Ben Tre, VIETNAM - "Everyone should attend a communist rally once in their life," my friend gushed. "There's something so genuine about it."
The Communist Youth Union Green Summer Campaign welcome ceremony had just concluded in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. As we loaded our bus to depart for our assigned hamlet for three weeks of building houses and teaching at summer camp, the excitement among my fellow volunteers was contagious.
Our group includes six American students from Duke and the University of North Carolina and six Vietnamese students who are our roommates and co-volunteers. The partnership is a huge deal here in Vietnam-our trip was front page news in the nation's biggest national newspaper.
Before we came to Vietnam, our group wondered what it would be like working in an area our country had destroyed with people who a little more than thirty years ago were our mortal enemies.
The province that we are working in, Ben Tre, was a site of fierce fighting during the Vietnam War (or here, the American War). A U.S. general famously remarked here, "We must destroy the village in order to save the village."
The area was completely ruined.
Nearby, there are many reminders of the war in Vietnam. At the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, the chilling Agent Orange dioxin display features pictures of horribly maimed adults, crippled children and two jars containing hideously deformed and pickled human fetuses.
The Cu Chi tunnels are about 75 miles of tunnels north of Ho Chi Minh City-once called Saigon-that served as the Viet Cong's underground base during the war. The site has a war memorial similar to our Vietnam wall in Washington, D.C. It was quite odd visiting the "enemy's" version of what is such a hallowed site in our country.
Our tour of the tunnels began with the most blatant propaganda film possible about the "evil Americans" who bombed and destroyed young, innocent children. The propaganda was painful, but the weirdest part of the presentation was that we were watching it with our Vietnamese roommates.
What did they think about the "evil Americans?" Did they blame us for what our country had done here?
I decided to ask my roommate directly-do most Vietnamese people today still dislike Americans? Is there any anger or resentment toward me, even deep down?
The response I got was immediate, direct, genuine and surprisingly poignant in its simplicity. Quy said, "That is the past, ancient times, not now."
"But don't you blame Americans some for destroying the country?"
He said that people don't think about it that way. Now our countries are working together, and that is what matters.
This is a sentiment that has been echoed so far by everyone we have met. I've talked to someone who fought with the Americans, and I've also heard from those who were ardent communist supporters all along. The answer to my question has always been that it is the "now" that is important.
I don't yet understand how such forgiveness is possible-it's not something we're good at in America. It was only eleven years ago, under President Bill Clinton in 1995, that we finally reestablished diplomatic connections with Vietnam.
During the war, American soldiers were told they were killing communists-they were painted as enemies, not as human beings. I've visited the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., many times, but I never really wondered about "the other side of the wall." Seeing the memorial for all the young Vietnamese who lost their lives-more than the American number-was a powerful reminder that at the end of the day, each individual fighting was just a person.
Now, thirty-three years after the Americans left Vietnam, we are back. I cannot imagine a warmer welcome. It is a terrible shame that it took so long for these relationships to be possible. There is so much we can learn from each other, and even on opposite sides of the world, we have so much in common.
I have seen the goods and bads of communism and one-party rule. We volunteers have had the chance to exchange ideas in enlightening discussions about politics, economics and even popular culture. I've learned that there are areas in which the Vietnamese are far more effective than Americans at instigating change or development. There is a lot we can learn from the communists.
I worry, however, that at the same time we are finally reconciling painful divisions from history, the U.S. government is busy creating new fissures in other parts of the world that will take another thirty years to heal.
It is easy to dismiss those on the other side as the globe with foreign cultures or governments as mere abstractions or figures in a body count.
Before we do so with regard to today's wars, we must think about standing on the other side of the wall.
David Fiocco is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Tuesday.
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