Eight Months in Hanoi

In the Vietnamese capital city of Hanoi, the national holiday of Giỗ tổ Hùng Vương is winding down. Many people have the day off, including International Development student Rasha Haider.

It’s just before midnight and Haider has returned from a precious free day of travel. She and a couple of young colleagues from her work placement at The Centre for Development of Community Initiative and Environment took advantage of the holiday and spent the day in Tam Dao National Park, about an hour’s drive north of Hanoi. The relatively untouched area is a welcome contrast from the chaos and hustle of Hanoi’s 7 million inhabitants.

“It’s a really beautiful town. It’s a mountainous region and you’re able to witness the daily rituals of the ethnic minority groups living there,” says Haider, who is in the final months of her eight month placement for the Faculty of Environment’s International Development program, and is savouring every opportunity she has to immerse herself in the culture and geography of the southeast Asian country.

For Haider, who returns to Canada in late April, a development placement offers a twofold opportunity.”.She’s there to help an organization make Vietnam more sustainable while preserving its precious cultural heritage, but she’s also there to develop as a future leader in her field -- and develop as a person. While some of that happens while working behind a desk in her office, it also occurs in the trips she takes with her colleagues, the stories she shares with them, and the care with which she experiences the rich culture happening all around her every day.

When Haider first arrived in Hanoi in September through a placement from World University Service of Canada (WUSC) she didn’t let herself get carried away with dreams of changing things overnight.

“When I first got there I was told that they couldn’t really give me a detailed job description,” she says. “They told me that they were working on this project trying to disseminate sustainable shopping solutions in a two-day training course and workshop on sustainable shopping for university students called ‘Think Green, Shop Green.’”

Her organization was small, about four people bolstered by a revolving cast of selfless volunteers. Haider recognized this was an all-hands-on-deck type organization. If she showed enough initiative she could really have an impact. The project would be a challenge, but Haider knew if she took on a leadership role she could help make the project a success.

But there was something important she needed to do first. She needed to get out and learn the kinds of things about her host country that you can’t Google.

In Vietnam, that invariably involves getting on a motorbike. “I rented a motorbike for a fair portion of my time here,” she says. “It was risky. But honestly, I took my time with it.” To get started, she practiced on a friend’s ride, counted her blessings, and hit Hanoi’s chaotic streets (and sidewalks).

“Traffic is insane. It is very hectic. There are few rules. Well, there are rules but people don’t follow them often so you have to be really careful and be aware of your surroundings at all times. It’s pretty crazy: people drive on sidewalks here!”

Braving the roads opened up a whole new world to Haider. It gave her the ability to explore corners of the city most tourists don’t see and added a three-hour travel radius outside of the city centre. “I try to travel through Vietnam in the quieter areas where most tourists don’t go. I feel like I should fit in as much as I can,” she says.

It also allowed her to bond with her colleagues, and better understand their lifestyle as many have been travelling by motorbike since they were old enough to hop on one. “My co-workers are young,” she says. “There are a lot of volunteers that work with my organization and they’re all around my age. We get along really well. They love showing me around Vietnam. It’s a ton of fun.”

One of the first things her new friends and co-workers exposed her to was an integral part of life in Vietnam, and that is its robust food culture and its famous market culture -- and by extension Vietnamese culture.

“There are tons of outdoor street markets in Vietnam, and there’s one just outside my place which I go to in order to buy vegetables and everything else I need. The produce is all-natural. And what I mean by that is it’s mostly organic. So the quality is really good,” Haider says.  

In North America, organic markets and sustainable food sources are elevated as somewhat of a touchstone for the environmentally conscious. But in Vietnam they are merely part of everyday life. Exposure to market life also dovetailed nicely with her work projects.

“Currently in Vietnam there are quite a few sustainable production programs and an increasing number of businesses that incorporate sustainable production practices and clean technology,” says Haider. “But there’s not a lot of information about sustainable consumption, like where you can go to buy green products, what materials you should be looking for, what’s credible and what’s not. That is why this was the perfect topic for our workshop to focus on for the youth.”

“I am Bengali, and there are a lot of similarities between Vietnamese culture and Bengali culture,” says Haider who grew up in Canada and has travelled to Bangladesh several times to visit family. “The religion is very different, but the way the people are, and the way that they’re very family oriented and very connected is similar. It’s very looked down upon if you don’t help your neighbour.”

Immersion in a culture with a traditional spirit of connectedness and cooperation helped her feel comfortable in a foreign place.

