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WR 121. 2 essays responces.
Cervantes1
Kandyce Cervantes
Cullom
WR 121 (Friday)
2 November 2013
Rough Draft Ethnog Part 3
Human Trafficking: Vietnam
Sitting down with Mi, my Informant on Vietnam, was definitely very informative and I am very appreciative of that. To hear about the everydays of her and her countries traditions of the average family was an eye opener, but I cannot help but think about an article I had come a crossed that spoke on human trafficking. I decided to go more in depth on the matter and found that it is a problematic issue. The statistic of Vietnamese victims who have gone missing have considerably grown since 1990 till now (2013) to a total of over 400,000 victims missing (Dale-Harris). The biggest population of these victims come’s come from the towns that border with China.
In contrast to Vietnam’s human trafficking, “China is the demand for an ideal family model which is what fuels the industry,” (Dale-Harris). Children are being sold whether it be, to have a son or a wife, or just to work in garment factories. In China because there is the one child policy the result is in a preference for all males, which ends in a shortage for girls available for marriage (Dale-Harris). There for since Vietnam is on the border of China take full advantage of solving the problem by paying Vietnamese people in kidnapping.
Linh, now 25, was young girl when she was kidnapped and taken to Hekou in China. Most of the kidnapping seems to take place by a relative who cons the children and sells them into the trafficking war. The story says Linh who’s aunt who, never showed her of any interest, one day decided to take her on a shopping trip. The aunt sold Linh to two Chinese women, who then took Linh to a market to be sold as wife to a 30 year old man (Dale-Harris). I could not imagine the horror that a little girl could go through. Thinking she was just going on shopping trip and the next moment taken from your family to be all of sudden be a wife to someone you have never met before, let alone being just a child. Linh job in the marriage was to produce a baby, and when she would refuse to sleep with the man her would then beat and rape her. Linh finally got the courage one rainy day and escaped to a local police station the police who put her into a shelter where she was given a meal and bed. Linh shelter had fifteen other girls, who all had similar stories of their own (Dake-Harris).
With a similar story to Linh, Hieu was a young Sixteen year old boy who lived in a small town in Vietnam called Dien Bien. This is a small mountain town in north-western Vietnam, it is one of the poorest provinces and borders China (Brown). Hieu worked at job making coal bricks when one day a women approached him in the village asking him if he wanted vocational training. Happy to tell his parent that he would finnaly have a chance for a real job to make money he took the womens offer. Hieu and eleven other children were taken by a bus 1,300 miles away to work in Ho Chi Minh, south Vietnam (Brown). The children were sold and then locked up in a small cramped room making clothes for the next two years. The children worked from six in the morning till midnight, with no wages. If mistakes were made the children were beaten with a stick (Brown). Hieu was very fortunate, and one day managed to escape with two other boys who all jumped out of the window of the third floor. The boys all ran as fast as they could, not knowing where they were going, and just ran until morning and found help (Brown).
These children are extremely fortunate to have escaped these harsh conditions. One of the other problem’s the kids are faced with are, once these children have escaped, they are disowned from their families or are no longer able to track down their families so they are left to live in the shelters until they are adults and can survive on their own. Once the kids are kidnapped they are taken far away from their home so that is they are able to escape they cannot just go home. The trafficking target on small rural towns, because the people in these communities do not know of the risks of human trafficking (brown). “The trafficking business is getting worse, because it is so lucrative and other people in the trafficking business want a piece of the pie (Brown). The fact that it is a growing a business is deeply saddening, although that Vietnamese government’s agenda is to increase in the number of prosecutions involving these gang like activities(Brown), I do not see this as a benefit. The problem will still be there.
(Conclusion)
Works Cited
Brown, Marianne. “Vietnam’s lost children in labyrinth of slave labour.” BBC NEWS, ASIA. 27 August 2013. 30 October 2013.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23631923?print=true
.
Dale-Harris, Luke. “The Ultimate Betrayal: Human Trafficking in Vietnam.” Huffpost Impact, United Kingdom. 1 July 2013. 30 October 2013. www.huffintonpost.co.uk/luke-daleharris/vietnam-human-trafficking.web.
