Single White Female in Hanoi (8 page)

‘Caz, you're taking it all too seriously,' he tells me. ‘You're expecting them to learn stuff.'

Nga tells me her husband's sister, Ly, works for another English school. They need teachers and want to meet me. When I ask about the school she tells me it's ‘UNESCO school' which sounds prestigious.

I tell her my minimum wage, a fairly unambitious sum.

‘OK. I tell your price to Miss Ly,' she says, looking dubious. After that, I don't hear anything more on the subject for a while. I presume I overshot my station.

But one day she tells me that Ly has agreed to my price.

I dial the number Nga has given me and I speak to Ly, whose English is more fluent than Nga's. She tells me to come to the office on Wednesday morning.

So early on Wednesday, I head due north on foot to the school, which is in a part of town I haven't seen. The walk turns out to be somewhat longer than the map suggested – about three quarters of an hour, but it's straight up a relatively uncrowded historical avenue. The sidewalks are vendor-free so I can walk at a normal pace. The scenery is fascinating. The buildings along this street are enormous and sit in extensive grounds. Some are obviously embassies but most appear to have a military purpose. I'm struck by the architecture, which varies between French and Stalinist.

There are high walls, manicured gardens and green-uniformed soldiers hugging AK47s stationed along almost the entire length of the street. In some places there's mown grass, something I haven't seen elsewhere. But wherever there's lawn, there's a sign telling the public to keep off it.

For the duration of the walk, passing motorcyclists point to me and discuss me with their pillion.
Xe om
drivers pull up beside me calling out ‘woo-ooh, woo-ooh'. I seem to be a talking point for locals. As I walk I contemplate this. It dawns on me that in Hanoi only the poorest people travel by foot. Anyone here with any means at all travels by car, motorcycle or at the very least by bicycle. The sight of a Westerner walking must be greatly confusing.

By the time I find the school, I'm worn down by forty-five minutes of persistent ‘woo-oohs'.

It takes me a couple of passes before I realise I'm at the right place. The neon sign out on the street doesn't read ‘UNESCO'. It reads ‘UNCO'.

There's a Kung Fu class for kids going on in the quadrangle behind the guarded gate, with about thirty brown-robed children busting synchronised moves for their elderly teacher. Behind them is a salubrious-looking French colonial-era house.

In an office beside the guardhouse at the gate, I meet Ly. She's the sister of Tuan, Nga's husband, and she has his handsome features, but they're marred by the sour expression into which her face seems to have congealed. She greets me politely, flashing a brief, tight-lipped smile.

I've brought my teaching certificate and a wad of other documentation, but she's not interested. My employment is already assured – these bits and pieces are of little concern.

I raise the matter of my wage and find all is well. The school will pay me the lowly US$10 per hour I requested, although I should be aware that other foreign teachers are paid less than this.

‘The school have decide to give you this wage because Nga say you are very good teacher and you are friend of my family,' she tells me.

She asks me which nights I can teach, then shows me the locked display cabinet of bootlegged textbooks behind her.

‘For your classes you will need this one, this one and this one,' she tugs at the different coloured spines. ‘If you don't want to pay now, we can deduct the price from your first wage. We will look after you because you are family friend'.

I stay quiet. I don't know whether to be grateful or suspicious. Maybe making teachers pay for the textbooks is normal, but it doesn't sound right. Nor does the fact that teachers, apparently, must teach two trial classes for free. I want to tell her one will be enough, but then wonder whether I'm being ungrateful. I'm a stranger in a strange land, and these people are offering me work.

Furthermore, being referred to as a family friend sounds like a good sign. In fact, in the North Vietnamese workplace, this is worth much, much more than any number of qualifications and references.

But when I tell Zac the good news, he snorts.

‘Global might be bad,' he says, ‘but at least they pay you.'

‘I can't see how a UN-owned institution is gonna get away with ripping off staff,' I retort.

