themselves, through the playing of games, the introduction of culture like music and TV shows, making the lessons ‘fun’, and conducting as much energy through the space as you could to make them interested in you and where you’re from.
At lunchtimes Ms Tú invited me on behalf of the school to eat in their teacher’s canteen, where I’d get differing assortments of rice, spring rolls (‘nem’), vegetables and meats in a stainless steel cafeteria tray. The odd inquisitive teacher would lean in to ask me questions I only half the time knew the answer to, always with a smile and a thumbs up. Afterwards I was given free reign of a darkened teacher’s room, with high ceilings, long old curtains, stern portraits on the walls and varnished hardwood chairs which I could pull together and nap across, given the typical Vietnamese lunchtime lasted about 3 hours and a siesta was not just accommodated, but expected. I was rarely bothered, though sometimes an unsuspecting older man would come in to correct homework and find a six foot tall Irish guy sprawled across five chairs with the air-con cranking, forearm across his forehead and drool gently running from his mouth.
Working across the public school system of Vietnam was a cultural experience like no other – possibly the most interesting job I will ever have, to be honest, the finer details of which I’ll go into in a future story – but it was utterly exhausting, and yet the Thursdays and Fridays I’d spend out in Cổ Loa were an end to the week I began to look forward to. The drive out over the enormous Nhat Tan bridge was exhilarating, particularly as autumn came and with it mists of rain accompanied by a roaring wind which would make your plastic poncho flap as you forced your head down glancing at the brown vacuum of water in the Red River, past the old ladies selling roadside corn on the cob in no-man’s land on the side of the motorway. On those trips to the countryside, the edge of the oasis that was far bigger than the relative dot of a city of 10 millions, I began to look forward to a part of the working week for probably the first time in my life.
At lunchtime Ms Tú would frequently spend time asking me about myself, my family, where I came from and what I wanted from life. She would bring me small gifts, though always ones with some kind of thoughtful meaning behind them. One was a jar of honey, mixed with chilis and other local ingredients, which she told me was “for your throat, for when you’re teaching too much”, though in her wonderfully euphemistic way of speaking, I think she probably was implying she’d copped me sneaking off to the café down the road at lunchtime on overcast days, to pull up a blue plastic stool and puff on a couple of Marlboro Whites.
Near the end of my time in Cổ Loa I was invited to the school’s Teacher’s Day celebrations, Teacher’s Day being an official public holiday in Vietnam, reflecting the reverence which the culture holds for educators and spiritual elders. The event was alternately billed as a ‘meeting’ and a ‘party’ by Ms Tú, which she said included ‘dances’, ‘music’, ‘games’ and ‘some speeches’, though trying to read between the lines of the language and the culture, to me this could have meant anything from a sombre and unnerving military ritual to some kind of cross between a hog-roast and a cock-fight.
I arrived on Vietnamese time at 8:30am on a Saturday for the 8am start, mildly hungover from a standard night out in the city with ex-pat friends, and expecting a typical hour of disorganisation and confusion before an hour of a shoddy finished product followed by a simple fruit party, mortified to discover that not only did it begin on time, but I’d been invited to an expertly choreographed and tightly organised event beginning with splendid dance routines and ending with a banquet. I was ushered to a prime seat by Ms Tú, wearing the elegantly fitted ao dai dress for formal occasions, as were all the others.
Groups of students performed a variety of well-rehearsed dances to contemporary Vietnamese pop songs and more traditional ballads. At the climax students letting off multi-coloured paint bombs, dousing the stage and their pristine white shirts, flecks of powdered paint in their hair, a mess that could be cleaned up later. Not just for effort and execution, but a dazzling display of enthusiasm, compassion and appreciation which had always elevated this school above their urban counterparts back in the city – the students were clearly loving it, and showed a caring for the ceremony they were part of, all typical teenage lethargy rehearsed out of them for this respected national holiday, and a contrasting reminder of the cynicism of my own school days, when no-one in my year would have been seen dead participating in something like this, much less be seen to enjoy it.
Awards were given to the teachers who did the most extra-curricular work for the school (Ms Tú providing translation of such facts, of course). Random students whom I didn’t teach requested pictures with me, both boys and girls.
After the music and dancing the ‘Golden Bell’ quiz. A large square mat was unfolded on the centre of the courtyard, the tiny plastic stools cleared to make way for it. On the mat a checkerboard of 100 squares, in each sat a cross-legged participant. A series of 20 questions were called aloud on a microphone and contestants wrote their answer on a small board wrapped in banana leaf, which they’d display over their heads. Incorrect answers were hunted down, and the culprits were removed from the game.
I was invited to ask question 10, the translation into English a token gesture:
“In what year was Cổ Loa school founded?”
Everyone got it right – 1966 – bar one. When interrogated as to how he made the mistake he admitted he’d misheard the question, believing it to have been
“When did the Cold War end?”
Just as funny to his classmates, his answer:
“1945”.
After my cameo I ducked out with Ms Tú to the teacher’s room, where she told me about her family and life and home, her desire to travel. She gifted me a present of a silk scarf, “so your neck doesn’t get cold when you drive to work”.
Some elderly men and women in their 70’s and 80’s – former teachers and principals – shuffled in and gave speeches and told stories about their teaching days. Me listening, unable to understand even the gist of the language, though sensing something deeper from the tone and gestures and energy, and filling in some of the blanks with my own historical knowledge and assumptions about Vietnam around 1966 and the subsequent decades, wondering how I’d even begin to imagine life here in those days.
