by Raymond Rajabalan
Music has a powerful effect on human experience. Students of religious phenomena have long recognized that music transcends our understanding and appeals to our intuitive nature. It is not surprising, then, that music played an important part in the worship of biblical communities, as a way of approaching the mystery of God and of expressing the joy of his presence.
This article discusses the role of music in the worship of Israel and of the early church, by way of establishing a biblical foundation for music in the Christian worship of today.
Music in Israelite Worship
Israelite prophets were musicians.
- During the exodus Miriam the prophetess, taking her tambourine, led the women in song and dance, celebrating the Lord’s triumph over the Egyptians (Exod. 15:20-21).
- Saul encountered a band of sanctuary prophets who prophesied accompanied by instruments (1 Sam. 10:5). Isaiah composed songs, including one celebrating the Lord’s deliverance of those who trust in him (Isa. 26:1-6).
- The public regarded Ezekiel as “one who has a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument” ( Ezekiel 33:32).
David, a musician as well as a warrior, established the place of music in the worship of the Lord. Even before the sacrifices had been moved to Jerusalem, he instructed the Levitical musicians to celebrate the ark’s journey to Zion (1 Chron. 15:16-24), and appointed Asaph as chief musician in charge of continual thanksgiving and praise (1 Chron. 16:1-7). The description of this activity (1 Chron. 25:1-7) suggests that these musicians led in a spontaneous and overwhelming outpouring of worship, especially at high moments like the dedication of Solomon’s temple (2 Chron 5:11-14). This may be the “new song” to which the Psalms refer (33:3, 40:3, 96:1, 144:9, 149:1). Many Psalms perhaps originated in this pre-temple Davidic worship centering around the ark of the covenant.
In the temple, music functioned as a “sacrifice of praise,” an offering of song to accompany the offering of sacrifice. Under the Judean rulers, the performance of music became regulated and standardized. The titles of 55 Psalms refer to the music director, with instructions for performance on various instruments or using certain tunes. This psalmody remained a feature of Israelite and Jewish worship. After the exile, Ezra recruited more than 200 Levites for service in the sanctuary (Ezra 8:18-20).
After the Babylonian exile, most Jews lived in the Dispersion (areas outside of Palestine) and could not participate in temple worship. Therefore the synagogue arose for prayer and the study of the Scriptures. The Psalms continued to be sung, and other portions of the Scriptures as well as prayers were chanted according to a developing system of “modes.” Such Jewish music influenced the worship of the early church.
Israelite worship music was both vocal and instrumental; the sanctuary orchestra contributed to the celebration of Israel’s covenant with the Lord. Its instruments fall into the same general classes with which we are familiar — percussion, winds (pipes) and strings. Horns, trumpets, cymbals, harps and lyres were used when the ark was brought to Mount Zion, and their continued use is reflected in their mention in the Psalms. The sanctuary instruments were not solo instruments, but sounded simultaneously to call the assembly to worship (Psa. 98:6). Strings and pipes, if used, probably played the modalities (tune elements) in the psalm being sung, with perhaps distinctive patterns of ornamentation. Horns, trumpets and cymbals added to the festive joy by creating a larger sound. The selah of the Psalms may have been an instru`mental interlude, or a “lifting up” of sound by both singers and instrumentalists. Tambourines, usually played by women, are mentioned in connection with dancing at Israelite festivals (Psa. 68:25), but were not used in the sanctuary where only men served as priests and musicians.
Worship Music in the New Testament
The worship of the emerging Christian movement did not produce new forms of music, but shared the characteristics described above, many of which are still found in the music of historic liturgies. Clearly, the worship life of the early church included psalms and other forms of song.
The New Testament mentions worship music in several places.
- The gospel story begins with a hymn of praise on the lips of the heavenly host, “Glory to God in the highest” (Luke 2:14).
- Reading the lesson from Isaiah in the synagogue of Nazareth (Luke 4:16-20), Jesus probably intoned it according to the custom of the time.
- The Gospels record that Jesus and his disciples sang a hymn after the Last Supper (Matt. 26:30; Mark 14:26), probably the “Great Hallel” (Psalms 113-118) of the Passover tradition.
