Teamwork: Cross-Cultural Cooperation

I remember the very first day I arrived to Vietnam all the way back in August. I was not simply culturally shocked, I was culturally stunned. Stunned by the way traffic worked (indeed it works); by familiar, yet foreign landscapes--couldn't and still cannot get over the images of war replaying in my mind; by the sanitation, especially in regards to food--bun cha was my first meal, and I still remember how cautious I was; by the way people pronounced things--I still cannot understand what Northerners are saying sometimes because I did not know many northern Vietnamese growing up. Considering that I grew up seeing northern Vietnamese as the "other" in the context the yellow flag with the three red stripes that is the Diasporic Vietnamese nation still today tugging on the strings of the regional and cold war ideological divide.

You can simply taste this regionalism in San Jose's favorite Vietnamese restaurants, especially the sweetness of the broth in the bowls of pho. You can taste it in anti-communist protests against their own politicians like Madison Nguyen, and musicians who are Vietnamese nationals. That's southern I tell you. I'm southern I tell you though we're no longer are in the south, but we're in the west, and we're rebuilding what once was in the south.

Lastly, I was also stunned by the fact that I was one of "those" overseas Vietnamese whose que huong comes from the south, whose family were once exiles (and to a respect, still are), and who was born and raised in the most imperialist country in the world today. I remember on those very first couple of days, I was incredibly paranoid of people in uniforms working who I thought might be working for the government. I was afraid that they would somehow know that I was a viet kieu with my broken Vietnamese, stumbling over tones and pronunciations. Maybe because I had too much of a dosage of Vietnamese American literature.. written many years ago. Little did I know, things had changed over the years: attitudes and policies have changed radically. Viet kieu are suppoedly no longer labeled as reactionary or enemies of the state, but rather contributors to progress. Today, I still think about my position here.

To finally get to the point of this week's blog, teamwork and cross-cultural cooperation starts with understanding. Prior I explained a little bit about my process of trying to understand not only Hanoi, Vietnam and its people, but also myself and how I fit in this picture. I was always conscious of what I was doing and its repercussions on local people here. These past months, for our UCHANU class, I have been working on Project Kiem An with two locals, and two other UC students. Although everyone knew how to speak English: the common language among us aside from Vietnamese, it was difficult in the beginning to establish a foundation. At Berkeley, in the organizing spaces I am familiar with intersecting a kind of "progressive" political philosophy with the practice of organizing and simply "getting shit done"--everyone should be equal no matter their position; decision processes should be democratic with power (voice) distributed equally. Fluidity within structure was preferred.

We had little structure in the beginning. Schedules of teammates started to shift tremendously including mine. At times, I felt uncomfortable "stepping" up because Hanoi, Vietnam was simply not my territory. I expected too much from our local teammates to lead the way since from the beginning they helped the UC students off their feet. To put it more informally, they "held" our hands until we could walk on our own.. literally. I am sure my other two UC teammates would agree that there was much uncertainty in not only how the project should be carried out with respects to how things are done here (culture and social norms), but also work distribution amongst the team members: everyone is at different levels in terms of language competency and fluency.

I personally felt the project, though it helped us be much more engaged critically of the realities of working people and the built environment--encouraged a kind of factory-style structure. Taking this in consideration, the group's objective of seeking to understand each other and this world shifted radically to essentially meeting interview deadlines: transcribing, translating, Gig'izing.. wash, rinse, and repeat. Just like that. I felt from that escalating point where deadlines became a priority, our connection with each other started to fade a bit. It was all about work, and that was it.

If I could change one thing of how things chronologically fell in place, I would try to change my personal attitude and incompetence with a new environment like this. This is my first time out of the country. Like I depicted, I was afraid and confused. I was caught between the foreign and the familiar. I would have "stepped up" a little bit more, and get out of my comfort zone, to propose more social outings with the group. Perhaps allocated time more effectively, and calendar dates and our individual deadlines collectively. What the group and I can do right now is on one of these days sit down, maybe sip on some tea, eat some khoai tay chien, and discuss/reflect/analyze on our interviews and how they relate to not simply to the development of Vietnam, but to the development of ourselves. Simply, let's share personal experiences.