Library on wheels brings joy in Vietnam

A brief immersion, a longtime lesson

(Elizabeth Gittens photo)
Fourth-graders at a school outside Hoi An, Vietnam, selected books from a mobile library courtesy of the Global Village Foundation.

Elizabeth Gittens, a Natick resident who is pursuing a master's degree in creative writing at Emerson College, recently returned from a 12-day trip to Vietnam, where she taught English and sponsored a mobile library for schoolchildren through the Globe Aware organization. She teaches fifth-grade language and literacy at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Natick.

By Elizabeth Gittens

Dec. 22, 2008

As the sun rises, the streets of the anciety city of Hoi An fill with the sounds of motorbikes, merchants, and daily announcements from the government being blasted over public speakers. Through these streets Vietnamese children -- some no older than 7 -- walk selling knickknacks to tourists who try to look the other way.

“Whistle?” they ask, never looking you directly in the eye. The words are rehearsed and meaningless to them. They hold the tiny whistle, an animal shaped out of clay, in their palm while staring into space. My husband, Dave, and I watch this in the distance from a balcony, while below merchants beckon to tourists that it’s their lucky day.

As volunteers with the Globe Aware organization, we’re here for a week teaching English to students in a rural primary school in Quang Nam Province in the central part of the country. Through Globe Aware, we’ve been connected with the Global Village Foundation, a nonprofit organization started by Vietnamese-American humanitarian and author Le Ly Hayslip.

Upon arriving in Vietnam after a sixteen year absence in 1986, Le Ly was shocked by the growing poverty and devastation left in her country after what many Vietnamese refer to as the “American War.’’ Determined to make a difference, she founded the East Meets West Foundation, and later went on to found the Global Village Foundation to support children in the areas of education and healthcare.

Our coordinator, Vinh Hoang, and translator, Tran Hung, are to show us around Hoi An and introduce us to our students, who reside just outside the city limits.

When we arrive at the school, students in blue and white uniforms rush to meet us at the gate. From the road the building seems almost majestic. Two stories of yellow cement, with flags of all colors and red banners lining the front. A closer look reveals cracks beginning to form in the cement and rust along the railings. Inside our classroom, the only things on the walls are a picture of the revolutionary Ho Chi Minh, a chalkboard, and a light switch turned to off. At hard wooden desks the children sit in pairs, hands clasped, waiting for our directions.

Between lessons we bring out the mobile library. A painted wooden box with the Global Village Foundation logo on the front, it holds more than 100 children’s books in Vietnamese. While we did not build the box, my husband and I fully sponsored it and supplemented it with some of our own English books. Each library travels from village to village for months at a time allowing many students their only access to books. While the goal is to help prepare the students for the future, they are learning to love books now. The looks on their faces and the blissful chaos they create every time the box is opened are proof of this.

On our time off from teaching, Dave and I become students. With Vinh and Hung as our guides, we climb onto the backs of their motorbikes and swerve in and out traffic to homes of friends in places our Lonely Planet books never would have taken us. We try lizard wine willingly and fall in love with bò kho, a curried beef stew for breakfast. Although on our first night we each ordered identical plates of seafood and scarfed them down by ourselves, we know now to order different plates and put them in the middle of the table so everyone can share. There is nothing we won’t try, no place we won’t go. We are empty vessels ready to be filled with everything Vietnam has to offer.

(Elizabeth Gittens photo) Students enjoyed recess outside their newly constructed primary school.

On our last day at school, the students crowd around us once more humming one last song under their breaths, but are still itching to go home for lunch. They are children after all, and I am glad to see them scatter quickly. I’m not fond of goodbyes.

When all the others are gone, one of my favorites, Ngoc, walks up to me. She is a quiet fifth-grade girl who craves the written word as much as I do. I am at a loss for words now though. In only a few days I will be home and hate to think that the ones we shared will soon be forgotten and that the books will someday grow outdated, unloved.

The words that come out of her mouth are not ones I have taught her.

“I hope I will see you again,” she says.

It’s not a plea. It’s a reminder. Don’t go home and forget about us.

A vessel is not just something to be filled, but something that can carry and keep something going. I have a choice: I can leave Hoi An filled with memories of its rainy days and crowded streets and keep them for myself, or I can take Ngoc’s words to heart and try to impart in my own students the messages of Le Ly now that I have returned to the United States. If I have learned anything from sitting around the Vietnamese table -- where no one orders the best meal and hoards it, but everyone shares, arms entangled, reaching out for only as much as one needs -- I am sure I will choose wisely.

For more information on Globe Aware, go to www.globeaware.org. For information on how you can contribute to Passport, contact the Globe's assistant foreign editor, Kenneth Kaplan, at k_kaplan@globe.com.