- Luke records that Paul and Silas were singing hymns in prison at Philippi when an earthquake occurred (Acts 16:25). Paul urges the Christians of Ephesus and Colossae to give thanks to God in “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). Describing the assembly of the church of Corinth, he remarks that “everyone has a psalm” (1 Cor. 14:26) which must blend with the contributions of other worshipers in an orderly service. Perhaps “psalms” were the biblical psalms, while “hymns” could have been Christian music in praise of Christ and “spiritual songs” more spontaneous worship expressions.
Luke quotes several hymns in the beginning chapters of his Gospel. In addition to the Gloria in Excelsis mentioned above, he includes the Magnificat or Song of Mary (1:46-55), the Benedictus or Song of Zechariah (1:67-79) and the Nunc Dimittis or Song of Simeon (2:29-32). Although spoken by several figures in the story of Jesus’ birth, these hymns came to be used in Christian worship at an early period. Paul quotes what may have been another song, “Awake, O sleeper and arise from the dead,” in Eph. 5:14. Scholars have suggested that other passages in Paul’s letters are based on primitive Christian hymns in praise of Christ, such as Philippians 2:6-11, Colossians 1:15-20 and 1 Timothy 3:16. Such hymns may have been composed to reinforce Christian teaching about the nature of Jesus’ Messiahship.
The Hosanna hymn of the crowds at Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem (Mark 11:9, based on Psa. 118:26) became part of the historic Christian eucharistic celebration.
Revelation to John
Musical expression of Christian worship reaches its New Testament climax in the hymns of the Revelation to John.
In John’s vision, acts of praise before God’s throne accompany the dramatic unfolding of events on earth. These hymns glorify the Creator (4:11), proclaim the worth of the Lamb (5:9-10; 5:12), extol both the Father and the Son (5:13; 7:10; 7:12), celebrate God’s triumph over the enemies of his people (11:16; 11:17-18; 12:10-12; 19:1-3; 19:6-8), and proclaim his justice (15:3-4; 16:5-7).
Perhaps these hymns reflect the actual worship practice of the church near the end of the first century. If so, the Revelation offers a window not only into the judgments of God in the earth but also into the development of Christian liturgy and hymnody.
The New Testament does not supply enough detail to reconstruct the exact musical content of developing Christian worship. Since the Hebrew Scriptures were still the authority for teaching and practice (1 Tim. 3:16-17), their broad principles regarding music must have remained the norm. The young church was a community under persecution, and could not apply the full resources of biblical celebration to its worship assemblies. Nevertheless, the evidence shows that music played a vital role in the worship of the emerging Christian community.
NADASWARAM
Some interesting Facts about Nadaswaram from the Word of God
This sacred instrument is unique; it has a special place in the Bible. .There is some divinity about this instrument. We have seen this instrument played at many auspicious occasions. Nadaswaram does not belong to any one sect or one religion.
- In Ezekiel 28:13 we read that God gave this instrument to Cherub to worship Him. In the course of time Cherub was cast down by God because of his high haughtiness. Cherub may have been cast down but the music was always cherished by God. This instrument still holds a significant place before God. We repeatedly see this instrument played at many occasions in the Bible.
- In Genesis 31:27 we see Laban says to Jacob “Why did you run off secretly and deceive me? Why didn’t you tell me, so I could send you away with joy and singing to the music of tambourines and harps?” We notice that this instrument was an integral part of Joyful occasions accompanied by singing and music.
- In 1 Samuel 10:5 when Samuel anoints Saul, this instrument was again used. This was accompanied by prophetic utterances.An instrument that is so dear to our Lord has been forgotten through time and has been used to glorify pagan Gods. It is my desire to Worship and Glorify our Lord in Heaven through the Music of Nadaswaram.