Vijeyarasa, Ramona. “The State, The Family And Language Of ‘Social Evils’: Re-Stigmatising Victims Of Trafficking In Vietnam.” Culture, Health & Sexuality 12.(2010): 89-102. Academic Search Premier. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.
Cervantes 8
Kandyce Cervantes
Cullom
WR 121 (Friday)
Ethnog. 4 Rough draft
Vietnam from the Outside
Flying high over the Andaman Sea, Gulf of Thailand, and finally the plane swings around into Vietnam. Coming down, getting closer and closer to land, I see beautiful turquoise water with shades of brown rippling through it. I cannot believe the reef is visible. All I can imagine is how the reef is a completely different underwater world than what I am used to seeing back home on the Pacific Ocean. I look out further onto the land and see large mountain ranges covered with every water loving tree and plant out there. The rainforest is incredibly dense with jungle, and I cannot even see where we could possibly land the plane. Not to mention that I can only see the tops of buildings. Where are the roads? The plane finally comes to a stop and the doors open.
Stepping off the plane I see an old run down building that is the terminal. It has finally, come to the end of the ride, after twenty hours of sitting! It is midday now and the sun is beating down. It feels as if it is 120 degrees out even though it is only 80 degrees, it is extremely humid. I am walking around trying to find baggage claim and cannot figure out at all where to begin to walk, I am already lost in translation, and I haven’t even left the airport. Deciding to ask someone, because I cannot understand the signs for the life of me, I say, “Excuse me where can I find bags!” as I hold up my backpack and point vigorously at it. The middle age couple points with their finger straight ahead, then to the left, right, right, and then straight again. I continue to say this over and over in my head trying my best not to get the rights and lefts mixed all around. At last, I have my bags and I am off to now find a taxi.
I arrive to the hotel and wave and say “hello” to the women at the front as she hands me a telegram from the organization I will be working with. I will start my new adventure tomorrow with someone who is picking me up in the morning. I head up to my room exhausted from my day. Whether it was figuring out where to find my bags at the airport or feeling like my cab driver was going to kill someone, it was something I appreciated to the fullest. I cannot wait to have more amazing meals or actually go back to the woman I received my meal from and ask her how to make it myself. Maybe she would even be so gracious to show me how to make it. As I clean up and put my bags away, I pull out my blanket and head off to bed. My sight-seeing day comes to an end and the real reason I am here begins.
My shoulder shakes, and I quickly snap out of my day to dream on a brief adventure to Vietnam. My husband said he had been calling my name, “Kandyce, Kandyce, K—andyce for a little over two minutes. Which is not long, but when you think of the normal span of day dream, which is about fourteen seconds, that was intense. I have always wanted to travel, and heading towards my goal to go into midwifery; there are many countries that are in need of proper pre and post natal care. Midwives are most cost efficient and safer. Vietnam has always been one of many countries I have wanted to travel to. Of course it is the most rural areas I am looking at going to be of any assistance.
I have a friend, Mi, who I met in my spring term of 2013; we had a class together and continued to keep in touch. I was able to sit down and talk to Mi about her country, Vietnam, as I jumped to this opportunity to find out about this place I, one day, would love to go.
First off, Mi is from a city called Ho-chi-minh, which is the largest city in Vietnam. I asked her how long she had been in the United States, and she replied, “I live nearly three years.” Mi moved here with her husband, who has lived in the United States for quite some time now. He, too, is from Vietnam and from the same city. I asked, “How long have you been married?” and she replied, “Three years I married my husband and I have to come here with him.” Mi claimed that it was very difficult to come to the United States because the government did not believe that her husband and she were married. I asked, “What did you have to do to come here?” She said, “We give a lot of pictures and married paper.” She and her husband have a two year old little boy at home that keeps her pretty busy, which is why the only time she was able to meet with me was during her work-study hours on the weekends. As we continued to whisper and complete the interview, she suddenly stopped talking and pointed to her boss, who was sitting only twenty feet away. Then she took the red vest off so we were not bothered. It was clear that we are doing work for school, and I couldn’t really imagine her getting in any trouble. We gradually eased back into what seemed to be our secret interview. She suddenly said lowly with a bit of excitement, “My country give rice to other country, the second largest in world for give rice.” It was like she suddenly remembered that bit of information about her country’s economy which I found really pleasant.