‘Caz,' he sighs and shakes his head at me. ‘There's “UNESCO” schools all over town, and none of them's got any connection whatsoever to the UN. I know a girl that used to work at this place, and the school still owes her money.'

‘Who?'

‘You don't know her, and she's left town anyway'

‘How do you know it was
this
place?'

He clicks his tongue impatiently and sighs as if tired of such petty chit-chat.

I'm nervous, but not deterred. I figure my connections will spell protection. Two days later, as arranged, I travel to the school's other, far more utilitarian, campus across town to take a class of advanced-level adults.

At the Kung Fu campus I was given the textbook for the class, and I've prepared a lesson from it, but now, on arrival at the second campus, I'm briefed differently.

‘This is advanced class' a plump, too-friendly woman called Yen tells me. ‘You must make discussion on topic like drug or divorce.'

‘But what about this book?' I wave the bootleg in front of her, perplexed. ‘When do I use this book?'

‘Yes.' She smiles. The phone is ringing. ‘This book also advanced level.' She answers the phone and smiles at me again. I'm dismissed.

I have half an hour before the class begins. I retire to the settee in the corner with pen and paper and prepare a debate on capital punishment, which exists in Vietnam. The death sentence, by firing squad, is handed down for murder, treason, counterfeiting, armed robbery, sex and drug offences and even for a number of economic crimes. Those convicted don't get the right to appoint their own lawyer. Amnesty International has condemned the Vietnamese trial system, which sends more than a hundred people to the squad each year. I make two columns and I jot down a few hoary arguments ‘for' and ‘against'. I'm so involved I don't notice the people swarming around me or the passage of time.

My concentration is broken by Yen. ‘Miss Carolyn – your class wetting now, please go upstair to floor four – room number … 403.' She hands me two sticks of chalk.

I wander out in search of an elevator, and quickly discover there isn't one. Since in Vietnam, the entrance floor is considered the first, the fourth floor is up only three flights of stairs. But this mathematical consolation counts for little, because each storey in this building is about six metres high.

This is not the weather for stairs. It's not the weather for any kind of motion at all. My thigh muscles start to fight back by the top of the first flight. I focus my mind outside my body and climb slowly. My mind drifts back to a lunchtime
xe om
ride I took today. En route to the restaurant, I witnessed a very strange thing. I saw a man running.

By the second floor I feel like I'm on a planet with higher gravity than Earth. I reflect on the running man. How was he able to command his muscles to work like this? Nobody else on the street was moving, save for the economical flick of the wrist required to operate a paper fan.

By the third floor I'm feeling dizzy. All the oxygen seems to have boiled out of the air. Students are bounding past me on their way to classes. I stop for a breather during which it occurs to me that the running man must have just committed a crime punishable by death. Perhaps I can work the story into the debate.

At the top, I lean against the banister struggling for breath, and notice the number painted outside the classroom in front of me is 403. When I judge I'll be able make vocal noises, rather than gasping ones, I stick my head in the doorway. And baulk at the vision. Luckily, I've stuck my head into a door at the back of the room, and the 25-odd students sitting at desks facing the other way haven't noticed me.

The classroom is long and narrow and the teacher's place is at the opposite end. I can see this without a doubt since it's where the blackboard and
stage
are.

Fourteen years as a performing musician and this is the first time I've experienced stage fright. I take a deep breath and re-enter the room at the teachers' entrance. I step up onto the stage, which creaks alarmingly, introduce myself, and the lesson begins.

Standing there in front of the blackboard, looking at the two neat, silent rows of desks going back beyond earshot, I feel like a 1950's maths teacher. The chalk squeals aggressively with every stroke as I write my name, curling my spine and causing my knees to twitch, but the class doesn't seem to notice.

After introducing myself, I chalk up an indistinct map of Australia, minimising strokes. I elicit questions about topography and demography and we discuss the marvel that a country 23 times bigger than theirs could have less than a quarter the population. The students seem interested, so I ask them: ‘I'm sure you have many questions. Who would like to ask a question?'

A timid girl in the front row raises her hand. I nod to her.