Many Small People, In Many Small Places…A Sojourn in Guatemala
By Anushi Sivarajah
[monsoonJournal.com]This spring, I set out for Guatemala with twelve other students from my university on a trip coordinated Global Youth Network, a non-profit Christian organization. For four weeks, we traveled to several different locations, immersing ourselves in the culture, the language and the prevailing ways of life. Among many other opportunities, we had the chance to visit mountain villages and orphanages, paint buildings, attend Spanish school, hear firsthand accounts of the brutalities spawned by the civil war and live with a community of ex-guerrilla members. We came across people from the international scene who are devoting their time to making many small but potent changes in attempt to heal the country’s damaged social infrastructure. Among them were a Canadian family heading an initiative to drill free wells in rural areas and volunteers participating in teaching projects that encourage lateral thinking over rote memorization. But what ultimately became the most valuable part of our cultural experience was the interaction we shared with the locals.
On our first day in Jalapa, we met a family doing laundry in the Contaminated laguna (lake) behind our house
Communicating was difficult at first. There wasn’t a single member on our team who had any prior knowledge of Spanish. Without a formal translator, it was up to us to learn the language through exchanges with the locals, who knew very few words of English themselves. It was exasperating to find ourselves forgetting the same essential travelers’ phrases time and time again. Still, these feelings of frustration would quickly dissipate whenever we engaged in actual conversation with the people we met. They all possessed a wonderful kind of persistence, in that they would not allow our lack of Spanish to get in the way of our communication. Fervent gestures and sign language often punctuated our conversations, whose purposes quickly became clear. In a country where silence was practiced and ignorance prevailed among the government-fearing public, being able to tell one’s story to a willing listener was a rarity, an opportunity that one could not afford to miss.
Guatemala’s 36-year civil war came to an official close in 1996. The war marked a period of genocide led by the then-ruling government against the indigenous Mayans and resulted in over 200,000 deaths. Bent on evicting the rural population from its rightful land, the government employed countless vicious tactics on its part. The most notorious was the “Scorched Earth” campaign, in which the national army recklessly invaded villages, set on torturing the men and children, raping the women and mutilating pregnant mothers. Having carried out their massacre, they would go on to burn down the village, literally leaving nothing but ’scorched earth’ in their wake. Over four hundred villages were destroyed in this manner.
Some of the children we met after a day of hiking
Some of the political players involved in these heinous war crimes have managed to re-integrate themselves back into society - back into the world of politics, even. The country is no stranger to political corruption. Candidates for election will often visit rural areas offering bags of free food provisions (usually corn) to the villagers, in an effort to put themselves in the good graces of the voters.
Our trip to Guatemala happened to coincide with the chaos that precedes any federal election; political propaganda was spray-painted shamelessly across mountainsides, buildings and on roadside boulders, while billboards bearing the faces of the contenders loomed tall in the cities.
Political campaigning in the city of Jalapa
At a Sunday church service we attended in our first week, a pastor addressed the upcoming elections and the ploys used by politicians aiming to secure rural votes. He urged the congregation to look past the free gifts. Politicians who approached them in such a manner were likely the ones caught up in drug trafficking and dealings with serious criminals, he warned. He emphasized the importance of inquiring about these politicians, finding out what ideals they stood for and making an informed choice. He reminded them that the kindness these politicians showed on voting day could quickly evaporate once elections were through.
Ultimately, he was encouraging his congregation members to step into the loop of political consciousness, to put aside their physical isolation from the urban core and to take an active interest in keeping the politically corrupt in check. The act was a touching reminder of what it means to be socially responsible.
* * *
Our first ten days were spent in the mountains. Nestled in its foothills was the city of Jalapa where, we were assured on the day of our arrival, Internet cafes and marketplaces abounded. We stayed with a Canadian man named Ted Van Der Zalm and his family, who had been in the country since the autumn of 2006. Their project, Wells of Hope, was founded several years ago with the intent of providing free, accessible drinking water to the people of Guatemala.
In rural areas, it’s all too common that within a community, a single lake or river will serve as a communal place to bathe, do laundry and collect water for drinking and cooking purposes. This water is further polluted by excrement from grazing animals.
Having completed some irrigation projects in Africa, Ted Van Der Zalm was approached by Guatemalan missionaries who implored him to help refine their own irrigation systems. He quickly realized that what many communities were lacking was a permanent source of clean water - and thus sprung Wells of Hope. Every year, the family raises enough funds to drill more wells. The Van Der Zalms relocate to Guatemala until all projects are completed, after which they return to Canada to fundraise for the following year.