In addition to what she remembered about her country’s economy, I asked Mi what she missed about Vietnam. She answered, “I miss my family and best friends when rainy and dark here. I feel my country is good. My culture three generation in the same home; it very happy and warm, make everyone close relationship.” I can imagine how that feels to not have that anymore.
Having had three generations in one home, I asked Mi if there were a lot of arguments. She said, “Sometime they are fight, and the eldest have to solve problem and have to obey.” Mi grew up with a younger sister who missed her so much she applied to a college in Texas so she could visit Mi more often. This makes it easier for Mi’s parents to come to the United States more, too.
I asked Mi what her fondest memory was with her family growing up, “On weekend usually go to the beach as a family.” From the city of Ho-Chi-Minh the ocean is only about an hour away. In my opinion, what kid doesn’t love the beach? Mi said, “Beach is sandy with no fish, very shallow, so kid just play.” She had a warm smile on her face, as if she was going back to that time spent with her family in her head. “You don’t swim?” I asked, and Mi replies, “Very shallow, no swim.”
Finally, as our conversation progressed, Mi started to relax a little more and began to tell me more without me having to go down my list of questions. “My country like here we only have two weather, the sunny and rainy. When rainy we don’t like go out, because it very dirty.” As I only imagined tons of mud everywhere and jungle, she reassured me that is not the landscape. Mi turned on one of the computers and Googled the city where she is from, which was just as she said, “like here.” In the pictures there were freeways, beautiful architecture, a lot of buildings, and it is clean. Unfortunately, I had assumed it was dirty, old, and unkempt. I asked her, “Why is it when it is raining, you don’t go outside?” She replied, “Travel by bike and motorcycle, only rich people have car,” which now makes perfect sense to me. This made me wonder if Mi thinks about ever going back to live in Vietnam to raise her son, and she replied, “No, stay here permanently. We go at end of year to visit my country. New year very special, I dress in Ao-Dai and celebrate.” An ao-dai is a long sleeved tunic that goes all way down to the ankles, with a beautiful embellishment on the front. It is normally worn over pants. Mi explained that for New Year or special occasions you wear bright colored ao-dai, but for school the girls have to wear white ao-dai. Mi continued on about the New Year and explained what all she has to do for the New Year preparation. She said, “I have to clean house, clean everything. Third day of New Year, kid are very happy. They have new clothes which spend with lucky money.” Lucky money is what kids get on the first of the year in red envelopes normally given by the parents, and occasionally friends and relatives, depending on family circumstances.
Sitting down with Mi, my Informant on Vietnam, was very informative and I am very appreciative of that. To hear about the everyday aspects of her country’s traditions and the lifestyle of the average family was an eye opener, but I cannot help but think about an article I came across that spoke about human trafficking in Vietnam. I decided to go more in depth on the matter and found that it is a problematic issue. The number of Vietnamese victims who have gone missing has considerably grown from 1990 to 2013, reaching a total of over 400,000 victims missing (Dale-Harris). The biggest population of these victims comes from the towns that border with China.
In contrast to Vietnam’s own human trafficking, in “China, it is the demand for an ideal family model which is what fuels the industry” (Dale-Harris). Children are being sold whether it be to have a son or a wife, or just to work in garment factories. In China because there is the one child policy the result is in a preference for all males, which ends in a shortage for girls available for marriage (Dale-Harris). Since Vietnam is on the border of China, they take full advantage of solving the problem by paying Vietnamese people for kidnapping.