‘How old are you?'

I stare at her and blink. Nothing in my teacher training prepared me for this.

‘Questions about Australia,' I tell her, and notice that, all over the room, bottom lips have rolled forward in disappointment.

Oh, what the hell?
I tell myself.
When in Rome …

‘I'm 36' I inform twenty-five strangers.

There's a chorus from the females of ‘Ahhh – so young!' which seems odd considering I'm nearly twice their age. (When my Vietnamese improves, I realise this is an idiom for ‘you look young!')

A hand shoots in the air a few rows back.

‘Yes?' I ask the young man.

‘How much do you earn to teach this class?'

Twenty-five sets of eyes focus on my mouth to make sure they catch the answer.

This will be the only time this question catches me unawares. On this occasion my mouth fails me by working like a goldfish's and I stammer stupidly, mumbling that I don't know what my wage is yet. On all subsequent occasions, and there are many – since I'll learn to give students the opportunity to commit this exact faux pas – I'm prepared.

On these occasions, I'll turn to the class smiling and ask them: ‘What are the three questions you should never ask a Westerner?' Usually, there's at least one classmate who has had some contact with a Westerner. When prompted, they will recite the answer.

‘How old are you? Are you married? How much do you earn?'

The problem is that most of these students have had little or no contact with an actual native English speaker. Nor have the teachers who taught them English. Their knowledge of the language has been imparted in a cultural vacuum.

I pick up the chalk and squeak the word ‘Punishment' up in large letters.

‘What is the expression for when a country punishes criminals by killing them?' I ask.

I'm eliciting some vocabulary for the lesson. I successfully elicit ‘Capital Punishment', ‘Death Penalty', ‘Guilty', ‘Innocent' and ‘Execute' – there's no shortage of vocabulary in the room – then we begin.

I run the discussion as a debate, splitting the class into two sides after running over a few basic pro and con arguments. But there's a setback. All the students want to be on the pro side, since everybody in the room supports capital punishment, although nobody in the class has ever met a criminal.

I have to keep explaining that the debate is not real life, it's about discussion skills and learning English. Tan, the guy who asked me my wage, and an outspoken round-faced woman called Pham, dominate the class. I divide the class again, putting them on opposite teams, and try in vain to encourage some of the quieter members to speak out.

This time, the ‘Against' team gets the hang of it, and while most of them sit in silence, a handful of members are arguing for all they're worth with the occasional personal insult thrown in.

‘Perhaps the criminal is innocent!' they cry, to which somebody from the other team responds with: ‘No criminal can be innocent,' only to be told: ‘You are stupid.'

The ‘For' team are relying mainly on the unusual tenet that capital punishment is good ‘because it show the government have control and power'.

Although my own position on capital punishment is not clear-cut, I find myself unable to resist helping the ‘Against' team in the hope that my arguments might open the minds of the students and improve their deductive skills. After a while, I sense hostility from the ‘For' team, and I become paranoid that my political sensibilities are making me unpopular. At the hour and a half mark, I gladly wind down the lesson, hoping it won't get me deported.

After the lesson, I meet a man in the reception area. He forms such an improbable spectacle that I find myself staring at him as I queue up to return chalk and sign the teacher's book. He's short with a disproportionately large head set on an awkward body possibly stunted by childhood polio. He has dusky-coloured skin and stiff black hair. His teeth jut out of his generous mouth at improbable angles. Behind the carnival distortion of the lenses in his spectacles, are two glassy, swollen green eyes whose focal points diverge by about 45 degrees.

He grins suddenly.

‘Aren't these women lovely!' he remarks. He says it in my direction, presumably to me, although neither of his eyes seems to be looking at me. He's referring to the administration staff. I blink politely. He has sprayed me with saliva with each syllable.

‘I'm sure gonna miss them when I go to Taiwan,' he continues. His accent is American-tinged. I notice he's shifting his weight from foot to foot as he stands there. He's addressing me as though he knows me. I wonder if he's mistaken me for someone else.