Hobbies of a Ha Tinh Hermit
(What's it really like to be a VSO volunteer?)

By Bryony Fuller
bryfuller@hotmail.com

In June 1998, I was delighted to be informed that I had been selected to join VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas). I was in London choosing from a handful of placements and one of the descriptions particularly caught my eye. It advised, "volunteer must be content with simple pleasures and be able to make their own entertainment". I failed to foresee the implications of this (under-) statement. Perhaps I should be involved in writing the next one, which might read as follows: "Come to Ha Tinh and develop skills you never knew you had! On a Saturday night, you could find yourself discovering any number of the following entertainments:

1. Mosquito-killing
   1. Try it one-handed, by clutching at the air then examining your hand for bits of leg or wing. Keep a tally of your success rate to monitor your progress.
      
      
   2. Or you might find it more satisfying to reach for a piece of paper, swat said creature, then discover bits of leg, wing, body and internal juices splattered all over your carefully-prepared, about-to-be-photocopied-for-80- students text.
      
      
   3. Failing that, you could clap two hands together, probably not achieving much, but at least reassuring the concerned college director opposite that you're having a great time on your own after all.
   
   
2. Searching high and low for the origin of a sporadic and really irritating buzzing sound, then grinning as you finally spot a fly dying slowly on its back under your bed.
   
   
3. Looking up 'sporadic' to check if that's the correct use of the word. Maybe'erratic' would be better…No, sounds too much like 'erotic', which the long fingernails of the sophisticated Vietnamese male definitely aren't.
   
   
4. Counting your money to see how many times you can get to Hanoi and back in the space of a month.
   
   
5. Wondering whether you could muster up the energy to travel all the way (350 km) from Ha Tinh to Hanoi anyway…by motorbike taxi (10 minutes), local bus (2 hours), motorbike taxi (10 minutes), night train (10 hours) and final motorbike taxi at 4:30am (5-10 minutes).
   
   
6. Washing up a stray teaspoon (before the spiders, cockroaches, ants and rats get it), making a cup of green tea, washing up the cup and spoon, making a cup of green tea, washing up etc…etc…
   
   
7. Writing another letter, but simultaneously recognising the futility of such an exercise. After all, no letters for 15 days from the UK must mean they've all got lost, or yours aren't getting to England, or maybe you're just on your own in your Vietnamese ivory tower forever.
   
   
8. Thinking back to two Saturdays ago when, new to your placement, you were 'rescued' by two colleagues: "We say een Viet Nam very sad to be alone on Saduddy night so we come see zyou" ["zyou" – Aaargh!] "and Chelsea's playing Villa on the telly so if you don't mind letting us in…"
   
   
9. Wondering whether the above colleagues were using 'sad' in its original sense.
   
   
10. Writing something hilarious for an online teaching magazine, scribbling it out and scrawling some entertaining ideas for future volunteers instead."

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I worked as an English teacher in provincial Vietnam for two years. I taught large (30-60), mixed-ability classes of students aged 18-22, all of whom were training to be English teachers. Their hardworking, respectful, friendly natures more than made up for the difficult teaching/learning conditions such as very limited resources, hot, humid and cramped classrooms, hard wooden benches and frequent power-cuts, to mention but a few. With the tremendous support of VSO and its network of skilled volunteers working throughout Vietnam, I had an extremely rewarding – if somewhat challenging time. However, the above 'activities' are not so far from the truth!