According to the Havoscope Global Black Market, trafficking is a $32 Billion industry; worldwide 20.9 million Human trafficking victims as of 2013. “Within Vietnam, security services have broken up over 3,000 human trafficking attempts along the Vietnam-China border between 2003 and 2013” (Havoscope). The human trafficking activities between Vietnam and China has increased in recent years. Chinese men are willing to pay up to $5,700 for Vietnamese women to be their brides, according to court documents (Havoscope).
According to Linh, who was born and raised in Vietnam with 8 older brothers. Linh, now 25, was a young girl when she was kidnapped and taken to Hekou in China. Most of the kidnapping seems to take place by a relative who cons the children and sells them into the trafficking war. The story says Linh, whose aunt never showed her any interest, one day decided to take her on a shopping trip. The aunt sold Linh to two Chinese women, who then took Linh to a market to be sold as wife to a 30 year old man (Dale-Harris). I could not imagine the horror that a little girl could go through. Linh, thinking it was just an average day, was asked to go shopping with her aunt. The next moment she was taken from her home and family to all of a sudden being an adult and a wife to someone she had never met before, let alone, being just a child. Linh’s job in the marriage was to produce a baby, and when she would refuse to sleep with her husband, he would then beat and rape her. Linh finally got the courage one rainy day and escaped to a local police station where she was put into a shelter and given a meal and bed. Linh’s shelter had fifteen other girls, who all had similar stories of their own (Dale-Harris).
With a similar story to Linh, Hieu was a young sixteen year old boy who lived in a small town in Vietnam called Dien Bien. It is a small mountain town in northwestern Vietnam, in one of the poorest provinces and bordering China (Brown). Hieu worked at job making coal bricks when one day a woman approached him in the village asking him if he wanted vocational training. Happy to tell his parents that he would finally have a chance for a real job to make money, he took the woman’s offer. Hieu and eleven other children were taken by a bus 1,300 miles away to work in Ho Chi Minh in the south of Vietnam (Brown). The children were sold and then locked up in a small cramped room making clothes for the next two years. The children worked from six in the morning until midnight with no wages. If mistakes were made, the children were beaten with a stick (Brown). Hieu was very fortunate, and one day managed to escape with two other boys who all jumped out of the window of the third floor. The boys all ran as fast as they could, not knowing where they were going, and just ran until morning and found help (Brown).
Furthermore, trafficking is focused more on children and women than men; the women have to deal with, “Multiple push factors, in terms of persistent gender inequality that can be considered one of the underlying causes of trafficking in women of Vietnam” (Vijeyarasa). These include high rates of domestic violence. Many victims are promised jobs in the hotel or leisure industry, or as interpreters, but when they arrive they are “groomed or threatened” and used for sexual exploitation, forced labour, or both. Women who are able to return to Vietnam are often scarred by traffickers, similar to that of sex workers. “The social economic inequality that leads to trafficking, including extreme poverty, lack of economic opportunity and gender biased” (Vijeyarasa).
(Conclusion)
(This will be on page 10)
Works Cited
Brown, Marianne. “Vietnam’s lost children in labyrinth of slave labour.” BBC NEWS, ASIA. 27 August 2013. 30 October 2013. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23631923?print=true.
Dale-Harris, Luke. “The Ultimate Betrayal: Human Trafficking in Vietnam.” Huffpost Impact, United Kingdom. 1 July 2013. 30 October 2013. www.huffintonpost.co.uk/luke-daleharris/vietnam-human-trafficking.web.
Havoscope. “Price to Purchase Bride in Vietnam.” “Vietnam Jails Chinese National, Locals for Human Trafficking.” Than Nien Daily. Havoscope Global Black Market Information. 17 June 2013. 21 November 2013. www.havoscope.com/tag/human-trafficking/page/5/. Web.
Vijeyarasa, Ramona. “The State, The Family And Language Of ‘Social Evils’: Re-Stigmatising Victims Of Trafficking In Vietnam.” Culture, Health & Sexuality 12.(2010): 89-102. Academic Search Premier. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.
“Vietnam Justice Department Issues Regulations on Foreign Marriages.” The Advocates for Human Rights. 30 July 2007. 21 November 2013. www.stopvaw.org.vietnam_trafficking.html. Web.