Ted ensured that we were always engaged in some kind of activity that involved getting a feel for the extent of need in rural areas. One day, he brought us along with him as he set out to inspect some recent drill sites. The hikes to the actual wells involved steep, uphill climbs and were a part of the local people’s regular walking routines. Ted reminded us that while we were walking bare-handed, the villagers would often bear heavy loads on their backs and, in the case of young mothers, would have to carry their infants along with them.
He continued to throw us anecdotes and tidbits of information that served the collective function of delivering us a forceful reality check. The underlying theme was to stop taking everything we encountered at face value. As we walked, he spoke to us on the importance of perspective. When you see a woman walking down a path like this, he would explain, think of how far she’s already walked, how far she has to go, how heavy the load she’s carrying on her head is, how intensely the sun is beating down, the family she must provide for, how long she’s been awake for and how long it will be until she can call it a day.
It does change things for you. We’re already so desensitized to images of suffering and human labor. It’s important, then, to put things into perspective and to try to understand the contexts people are living in.
As you train yourself to think in this manner, you become all the more appreciative of those simple acts of kindness and generosity that are directed your way.
Ted had told us, countless times before, that eating meat was a luxury in many of the villages that we were visiting; in fact, it was usually a once-a-month occurrence.
In the course of one of our hikes, as a teammate and I were turning a corner, a woman called out to us from the back of her house. We stopped, unsure of what she had said. She quickly ran out to meet us, holding a stack of tortillas wrapped in the trademark, vibrantly-colored Mayan cloth - and piled neatly on top of the first tortilla were several small pieces of cooked chicken meat.
It may not sound like much, but after Ted’s constant reminders about meat being much more difficult for these people to afford, I found it a little overwhelming that she was offering her food to us so willingly and for no apparent reason. Unfortunately, our command of the Spanish language was still quite weak. We smiled at her, thanked her as profusely as we could, and patted our stomachs, trying to indicate that we had already eaten. That wasn’t the issue, of course; it just didn’t feel right to take away from her already low ration of food. And still, she persisted, eventually relenting with a smile and a few parting words.
Fortunately, continued interaction with the locals enabled the eventual dissolve of this language barrier. Later that week, Ted split the team into three and dropped each group off at a different village. The intent was to give us a glimpse of ‘a day in the life.’
We were dropped off at the village of Aldea San Francisco, where we were led around on a house-by-house tour. Every building was made of sun-baked bricks of mud and corrugated tin roofs. Every family seemed to consist of a few matriarchs and numerous children. The men were out working the fields, we were told, and they would not return until very late.
As we moved through the village, we began to acquire a whispering, giggling posse; it continued to grow as we left one house and entered the next. The children of Aldea San Francisco trailed us with mighty resilience, as if we were a gang of Pied Pipers spiriting them away.
We got rained in at one point. We all gathered around on the cement porch; a couple of the children were kicking a soccer ball around, while others were lining up for pictures and then clustering around digital cameras to view the results.
More children from Aldea San Francisco; 12-year-old Tulio in the gray Adidas
I’d made myself a friend on the walk to this house: he was a twelve-year-old boy named Tulio. As we waited the rain out, Tulio took it upon himself to teach me some Spanish. He pointed out various objects on the porch, had me repeat their names before moving on to more, and took me through basic colours, numbers and adjectives. He was incredibly persistent. If I couldn’t wrap my head around the pronunciation of a certain word, Tulio would spell it out for me, simultaneously pointing to the letters on my shirt to ensure that I was following. He was a teacher with wonderful patience; he never once seemed to get bored of the initiative he had taken on. It touched me that while his friends were clearly having a good time playing soccer, he had instead chosen to help me out.
* * *
We spent the fourth and final week of our trip in the community of Nuevo Horizonte. There were some misgivings about how this leg of the trip would wind up; all we knew was that the community had been developed by ex-guerrilla members. We had spent our third week in the upscale city of Xela, where we attended Spanish school and comfortably discussed the history of the civil war over coffee with our language instructors. And now, we were on the verge of meeting the people who had taken on hefty roles in this still-volatile part of Guatemalan history.
