Abena in Vietnam: No, my skin colour does not come off!!!

Workshop

It’s nice to be back in Hanoi. The whole of last week I was in Nghe An province, in a small town. I was there to conduct a workshop on Result Base Management and The Logical Model. The workshop consisted of about 20 people from different districts in Nghe An province. The participants consisted of officials from the village to the provincial level. I had met some of them before, however some of the participants were new to me. There were a few women but mostly men.

My colleagues and I got there on Monday night around 22h30. The train was a long ride. Oh I should have taken a picture of our cabin. It has six beds, which meant that we were packed in our cabins like sardines. Upon arrival, I was much relived.

Field visit

Once we got to the hotel, we were told that there was power outage so there was no power. I was not bothered as we were assured that there would be power the next day. Nope. We did not have power the whole week. I did not mind that we did not have power as I was content with using the generator when I am conducting my PowerPoint. However, the room that were using was as hot and humid as hell. By 10am people were falling asleep and couldn’t sit still.

The next day we moved to the downstairs of the hotel and got some fans in the room with the help of generators. Participants became more involved and active. The workshop went really well. After we went to the field to check out some of the projects we were doing.

field visit

On our way there I sat beside one of the participants in a taxi. She first touched my leg and then robbed my thigh a bit. I was like oookay. I had a feeling what she was trying to do as I was told by John that people had done this to him. I ignored the situation. The fieldwork was good; I discover different method of rice and maize cultivation.

By the time we came back to the hotel our two other colleagues Jonathan and Dominique had arrived come from Hanoi. They were each going to conduct a workshop with the same participants in communication and gender respectively.

This is the girl that touched me in the Taxi

Thursday was a tiring and hot as there was no electricity, we were limited to use the generator for the fan and for our PowerPoint. After work my translator Tung and I went for a walk at the beach. On our way back we met a man and a women from the village. Of course the first thing the women went for was my hair. Then while standing there and conversing with the man in broken Vietnamese she grabbed my am and began to rub my arm intensely. I was like what are you doing. I pulled my arm from her. She looked at me shocked. Then she told my translator that my skin colour was not coming off.

WHAT!!!! I could not believe that this woman actually tested me.

This child just wanted her picture taken

Oh this child was all over me during our trim to Nghe An

Honestly I could not believe that. The next day similar situation happened. That’s crazy eh? I am reading a book right now, I don’t recall what exactly it said but one of the character says something that I think I should take it. the character says something along the line of “life being one big joke, and if one does not laugh during these times, then they do not understand the joke.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we shall see how many of these jokes I will get; I hope I get the jokes more than I would get frustrated by them.