19. The marks of a war time couldn't erase yet, in Saigon, Southern Vietnam
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I arrived in Saigon, Vietnam, and words like napalm or Agent Orange became outrageously familiars. Not only at the War Museum of Saigon, but also on the streets. These are the marks of an absurd war that time couldn't erase yet. | |
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Saigon. The name of the city, only by itself, brings to one's memory scenes reviewed countless times in films, documentaries or press articles. Well-known pictures of such an absurd war as all the wars usually are. Endless sequences of ammo falling from the sky, handicapped young people, frightened children screaming and crying and dying. Names like napalm or the Agent Orange become scandalously familiar. By the worst reasons! And being there, in the South of Vietnam, those memories come to life when they mix with the present reality. It was a hard to stand meeting.
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| Daily life on the banks of Mekong Delta, Vietnam |
Visiting the War Museum in Saigon, for example, is not a pleasant experience. A brief collection of photos from the so called Vietnamese War, when the photographers could circulate without any kind of restrictions in the battle fields makes you feel really impressed by the coldness one is told about the story of the conflict, both illogical and bloody. It shows faces with a name. Real names. You can almost feel the smell of napalm when you go along the rooms of the museum. A sense of revolt invades the body of the least sensible visitor when seeing the effects on the population of the harmful Agent Orange, used by the American troops. Or when one gets to know in detail the atrocities like the My Lai massacre when, in just a few hours, American soldiers destroyed whole villages and wildly assassinated hundreds of unarmed civilians, including old people, women and young children. However, the saddest thing of all is that one does not need to visit the museum to fell the consequences of this war on the Vietnamese people.
Marks can be seen all over Saigon in the cruellest way. Disabled men wandering around the streets, begging for the precious help of those who pass by. People whose parents were infected by the harmful Agent Orange - which destroyed everything Man achieved to his own body after millions of years of evolution -, survive hopelessly. Faces burnt by napalm can be found at every street corner. People with unbelievable deformations in all the parts of their bodies. Real monsters at the light of Nature laws. People whose happiness was robbed to the rest of their lives just in the instant of an explosion.
I will never forget the image of that man, walking without legs, just on tiny and deformed feet glued to his hip, armless, a sad look begging for help. The war is not a nice thing - one usually says - but seeing its effects in front of one's eyes is something that can't leave them dry.
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| Cai Rang floating market, Mekong Delta |
After all this I had to see how the Vietcong face the powerful American enemy and the southern troops of the country which was by then divided. I decided to visit the Cu Chi tunnels, a two-hour-journey from Saigon. Getting into those tunnels was a remarkable experience. I have crawled as a real Vietcong through hundreds of metres of tunnels which are unbelievably narrow and low. The filthy air, in spite of the cooling systems which were cleverly invented, made breathing hard. Other visitors gave the experience up half way and left the tunnels through one of the countless exits which in the past were disguised in the jungle. Claustrophobia, perhaps. In the end, everybody - the four “survivors” - ran with sweat, but we were all happy with the experience.
Some days later I left Saigon and sailed along the Mekong Delta heading for Chau Doc, near the border with Cambodia. It is the slowest way to make the journey, but at the same time it is one of those who leave the best memoirs to the traveller. Just a bit of normal life after the hard reality of the past. And in this way I could observe that life was going on in a natural peaceful way in the impressive floating market of Cai Rang, which is the most crowed in the region. Aboard a rowing boat, driven by a kind and strong old woman I left myself absorb by the labyrinthine charm of small channels of muddy water. And I got in touch with the rhythm of life in a floating village where all the inhabitants earn their living raising fish in crawls in the middle of the river. A time to smile following the war-like intensity of the previous experiences.
Now I leave a wonderful country behind and an unbelievably optimistic people who tries to look ahead and overcome the marks of a past which was not always easy to handle with. But I move to another one which still lives under the ghost of one of the cruellest political regimens the story of Mankind can remember: Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. I am aware of what is waiting for me in Phnom Penh. I bite my lips, have my passport stamped and cross the border.
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