After the event we were ushered into the gymnasium behind the regular canteen for a banquet. Rows of tables of six were laid out with all the usual Vietnamese meal paraphernalia, including hotpots, small bowls and chopsticks, cans of beer and miniature bottles of national mineral water brand La Vie, the water replaced with the darker liquid of rượu – rice wine.
During the meal the principal did the rounds, cheers-ing everyone with beers and shots of rượu. He half-asked, half-told – by way of translation through one of the other English teachers – me to down my glass of beer in one, which of course I did. Followed by a shot. He winced and cursed a bit as the burning liquor went down his throat, muttering and gesturing and wondering how I appeared unaffected (though I was putting on a brave face I should add). The vice-principal was next, and in between two more shots of moonshine he asked where I was from – “Ai Len” (Vietnamese has distinct names for the major world countries; the majority of the lesser ones including Ireland are endearing phonetic transliterations).
“Ah – Aix Len! Gudjohnson! Aix Len!”
The single letter difference between Ireland and Iceland carrying across perfectly into Vietnamese, as did the standard practice of using well-known professional footballers as means of relating to foreigners and their home countries.
The teachers corrected him, and to be fair he’d already had a few.
“Ah! Ai Len! Roy Keane!”
More rice wine.
It was shortly after 11am.
So it always goes.
After the lunch I was feeling a bit wiped out, and had to go for my usual nap across the hardwood chairs in the teacher’s room upstairs.
“I think you should go sleep in Room 1 before you go” Ms Tú suggested, with her typically indirect way of saying “You’re not fit to drive”.
After my nap I went for a drive around the village of Cổ Loa, visiting the ancient citadel and founding site of Vietnam as a country in the third century B.C., the village being far older than Hanoi, the intimidating city in the background which had long grown up to overshadow it, a distant dream still for most of the students and teachers of Cổ Loa, no more than unpronounceable island nations on the other side of the world.
Ms Tú invited my brother and I for lunch the day he arrived in Vietnam, in a distinguished local restaurant in the village, insisting on paying. I brought her flowers from the Tay Ho flower market, and not knowing what else to get, a bottle of Bailey’s from the local import supermarket. We kept in touch for a while after I left the school. She’d message me on facebook telling me she and her students missed me, reminding me not to get cold in winter, and inviting me to dinner at her home with her husband and family. I always made excuses, invites always being for Sunday mornings – her only day off as Vietnam’s schools run six days a week like everything else – and me always worried I’d be too hungover from standard Saturday nights out, or too precious with my time spent going to yoga classes or hanging out with my ex-pat friends.
My friend Josh, an outrageously flamboyant English lad, partial these days to cross-dressing and wearing makeup, had just arrived to Vietnam and began working for my old company. He’d taken over my classes at Cổ Loa and by all accounts his extraverted nature – loud and camp as a row of tents – was suited to the role of English teacher, and was going down well with the school.
One day Ms Tú sent a typical text enquiring about how I was keeping – “How are you Garvin? (Vietnamese people always called me Garvin, even responding to emails where I clearly spelled my name spelled correctly, and despite the fact that they can’t pronounce ‘R’s’) and that she and her students missed me, and hoping I was doing well in my new role, and that I hadn’t forgotten them all at Cổ Loa, and so on.
She continued:
“This week we have just met a new teacher. His name is Josh. He writes by his left hand and that’s quite strange to me as well as my students”.
The message made me laugh, as I inferred that “He writes by his left hand” was one of her beautifully obtuse and poetic Vietnamese euphemisms, by which she was trying to say:
“He’s a flaming homosexual”.
We’re still linked across time and space through social media, Ms Tu and I – her full name: Hương Tu, has an appropriately non-sensical meaning when literally translated from Vietnamese into English, from Asian to Western: she informed me it means ‘Fragrant Star’ – and she would pop up every now and then with a precious comment on a random photo like “Handsome guy with nice smile!” or “Having a wonderful day with wonderful friends!” and that she hoped I was “Having a good life” or some other sincere poetic sentiment, the translation always spot on in some ways, the meaning like two ships passing in the South China Sea (sorry: Vietnam Sea), waving at each other but ever so slightly lost. Social media consumption has informed me, in that indirect way that it does, that a lad from home is married to a Vietnamese woman, a mutual friend being none other than Ms Tú. I wondered if they actually knew each other – incredibly small world if they do – or if it’s just from the Vietnamese and wider Asian habit of hitting the ‘Add Friend’ button on literally every profile they come across, amassing thousands of ‘friends’ whether they know them or not, a bizarre and inauthentic practice to most of us over here, though as with the language, I’m sure there is a sincerity to it buried in the nuances that we just don’t understand.
I always regretted dodging her dinner invites. Whether 3 month backpacker or 3 year resident, or permanent migrant, the experience of being on the other side of the world urges so many to naturally congregate with their own rather than immersing with their hosts in the hope that it’ll stave away the very specific loneliness of being in a very foreign place. It is always known rationally but rather more difficult to embrace and integrate at the time, that paradoxically, the remedy for this loneliness is to spend more time immersing in the local culture, rather than flailing on the life-raft of home comforts in the ocean of chaos around you; to take the leap of faith and let go of everything that is familiar, to embrace the uncertainty of surface level mis-communications for the deeper warmth of local hospitality and understanding that can’t be articulated through language; the things that you cannot teach the English words for.
It is in this way that you will find yourself most at Home.
And Cổ Loa, a breath of fresh air just outside of the city, for a couple of months which sat chronologically at the middle point of my three year journey through Asia – the farthest point from Home – away from ex-pat comforts and friendships and despite being the only foreigner in the village, was one of the places and times in Vietnam that I felt more at home than anywhere else.
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