Fortunately, our apprehension turned out to be in vain. The community itself had only been developed eight years ago. Very soon after the war ended, a group of former guerrilla members acquired about nine hundred hectares of land, as per the terms signed in the final peace accords. Of course, tensions between the government and the guerrilla were still rife, and the fact that their new plot of land was treeless and desolate came as no surprise to the future settlers of Nuevo Horizonte. Undeterred, they devised an organizational hierarchy by which the community would be run. They agreed that their most economically sound option would be to function as a cooperative. This way, the income generated from the numerous projects they were planning could be circulated evenly amongst the community members, and the massive gap that typically separates the rich from the poor in Guatemala would be denied the chance to emerge.
The Nuevo Horizonte cooperative has continued to flourish beautifully since its inception. Having finally received land of their own, the community members were anxious to start moving forward. Their determination to recoup their losses has brought them a long way from the position the war left them in. They are recognized locally and internationally for their equality-based cooperative system and their self-sufficiency. Together, they envisioned, planned out and brought into action a whole slew of initiatives to sustain their economy and the well-being of their people, including fish farming, reforestation and eco-tourism projects, agricultural ventures and an alternative high school education programme. Their excitement for the future of their community is a palpable kind and is definitely justified in its existence. While their past was a bitter one, they have effectively closed that chapter of their lives. They have risen to the challenge of starting over with real strength and obvious competence.
* * *
The trip in its entirety made for a very rich and diversified learning experience. Even now - over a month after returning to Canada - I still find that my thoughts are very much occupied by the people I met.
A building painted by volunteers in Nuevo Horizonte
In spite of their troubles, they radiated a tangibly positive energy. Their determination to preserve their rich culture and history, to fight for their rights and to have their voices carried to places they couldn’t physically reach through foreigners like ourselves burned fervently. In Nuevo Horizonte, I saw a building painted by former volunteers, inscribed with the words “Muchas pequenas personas, en muchos pequenos lugares, haciendo muchas pequenas cosas….pueden cambiar el mundo”
In English, “Many small people, in many small places, doing many small things….can change the world” - simple words that, I believe, complement the nature of the Guatemalans in the most perfect way possible. [monsoonJournal.com]
Anushi Sivarajah is a Canadian of Tamil heritage, she is currently studying Health Sciences at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.
By: Tony Navaneelan
[monsoonJournal.com]
The Teaching Experience of a UFT Undergraduate in Vietnam
On board the twenty-one hour Viet Nam Airlines flight to Ha Noi, it is difficult not to notice with some confusion an Air France logo hidden under a thin wash of paint or still engraved on the back of one of the forks. Most of Viet Nam Airlines’ older jets were bought on discount from the French airliner after independence; a small compensation for the long colonial history between the two countries. On board, well-groomed attendants see little irony in handing out immigration forms to the ‘people’s socialist republic’ at the same time as glossy duty-free catalogues peddling imported luxury items. And despite the numerous non-smoking signs all over the aircraft, I keep finding a suspicious number of cigarette butts in my armchair ashtray.
[Me and my co-teacher Nancy Nguyen]
These contradictions – jarring and yet so commonplace in contemporary Vietnamese society – were still novel and disorienting for me as I flew towards Ha Noi. Most of what I knew of Viet Nam to that point came from a handful of American war movies and the Vietnamese phở restaurant near my university. In the seven days that past between when I was accepted for the job posting and when I actually stepped on the plane, there wasn’t much time to consider the experience ahead of me. But there I was, after flying across eleven time zones, stepping off the plane to spend half a year in one of the world’s last and most infamous Communist states.
* * *
[Class Picture]
I arrived in Viet Nam last February with a well-thumbed Lonely Planet Guide and a six month working visa from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). A few weeks earlier I had applied for a volunteer teaching position in the country over the internet – although the job positing was vague on the employer. It wasn’t until my employer called to offer me the job that she asked casually, “you know you’ll be working for the United Nations, right?” I had finished my undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto the previous summer and this seemed like the ideal way to fill my year off. The phone still in my hand, I glanced at the world map to see where Viet Nam was exactly and then told her I’d take the job. When did you need me to be there, I asked? “How’s February 26?” I looked at the calendar. It was February 21.
