Sweat Labor and a Flash Flood

A group of students from Johnson State College (JSC) is spending the next few weeks with Clear Path International in Vietnam. This is possible due to a partnership between Clear Path, the Break Away Program and JSC. The students and staff will be posting tales and photos from their journey to this blog. You can read all of their posts by clicking here. The images from this post are from the Clear Path Archive.


(Written by Caroline Cole)
We were off to an early start today. After a quick breakfast we headed out to the emerging teen center to continue our efforts. Galen and I assumed our places at the brick-slinging station. Our job consisted of placing bricks in baskets, hauling them from point A to point B, then latching the baskets to a pulley system that transported them to the top floor. I actually found the work quite satisfying. There is something to be said for using the sheer strength of your body to attain a tangible ends. The effort of my muscles becomes a place where kids can learn and recreate in. It is a way of transfering internal processes to the external environment, like art, a simple yet amazing alchemy. It is a way of manifesting intent. The engagement of the flesh somehow makes the service more complete, not a mere exercise of the mind, but grounded in the earth as well. It had a certain meditative quality. It slows me down, allows my mind to clear. It was also a way to really be with the Vietnamese people around me. Perhaps we could exchange only limited words, but we grew a natural sort of intimacy that can only be achieved through shared sweat and labor.

Later that evening we experienced a crazy flash flood that bears mentioning. In what seemed like a matter of moments, a seemingly benign rain storm ecscalted into a full-fledged city emergency. The streets were filled with about a foot and a half of water. The people of Hue seemed largely unphased by the situation. Children splashed
around in the filthy waves. Mother and fathers quietly walked there bikes home. Cyclo drivers donned tarps and sought customers completely undaunted. One fellow fished an eel out of the murky depths. The mood was generally quite cheery, people smiling and laughing. It was a break from the usual routine, the kind that awakens one to life's spectacle, and to the grace of having one another's company in this mad adventure.

The lower floor of our hotel is a restaurant that is completely open to the road on one side. The high water mark was essentially exactly level with the floor of the hotel, having swallowed the front steps. As if by divine providence, the flood did not rise that last fateful inch. Meanwhile, we all sort of took the cue of the locals and calmly finished our supper by candlelight (the power went out as well). It was one part fiddling while Rome burned, and one part romantic lakeside dining. Somehow the lack of panic seemed utterly normal. I think the Vietanmese spirit possessed me at that moment. Somehow it seemed as if we were all in this together, a peaceful resignation, a genuinely felt sense of community. Not the community we yammer on about in cliched sermons, but the real kind that develops after years of struggle and quietly plodding on. The sense of knowing exactly what is important, and knowing exactly how much the human spirit can take. It reminds me of a Joyce quote, "Go on loving, it's your only revenge."