Heyo,
As time goes on and my time in Ben Tre draws to a close, I
have begun to consider plans after Vietnam. Jobs, apartments, hobbies,
returning to my old life and starting a new one. But all the time there is a
looming event. The impending (6 weeks!?!?! oh god) goodbyes.
Whenever you say goodbye to a large group of people, there
is always the cold fact that you will not see most of them again. High school
friends, college classmates, fellow grantees—most of these people you will
never see again, and those you will see you may only see after many years
apart, after they have become completely different people. There are the
handful of friends you will stay close to over the years, but they tend to be a
small minority of your overall former friend sphere.
Still, there is always the possibility that you may become
reacquainted with these friends. A high school friend moves to California,
miles away from your Boston hometown. But you both end up attending the same
conference in Chicago. A college friend runs into you on vacation in Paris.
Your old teacher ends up moving to Chicago, and you get reacquainted over
drinks. Hell, I saw my friend John Shakespear in Cambodia, and I hadn't seen him for five years!
You bid farewell to your old friends understanding that you will
probably never see each other again, but knowing you may well run into them
some years down the line. You might even half-joke about this, saying “this
isn’t ‘goodbye,’ it’s ‘see you later.’”
These are the long goodbyes.
As painful as these goodbyes are, there is another type of
goodbye that feels much worse. They are the infinite goodbye.
I first experienced the infinite goodbye after I lived in
Cairo for a month. Upon leaving Cairo, I bid farewell to my European, American
and Egyptian friends. The contrast could not have been more different. With my
European and American friends I said a long goodbye, sad to be leaving each
other but hoping to see each other again. I haven’t seen most of those friends
again, but I ran into four of them only a year later on separate occasions.
The goodbye was long, but we knew we might see each other again.
A couple of my American travel buddies, Dinger Dan and Will
With my Egyptian friends I said an infinite goodbye. An
infinite goodbye is when it is almost statistically impossible for you to see
them again.
As for my Egyptian friends, how were they going to get to
Paris or Boston? For both political and economic reasons, it was very hard for
them to leave the country. I would have to return to Cairo to see them, and the
flight from Boston to Cairo is not exactly cheap. If I never returned to Cairo,
the reality was I would never see them again.
My Egyptian friends. Gendi, Hosni, Abdullah, Omar, Dino, Jaime and others
I had both Egyptian and European/American friends at my birthday dinner. But when I left Egypt two days later, the goodbyes felt very different.
The same thing will happen when my time in Vietnam ends. I
will say two goodbyes, both of them painful but one much more so. Saying
goodbye to the Fulbrighters will be a long goodbye. I may never see some of
them again, but I will almost certainly meet up with them again, travel through
America and visit them.
Saying goodbye to the people in Ben Tre will be an infinite
goodbye.
Mr. Hoang, Mr. Vu, Mrs. Trang, Mrs. Thu, Mr. Luan, Mr. Man, Mrs.
Thuyen, Ms. Y, Mr. Duc, Mr. Duy, Mr. Tuan, Mr. Vu Hung, Ms. Kim Long, Ms. Tien, Quyen, Truc, Xuyen, Truc, An, Van, Tan, Khanh, Tram, Trinh,
Chau, Pho, Nhien. These are just the names that popped into my head of the
students and teachers I will miss. I could go on for an entire page. Their are people here who I see everyday, who have become my friends, who have adopted me into their families and helped me navigate this strange and wonderful new world.
If I do
not return to Vietnam, it is almost a certainty that I will never see them
again. It is very hard for someone from Vietnam to travel to the United States,
for both social and economic reasons. It is possible, sure, but the odds are
already stacked against my students. Most will never leave Ben Tre Province, so
expecting them to show up in the U.S. defies imagination.
I will probably come back to Vietnam at some point, but that
flight is not cheap, and there are always other places in the world to explore.
The simple fact of the matter is that I do not know who I will see again from
Ben Tre Province, and it is a very real possibility that I will not see them
again.
Saying goodbye is always hard, but some goodbyes are harder
than others.
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