We touch down in Ha Noi airport through a cloud of crisp fog. It is wintertime in the north and far from scenes of lush tropical rainforest, the city feels damp and there a lingering fragrance of mildew. The airport is not what is expected. The new building is sleek and modern, complete with polished black marble floors and an elderly lady doggedly sweeping away footprints as soon as they are deposited. The airport is intended as showcase of the new Viet Nam: prosperous, technological, modern. But the very cleanliness of the building, a sign of its under-use, belies that fact that new Viet Nam is still in its infancy. As I glanced at the Western products being sold in the gift stores, I was immediately regretted the ten tubes of toothpaste and deodorant sticks I had nervously packed for my half-year stay. And outside on the curb, under the portrait of Ho Chi Minh – the man who had orchestrated the US’ only military defeat in a foreign war – taxis from the Hilton and Sheraton now waited to whisk American tourists to the new glass-clad towers sticking into the Ha Noi skyline.
[Vehicle used to transport the women]
This is the not Viet Nam from American war movies. It is the Viet Nam that I and thousands of other foreigners had come here to experience following the country’s two decades of economic growth, second only to China’s in its voracious pace. But that is not to say the old Viet Nam is not still ever present. Once my taxi sped away from the airport the land opened up into a flat, green plateau of rice paddies full of women toiling away in the country’s iconic white cone-shaped hats. These women earn less than US$2 per day and they represent the vast majority of Vietnamese society still. They, like tens of millions of others, work not only in the shadow of the country’s modern airport, but in the shadow of the country’s economic miracle as a whole. As I would come to learn, Viet Nam is, if nothing else, a land of tenuously co-existing contradictions.
* * *
A few after arriving and I am on the back of a Honda motorcycle – ubiquitous in Viet Nam – heading into the countryside. Motorbikes are a cheap and efficient way of moving around which has made them extremely popular in Viet Nam since the 1990s. At every intersection in Ha Noi, hundreds of motorbikes will stream haphazardly into one another, oblivious to any concept of traffic laws or helmets. In Canada I do not even have my learner’s permit, so in Viet Nam I am confined to my bicycle. This means, like all other cyclists, I am relegated the very bottem of Vietnamese society along with recently arrived migrants and people who have sold their motobikes for drugs. But bicycling in Ha Noi rush hour traffic is difficult enough. I tend to hug the curb and hang out with the bicycling ladies who are carrying rice or vegetables on their head while they peddle. They give me the ‘thumbs up.’ In the countryside, however, we have escaped the traffic of Ha Noi and my driver and I are able to speed easily towards our destination: an all-female labour prison inside a national park.
[Women in the Program]
Most North Americans come to Asia to teach to middle-to-upper class students eager to study at universities abroad. My class was somewhat different. To begin with, they were all recovering drug addicts or sex-trade workers. Secondly, they were still in prison. I had been hired to work in a pilot UNDP project which was providing vocational training to soon-to-be-released inmates in these ‘special’ prisons. Viet Nam has an entirely separate prison system for individuals convicted of a special class of ‘social’ crimes: drug use, sex trade work, sexual indecency, homosexuality, etc. Typical of Communist governments’ fetish for strange rhetoric and even stranger institutions, these women are officially termed victims of ‘social evil’ and the facility they are housed in was operated by the Ha Noi Sub-Department for the Prevention of Social Evil.
[Women in the Program]
While the prison I worked in only housed drug users and sex workers, the government has also launched campaigns against such social evils as gambling and has even targeted karaoke bars and foreign-language signage as being counter-revolutionary. The prisons are officially known as rehabilitation centres which made me cringe at what the conditions in an actual Vietnamese prison must be like. Our ‘rehabilitation centre,’ like all others, was overcrowded and underfunded. The women sleep 35 to a room with only 20 beds. Most sleep on bamboo mats on the floor. They work in factories most days painting plastic toys. Everything smells of mildew. This was not the Betty Ford Clinic.
