We have been in Vietnam for a day now. We came here from cambodia on a visa renewal trip. We were so close to Vietnam we thought we would come check it out. Today we went for a boat cruise on the Mekong river. We saw the river and the way a lot of the people live and make money.
On the way back from the trip I ended up sitting by a local vietmanese guy. He was 23 and a tour guide. He had led a tour with one of the other groups, but he was riding home with us. He had moved away from his family at the beach which he went on to tell me was perhaps the most beautiful place in the world. As far as i know he is right, maybe i will be left to find out one day. Maybe I won’t that is kind of the mystery of life, the unknown the wondering, will I ever get to see this beach that i have pictured in my mind. The picture that is so vague but yet present.
We talked of the war and who was right, maybe who was on whose side. I went to the war museum yesterday, I am still haunted by the images that were displayed. Images of peoples faces being burned off,
a baby deformed stuck in a jar out on display the effects of chemical warfare
bodies hanging limp in soldiers arms,
People being tortured
I Walked to the back of the museum to the place where they showed the torture cells and the prison as well as a guiottine.
Just standing in the same room as that thing sent shivers down my spine. I left the museum in a way ashamed of being an American. I was ashamed to say I in a small way was part of all of that. A man immediatly outside the gate asked where I was from. I told him America. I stopped the thought in my mind. Do I really want people here to know where I come from? I asked myself truly questioning it in my mind.
My new friend on the bus assured me they love Americans, Well at least the non communist south. Our tour guide also happened to fight alongside the Americans in the war. He thanked us continunly for coming to their aid. For coming to stand beside them when they needed it the most. In a way I felt better knowing that. I liked knowing that we had come to help. Whether right or wrong I am not here to decide. I don’t know what call I would make, I am not a big fighter. I do not like to see death or destruction. I do not want to be a part of anything that does.
I came home and watched a movie that happened to be on tv called Lords of War. It was about an arms dealer that sold weapons, guns and ammo to all of the different conflict zones around the world. To africa to the middle east it didn’t matter what the guns were being used for, what mattered was he was making money. To everyone else it didn’t make sense. How can you give guns to people you know are going to kill millions of innocent people, he simply replied. It is not my fight.
He then said, “I have heard a quote Evil Prevails where good men fail to stand. But i say Evil Prevails.”
In a world but more closely in a country filled with destruction and lust abounding all around. It is hard to say good prevails and that in the end good will win. I get so lost in it all, I get lost in trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I can sum it all up I am sure with some pretty little cliche found so nicely nestled on so many christians tongues, the little sayings like God is in control, or God will make it all work out for Good. I am sorry, but you try telling that to a guy missing half his body parts and pulling himself across a street. You tell that to a guy whose face is melted off. Or a small kid who has seen his whole family raped and savagely killed in front of his eyes and then forced at gunpoint to go and kill innocent people day after day, before he knows it he is a killer, not by choice, but by force.
You tell that to a young girl stuck in a sex trafficking ring handcuffed to a bed in a windowless room as men after men do what they want with her and soon she is thrown out or dies of aids. It is so easy to turn a blind eye. I do it day after day, maybe in a way it is how we all cope. I see it day after day after day. Unimaginable poverty, death, disease, needs that no one should have to bear. People killing people, hatred running wild. I sit and watch my little comedic movies on tv and eat what I want as I fall asleep on my nice bed in my air conditioned room, I may get upset because i have to get up early to go on a tour and the bus doesn’t have enough leg room.
I ran into two little girls selling flowers on the street. They were so cute so innocent they reminded me of my sisters. They reminded me that these little girls are humans. They are probably being used and extorted, so i have the choice buy from them and keep them being extorted or not and they may not eat. We talk to them for awhile they laugh and smile and take pictures with us, and act like any little girl would. And my heart breaks for them. So much pain surrounds us.
I feel like a pebble in the middle of a desert, dry and useless tossed around by every current of wind going by. I maybe find a piece of something that seems to have purpose so I stick to it only to be tossed along again. I need to find some water I tell my little pebble self, you see only through the water can a single pebble turn into something worth using. You see when a pebble interacts with water and other pebbles that pebble can then turn into one of the many wonders of the world. Mud. Only when dry pebbles come together through the wonder of water can they complete the task at hand. You can’t build a mud hut with one pebble and you can’t even do it with a bunch of pebbles they will all fall down, you need water to unite you.
All year we have constantly been talking about the One. It is not about changing the world. It is about saving the one who will then in turn save the one and so on and so on and before you know it the world is saved. Maybe it just takes a step back a step into the darkness a step into the eyes of a war ravished nation full of hurt and pain to realize that life is bigger than my dry little pebble self and its time to come together and be filled with the water and unite with my peers and change this world one mud hut at a time.
Sometimes I get amazed with how stuff I write comes out. I think because sometimes I read it back and say what in the world does any of that even mean. Like the whole mud pebble cliche story, that sounds so wonderful in theory. I really wish we could all change and unite and fix the problems, but Am I really changed probably not. I mean sure I feel bad now, but tommorrow will come and the comforts of my life and my wants will more than likely over shadow the needs of others and the hurts that so often grip them. I really wish I knew the answer to that riddle. I wish just for a moment We really could come together, we really could change things. Maybe I am being pessimistic, but it is hard when I am living in it. I am living in this radical thing called the world race. I am living in this thing that is suppose to change me and in turn change the world. And sometimes I feel even more hardened then i was when I began. Maybe it is seeing everything over and over again that makes me shut down. I have the moments where I really believe we can make a difference and then I look at myself and realize I really don’t care all that much. So what is the answer. Please do tell me what you think, because I am at a loss. I have been roaming the world hoping to find the answers to fix the problems and all I think I really end up finding is more problems and less solutions. And I think the worst part about all this is that I am not really that distressed about it. I know all the hurts of the world I have seen it all and here I sit on a computer in my hotel in Vietnam as the city around me remains hurting and loss. And so I wait, for answers to the complexities before me.
