Tết Nguyên Đán, or Vietnamese New Year, is one of the most important celebrations in the Vietnamese Culture. For me personally, it was and still is a holiday I look forward to most. My home was filled with special traditional foods and treats like bánh tét (Variety of sticky rice cakes with a savory or sweet filling), hạt dưa (roasted watermelon seeds), and mứt (dried candied fruits). It was also the only time my tiger parents would allow my brother and I to stay up late, tolerate high sugar intake, and extend playtime . During my undergrad years, Tết was a time I came home to comfort food and ridiculous amounts of leftovers – that I later tried stuffing into a mini-fridge. It was food my greedy roommate didn’t try to eat, ensuring my survival at college, or at least for the month of Jan/Feb. Recently, after moving to the DC area from Colorado, I no longer have the joys of celebrating with my family. However, I do have a close group friends that I met through the UNAVSA/UVSA network to help bring in the Lunar New Year. I’d like to call them my chosen family and proud that we continue to carry on the traditions that each of us grew up with. As I take the time to reflect on fond Tết memories, none have compared to the time I went to Vietnam as an 8 year old child, which strangely relates to the current UNAVSA Collective Philanthropy Project (CPP).
My mother announced that I would accompany her to visit my grandparents and others from my parents’ past. I was ecstatic to travel and see a land I could only associate as a weirdly shaped “S” on a map. Shortly after the announcement, series of packing, an 18 hour flight, and culture shock awakening, we spent about a month exploring various providences and meeting family. I grew to love the rich layers of culture and cherished the memories and experiences I had gained. The last leg of our trip was during Tết season. My mother organized a lunch with her old classmates and as they caught up on 15 years of lost time, I ordered water and food. The event itself was nothing out of the ordinary nor all that eventful. I don’t remember what happened later, but I can only assume it was just another day in Vietnam.
The next morning I woke up with a cold sweat, a fever, hallucinations and random dialogue that no one understood. My mother, deeply concerned, took off to search for the nearest available clinic to help diagnose what was happening. As I was left to rest, extended family and neighborhood friends devised a plan to help me get better. Their solution: sacrifice a pig. Yes, sacrifice a pig. The thought process to this conclusion was: she’s mumbling a strange language, and having extreme cold sweats, her body is trying to expel a demonic spirit, which happened to inhabit itself into my soul since I was an innocent child from America. I have to say the village people were very radical thinkers and enacted the plan with haste. By the time my mother found a reliable doctor and came back to get me, she came home to a house filled with family, friends, and strangers praying to an ancestral mantle and a freshly roasted pig displayed right below. She didn’t stop to process the strange event. Scooping me up, she rushed over to the clinic. After a shot administered to my bum (to this day I don’t know why that specific area, nor what was administered), I was better within a few days. The day I could eat and function normally, happened to be the first day of the new Lunar Year. My mother let the people involved believe that it was the pig sacrifice and prayers that helped cure me, and to take it as a sign of good fortunes to come. In reality, the culprit behind my sickness was traced back to the glass of water I drank at her friend’s lunch. It wasn’t the bottled water I ordered, but the unfiltered water used to make the ice. In most cases, as the doctor stated, people from Vietnam may have tolerances to different bacteria that I did not, but getting sick from contaminated water is not uncommon,and my sensitive stomach escalated this specific case.
I was very fortunate to have a resourceful mother with the means to afford a doctor to take my case. My situation if left without treatment could have been dire. The current state of water sanitation in most third world countries, such as Vietnam, makes my case one of millions. UNICEF has stated “44% of the Vietnamese children population are estimated to be infected with diseases relating to contaminated water”. That’s just children, imagine the number increasing when factoring in the elderly, and whole communities. Contaminated water often contains arsenic, manganese, selenium, and barium – both naturally occurring and from pollution. Constant exposure and ingestion of these toxic substances cause dysentery, abdominal complications, cancer and various other diseases. Growing up in America is not an easy task, as we all face an array of challenges and obstacles, however, we are all much more fortunate than we give ourselves credit for. Having clean filtered water at an arm’s reach becomes second nature to us here in America. For those living in Vietnam, rapid urban industrialization and the lack of education on the matter, rapidly decreases their access and overall quality of life. My story was one of the various reasons why I wanted to lead the current CPP Campaign and help raise awareness and funds for clean water in needed communities in Vietnam.
Ever since that unfortunate event, my Tết seasons have been calmer. Coming back alive I’m much more grateful for the life I have. Everyday, I am thankful to have loving people in my life, a roof over my head, food, and of course, clean water. I can’t help but laugh every now and then reflecting on that particular memory. Its not everyday a village will readily kill a pig in my name, and strangers praying for my quick recovery. It’s a small demonstration of how beautiful a community coming together, for one cause. can be. I hope as individuals in the UNAVSA/UVSA/VSA network, we show our community strength by working together to make a difference through this year’s partnership with Foodaid Compassion. I have many more stories from this trip, mostly embarrassing stories due to my naive curiosity, but I’ll save those for another time. As the Year of the Goat comes into fruition, I wish everyone a very safe, healthy, happy, and fulfilling year. Chúc Mừng Năm Mới!