* * *
For too many North Americans, Viet Nam isn’t so much a country as it is a war. It is easy to lump this state alongside a few infamous others – Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq – as places which have been flattened in our memories to a few newspaper photographs of a distant and violent conflict. Indeed, the word Viet Nam itself has become shorthand for military quagmire and terrible sacrifice. But with the exception of a US B-52 bomber wreckage that is still floating in the lake into which it crashed in Ha Noi, the country harbors almost no evidence of, and even less resentment over, the Viet Nam War – or the American War, as they refer to it. From the Vietnamese perspective, the country was essentially in a state of continuous war for independence and territorial unity from WWII until 1988; a small and poor country which successfully fought back invasions by the Japanese, the French, the Americans and the Chinese.
But what is done is done. Far from the venomous perceptions of Americans in Iran, Cuba and other places where US foreign policy has been defeated, Vietnamese have developed a very positive impression of the United States. Most Vietnamese in the cities express a desire to work and live in the US for some time and every tourist is inevitably approached by youth looking to practice their English. The people I spoke to seemed almost disappointed when they found out I was not American but Canadian. The land lady at the small apartment I rented in Ha Noi was certain I was mistaken and that “Canada is in America. No? America very rich. Don’t you want to be rich?” All of this is testimony to the new and dogmatic focus in Viet Nam since the onset of a period of relative peace since 1988. Far from dwelling on the lost decades behind them, Viet Nam has chosen to direct its attention squarely on a forward-facing obsession: economic development.
Like most people in Viet Nam, the lives of the 30 women I was soon to meet and teach mirrored the large social upheavals that have come along with Viet Nam’s drive towards development. After the drying up of subsidies from the USSR at the end of the Cold War, the Communist government in Viet Nam began a process of serious reform, opening up the country to trade and allowing private business. The hope was to mirror the successes of nearby China and Thailand in catapulting themselves away from decades of warfare and beyond the status of a low-income country. What followed was an economic boom that has seen the country grow at an annual rate of 8% for nearly twenty years, producing the fastest rate of poverty reduction in human history. In no other country have so many people escaped poverty so quickly than in Viet Nam between 1988 and the present. Just last year, the Viet Nam Stock Exchange increased by 150%. The sense of optimism in the country is almost palpable. Everyone is smiling.
[Women’s prison in Vietnam]
But along with imported Taiwanese DVD players and American cigarettes, the newly opened economy also generated an appetite for heroin and along with it, HIV. And so on my first day I entered a classroom of women who represented the physical cost Viet Nam was paying for its rapid growth – “the waste products,” I once heard someone distastefully say, of the country’s famed economic machine. Most were struggling with addictions, most commonly to heroin or for the more affluent, to ecstasy. Many concealed prized – yet banned – photographs in their jacket pockets of children living in Ha Noi. And one-third of them were battling HIV in perhaps the most unfavourable of circumstances: in a rural prison, in a poor country, and without any form of medication.
Over the next six months, myself and a team of six UN workers ran the vocational training program inside the women’s prison. The course work consisted mainly of computer training, English lessons and information sessions on drug counseling and social networks when they are released. Our ambitions were low. When we arrived, the prison we were working at had a return rate of over 90% — 9 out 10 women would relapse and be sent back for another 2-year stay. Just having 5 women in the program gain stable employment following release would be enough to declare success. Of course the women themselves had their own varying incentives for succeeding. Letters (opened by the prison of course) from boyfriends in their hometowns, visits from their children and parents on weekend, or rumors of a famous South Korean movie playing in Ha Noi would all bring them all pangs for home.