“I find that the people here, especially the youth, are not very judgmental with foreigners,” she says. “They don’t have any negative feelings towards outsiders so they were very open with me from the beginning.”

A large part of this acceptance comes from the rapid forces of globalization that are sweeping the planet. These changes are happening everywhere, but in a place like Vietnam exposure to new ideas through cultural exchange and technology is creating stark contrasts between generations.

“Just speaking with different age groups, like with the teenagers, they are definitely interested in sustainable trends. But then when you’re talking about it with someone a little bit older they’re not 100 per cent on board with the idea of sustainability,” Haider explains. “Depending on whom you’re speaking to, they will say, ‘that’s a nice concept, but it’s not going to make me shift my shopping habits or things that I’ve known to do my whole life.’”

Political leadership in Vietnam is also in a phase of transition as it adjusts to a new global economy. In many ways Vietnam is still recovering from the horrific war that gripped the country from 1956 until 1975. Since then, the country has made fantastic strides towards stability and prosperity.

“Vietnamese have a lot of pride and a strong patriotic attitude for their country, and because of their rich political history, resilience is a concept well-known to citizens,” she says.

But for an older generation who has suffered greatly for these gains, big change must understandably be approached with caution.

For Haider and her colleagues at The Centre for Development of Community Initiative and Environment the wider challenge is to bridge this gap and help people of all ages appreciate that sustainability doesn’t necessarily mean sacrificing traditional culture and the economy. In fact, it can enable and preserve both.

“I found it challenging because the government is somewhat resistant to implement certain environmental programs like regulations and caps on businesses. They’re a little more hesitant just because they’ve seen a lot of economic growth and they don’t want to hinder that path.”

There are no easy fixes. One thing nearly all Vietnamese can agree on is that prosperity cannot come at the expense of the natural beauty of the country and a way of life that has existed for centuries. “Vietnamese people firmly believe that their country is very beautiful the way it’s set up,” says Haider. “With the way the infrastructure is and just the way the markets and shops are, they feel like they have something valuable and unique,” she says. “From what I’ve witnessed, they don’t want markets to be commercialized or have high-end retailers just because that increases the cost of living. They make do and are happy with what they have. So I think that that’s definitely something to learn from.”

Having made an effort to immerse herself in the culture, Haider couldn’t agree more. Her job with The Centre for Development of Community Initiative and Environment is to help preserve these unique and precious qualities, through sustainability.

In many ways Haider’s experience working in the development field mirrors her own development as a professional. In the short time she’s been in Hanoi, Haider’s been learning as much about herself as she has about what it takes to effect balanced positive change in culture not her own.

“I feel like I had the opportunity to learn so much about the culture but also a lot about myself,” she says. “Just being away from everyone that I know, like all my family and friends, I’ve had a lot of epiphanies.”

Like Vietnam itself, Haider is happy with who she is, but is also open to small sustainable changes to help make her a more well-rounded person.  

“I’ve noticed small things like how integral family life is to me and just how inactive I’ve been all my life,” she says. “I feel like Vietnamese people are so hard-working;  everyone’s up at dawn, and it’s not just the people who are able, it’s the elderly as well. It makes me feel like I’m just sitting in Canada, watching my T.V. show and eating my cereal, wasting precious time.”

That work ethic, combined with a sense of duty to her small close-knit team of co-workers and her temporary home inspired her to push herself to do a great job during her placement. “It’s basically just the four of us,” she explains. “My boss usually sends me documents in the morning and says, ‘I need you to look at this today.’ I feel like there is a certain respect that was established because I took it upon myself to play an active role in a lot of the activities,” she says.

Haider also developed a new respect for what it takes to make a career in the development field. “I honestly think that I’ll come back and be able to use what I learned now that my personal goals are a lot clearer to me,” she says.  “Being here has made me realize that my degree is great and it has equipped me for a lot of things, but I also want to have some sort of expertise. I need a specialization. I think that now I can make use of all the resources I have available to me in Canada.”

Once Haider returns home she plans on specializing in digital geography and methods such as land use and community planning used by the public sector to influence the distribution of people and activities in spaces of various scales

It’s a logical next step in her career. But what about personally? As anyone who has lived abroad can tell you, reverse culture shock can be just as challenging as moving somewhere new.

Haider isn’t overly concerned about this… but the same shouldn’t be said for Canadian motorists. “I’m going to want to cut people off and be a menace on the road, but I can’t do that,” she jokes.