Though they work in different fields, French physics professor Patrick Aurenche, American English teacher Sarah Bales and Norwegian health activist Jon Liden, visited Vietnam once only to return again and again.

Professor Patrick Aurenche first visited Hanoi in the winter of 1993 to attend the Vietnam Meeting on Physics. Since then, he has come back to Vietnam 14 times to help run the Vietnam Physics School or participate in scientific conferences. The professor said that he spends a great deal of money on his visits to Vietnam only because he loves and wants to help Vietnam with his professional knowledge.

On Christmas Eve, December 24, 2006, professor Aurenche went to Nha Trang to take part in a conference of the Vietnam Physics School. The school’s annual programmes last only for several weeks in the winter and are yearly delivered in different cities like Da Lat, Vung Tau, Nha Trang, Hue, Ha Long and Hanoi. It targets graduate students, research interns, as well as young PhD holders. Young researchers from Vietnam, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, Taiwan and many other countries attend this winter mobile school in Vietnam. International professors deliver lectures on the latest discoveries in physics without any compensation because like Mr. Aurenche, they all love Vietnam and know that it is a poor country.

In many Western countries, Christmas Eve, the most important holiday of the year, is as big an event as the lunar New Year in Vietnam. Yet, for more than 10 years, whenever Christmas comes, professor Aurenche has flown to a faraway land, leaving home and family behind to celebrate Christmas without him. “There is nothing I can do, since in 1994, professor Tran Thanh Van, chairman of the scientific organisation Meeting Vietnam, invited me to be one of the 3 presidents of the Vietnam Physics School,” said Mr. Aurenche.

One is curious to know what the French professor thinks about his Vietnamese students. And here is an optimistic answer, “Compared to 1994, current Vietnamese students are younger and better trained, thanks to a new generation of physics teachers. Foreign professors can now easily communicate with Vietnamese students. The English barrier is still there, but isn’t as high. Several years ago, the distance between Vietnamese students and those from China, Thailand and Malaysia was obvious. This distance no longer exists now. Many former Vietnamese students have received PhDs from universities in France, the US, Japan and the Republic of Korea. Some have returned to Vietnam to teach. Their students are better trained and attending their teachers’ school today.” After a short pause, Mr, Aurenche continued, “We have reasons to believe in the young Vietnamese generation.”

Campaigns to fight social ills

Another teacher came to Vietnam in 1992. She is Sarah Bales from the US. She volunteered to teach English at the National University of Economics. After a great deal of interaction with Vietnamese students, she discovered their greatest weakness: the lack of confidence and communication skills. So with some friends, she gathered a group of volunteers to give free consulting and communication skill sessions to Vietnamese students. She also edited a series of learning materials titled “Commercial English” to help students to master simple English sentences and phases. Miss Bales returned to the US to finish her graduate studies. Yet, the Vietnam-sickness urged her to come back.

And come back she did to teach and later work for a World Bank research project on poverty elimination. In the meantime, a romantic love story between Sarah Bales and economics professor Hoang Van Kinh made her decide to be the daughter-in-law of Giao Thuy, Nam Dinh Province. She persuaded her husband to take part in “Health is Gold” Project which helped the Vietnam Ministry of Heath successfully carry out an anti-smoking campaign in Vietnam. Thanks to this project, many villages in Vietnam now organise weddings without cigarettes.

There are many other social ills in Vietnam which the former English teacher is interested in. One of them is Vietnamese men’s addiction to wine and beer. She is now working with the Institute of Strategies to conduct research on wine and beer drinking in Vietnam. In a family discussion, she again convinced Mr. Kinh to write a newspaper article about wine drinking culture in his country.

Beside the love for my family, I suddenly realised that I love this country so much!

If the American teacher pays particular attention to rampant cigarette smoking and wine drinking, Jon Liden from Norway was shocked by the number of traffic accidents in Vietnam. Jon Liden, who works for the Global Fund, an HIV and malaria prevention international organisation in Switzerland, recently returned to Vietnam after his last trips in the early 1990s. And what appeared before his eyes was not only encouraging signs of a fast developing market economy, but also the sight of thousands of all kinds of vehicles crowding the streets.

On the pavement, pedestrians can no longer walk leisurely, since they have to find their way through countless motorcycles and shops encroaching on the streets. “If traffic accidents continue to increase at such a rate as now, and the dead and injured are the main providers of families, or young people, this shocking phenomenon will hamper the development of the nation,” Mr. Liden said. Another shocking thing to the Norwegian is the number of beer shops. Why are there so many beer shops? Why do even office employees, teachers and researchers visit beer shops every noon? How can they work for the rest of the day?

Such questions occurred to Jon Liden, who had to suffer another shock: sanitary conditions of food. “To protect a people, the living standards of that people must be the first priority. In Japan and other countries, domestically-used products have better quality than exported goods, and the best and safest food products are put aside for their own peoples,” said Mr. Liden. But sadly, in Vietnam, the opposite is true. According to Jon Liden, unsafe food products not only affect Vietnamese people, but also international tourists who prefer to eat at popular street shops rather than inside elegant restaurants.

But whatever change is taking place in Vietnam, Hanoi in his eyes was as lovely as before. “Do you know that when thinking about leaving Vietnam and Hanoi to return to Switzerland, I felt very sad as though I was leaving my sweetheart behind? Beside the love for my family, I suddenly realised that I love this country so much!” Jon Riden confided.

(Source: SGTT)

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