* * *
The problems of our project were frequent table conversation when our UN team would go out for dinner. This helped distract us, at times, from the food. The diet in Viet Nam is largely a function of the population. In a country of 88-million living in an area half the size of Saskatchewan, nothing can go to waste. Dog meat, pig stomach, cow cheek and insects have all staked out a place for themselves on the Vietnamese menu. Ordering snake at a restaurant in Ha Noi entails a live snake being brought to the table, killed on spot and its still-beating heart placed on a dish on the table. Then the oldest guest eats the pulsating heart while the others drink a shot of snake blood and vodka. For health and longevity, of course. Delicious. But when the meal is over, the discussions with my UN co-workers would inevitably turn into a verbal browbeating of the state over the conditions of the prisons. The prisons have been termed by many critics as forced labour centres or even concentration camps for people living with HIV/AIDS. And on days when my classes with the women are cancelled because they failed to meet their work quota for the previous day, I was tempted to agree.
But while the prisons may seem crude, they represent an honest (although futile) attempt to address an epidemic by a country which, until a few years ago, did not even have a word for HIV. Indeed, it is part of the promise but also the problem that such rapid poverty reduction has brought to Viet Nam. A society that twenty-five years ago was preoccupied with Chinese invasion and rice famines, is now trying to absorb Korean soap operas, Microsoft, admission to the WTO and HIV/AIDS simultaneously. The results are sometimes tragic, often comedic and never perfect – there is still an infuriating lack of social norms governing where and when cell phones can be used. But they represent the best attempt of a society to deal with a total economic and social upheaval the likes of which Canada has never experienced. To put the scale of growth in perspective, the total wealth of Viet Nam’s 88-million people doubles every nine years. Greater countries have come apart under lesser strain.
And even amongst those who have paid the highest price in the country’s race for modernization there exists no less enthusiasm for the project as a whole. I would have expected the women in the prison – most victims of the new imports of cheap Thai rice and Cambodian heroin, a lethal mixture for rural Viet Nam’s rice-based economies – to be the most critical of the new reforms in the country. Instead they seem to be completely enthralled by, and well adjusted to, it. As if we were at a café instead of a prison, the women feverishly inquire what foreigners think about Viet Nam, ask what Canadian girls wear dancing and if Canadian boys live with their parents, and are proud to pass on to me their new email addresses – even though many will not be able to check their inboxes until their release in two years. With few exceptions, the women in the prison know that even with a criminal record, the pace of growth means they will enjoy a quality of life greater than their parents and almost unimaginable to their grandparents. And perhaps most surprising of all is the constant requests for Bee Gees and Lionel Ritchie CDs. The Bee Gees and Lionel Ritchie, like most foreign music, are big in Viet Nam.
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Packing up my apartment in Ha Noi at the end of six months was a bittersweet experience. I had become tired of making a fool of myself on a daily basis while trying to complete such basic tasks as grocery shopping or finding an internet café. The novelty of everyone staring at me as I drove by on my bicycle also became less enjoyable. And I longed for a conversation with friends that did not take place over email and across eleven time zones. The addition of Ha Noi summer heat – so humid it made the wallpaper in my apartment peel – did not add much incentive to stay. I was ready to go home. When our UNDP program finished in August, I booked a ticket for my long, twenty-one flight back to Canada. But this is a natural experience for people working in different cultures from their own. The daily frustrations of culture-clash and language barriers can be trying but they are passing. Those feelings quickly melt away once you get home, allowing you to appreciate the true value of the time you spent there.
In Viet Nam, the sense of optimism and renewal is almost tangible. The country is literally reinventing – remanufacturing – itself every few years. The experience of living inside such a society at this time was invaluable and the memories, one year later, are still fresh. And so is my affection for friendships I formed while I was there. The women who worked in our program, with the exception of a few, will all have been released by now – quietly and unceremoniously deposited outside the gate of the prison like many before them where they wait for a bus to take them to the nearby city. I rode that bus, stifling and crowded in the summer heat, every week coming back to Ha Noi which is a unique experience in itself. Some former inmates are greeted by friends and the hesitant smiles of family and some are stoic and simply stare out the window. They are like the country itself, with many bad memories behind and so much turbulent development left ahead. They have confidence in the tide of progress they have been swept up in and yet fear their inability to properly control the course it will take them on. But like Viet Nam as whole, I think most of those women seem sure they are at least heading in a direction better from where they came.
Anthony Navaneelan is a Canadian of Sri Lankan heritage who worked in Viet Nam from February to August 2006. He is currently studying for his law degree at the University of Toronto.