Tạm biệt Vietnam!

I turned 28 in the mountains of Northwestern Vietnam on the back of a Russian Minsk; a motorcycle older than me and wonderfully appropriate for the undulating roads that connect Hanoi and my homestay for the night in Mai Chau. My guide had done well to steer us away from the stresses of the country’s congested (and dangerous) highways. We took back roads that I would not have found on a map, and even stopped for tea at his childhood home in a village normally closed to foreigners. The trip was a birthday gift to myself, and as I would be leaving Vietnam in just about a week it doubled as a chance to reflect on my time in the country.

Resting along the way.

That night I sat cross-legged on the floor not at my homestay but at the home of a neighbor who had invited my guide and I for dinner. The power had gone out, as it often does, so the room danced with flickering candlelight. We drank rice wine poured from used plastic containers and I tried my best to navigate the traditional toasting protocols that dictate who drinks when. It was great fun. The food spread out before us was delicious and included a local delicacy that I only tried reluctantly – dog meat. I pretended that it was my birthday celebration, and my unexpected hosts made it a memorable one.

Beautiful Mai Chau from above.

The hospitality I found in Mai Chau I found everywhere I went in Vietnam. It was in the markets and the alleys of busy Hanoi, the beaches of Da Nang, and the terraced rice fields of Sa Pa. Vietnamese people are deeply friendly and welcoming, which isn’t the common perception at home. The question that I have most often received about my summer has been whether or not I felt any lingering anti-American sentiment from the war. The answer is decidedly no, despite the fact that two blocks from my homestay rests a downed American bomber in a lake, memorialized by an adjacent war museum. As far as I can tell from the friendships that I made and the conversations that I had, Vietnam is somewhat remarkably a pro American country. What this says about the U.S. Military’s misadventures in certain parts of the world is a topic for a braver blogger.

Vietnam’s friendliness was not new to me – I had been to the country twice previously. What was new to me, though, was the type of work that I would be doing: I had never worked for a non-profit before. I’ve spent my career in the private sector, and business school was my chance to gain exposure to the other side. My experience at SNV in Hanoi was an overwhelmingly positive one. My colleagues were all passionate about their work and the effort they put in to managing the Vietnamese Business Challenge Fund. The painstaking process they went through in selecting investments yielded a portfolio with significant potential. The portfolio companies are all positioned for both profitability and positive social impact.

Experimental rice production at a seed company.

It was visiting these companies that I most enjoyed about my work. Each was unique, and each was led by entrepreneurs passionate about making a difference in Vietnam. The funding they receive from the VBCF is critical to the viability of their business plans, which made the work I was contributing over the summer feel important.

I am so lucky to have had this experience, and I know that I will carry these lessons with me throughout the rest of my career!

No Mo' FOMO

I’m in a war of attrition against an all-to-familiar foe: FOMO and all those who provide it safe harbor, most notably its closest allies and purveyors of propaganda Facebook and Instagram. It is decidedly ironic that the greatest enemy of a good time is a good time somewhere else. Too many experiences have fallen victim to that nagging anxiety – the Fear (of Missing Out) – and I’ve resolved to hang the wet blanket out to dry, so to speak. Social media is a powerful tool for maintaining a connection to family and friends, but its usefulness as such must be balanced with its persistence in reminding you of precisely what you aren’t doing. 

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how unique a situation, how beautiful a sight, or how interesting a conversation is. I am somewhere I worked hard to be, but the satisfaction can still be fragile. A thought of sunset on a Brooklyn rooftop might slip into my head, for example, and spoil a moment. Concerts, touch football games, weddings, the company of great friends… thoughts of all these things conspire against me. When I manage to put them out of mind, social media returns them mercilessly to the fore. It becomes a struggle to remain in the moment when, really, I should be relishing it. 

I think that the other WDI Summer Fellows would agree that sometimes personal growth can only be found along with some degree of isolation from the world you know. It is when you are pushed outside of your comfort zone that you learn not only about your surroundings but also about yourself. Though I would love to be spending this summer with friends in a familiar place, I’ve come to strongly believe that it is diversity of experience that makes someone a dynamic person. That is why I chose to spend over a month in Amman, Jordan and then nearly four here in Hanoi with just over a week at home in between. The University of Michigan gave me opportunities to do unique work in unique places, and I gobbled them up happily.

The unlikeliest of moments, I’ve found, return me to a certain state of clarity and calm that puts me at ease with where I am and what I am doing. This happened the other night as I rode home from playing volleyball with a mix of locals and expatriates on the other side of town. We had played late into the evening, under lights, and only stopped when a crack of thunder signaled that one of Hanoi’s sudden downpours loomed overhead. The streets and alleys were unusually placid as vendors had closed for the day and those still outside prepared for the storm. As the winds began to gather strength around me, audible in the trees despite the oil-hungry groan of my old motorbike, I felt deeply content. I smiled with the sudden certainty that I was exactly where I was supposed to be, FOMO be damned!

 

Welcome to Hanoi!

The first thing that hits you in the morning is the heat. It’s a moist, dense heat that carries with it a mélange of odors from a market that wasn’t there the night before. This is also when you start to sweat, and efficiency of movement becomes the name of the game. One mistake as you navigate the maze – dropping your keys and the required effort of picking them up, for example – might send you irrecoverably into the throes of excessive perspiration. Plan in advance and glide smoothly and you might not need to towel off when you arrive at work.

Hanoi’s alleyways are a web of corridors that are in many ways the lifeblood of the city’s vibrant communities. They can be quite narrow in places and signage is intermittent. Overhead is an alarming mass of electrical wire. It actually looks as though rather than fix any interruption in power a new wire is simply run alongside the old one, and that this has been going on since the invention of electricity. The alleys are uniquely Hanoian, and getting lost in them is a means of discovery. To find your way out follow the jumble of wires; they lead to the main road.

At 8 AM, when I leave for work, these passages are teeming with activity. While in other major cities that I’ve visited alleys are decidedly ominous places, in Hanoi they are where life happens. A barber might be giving a man a morning shave adjacent to a cluster of plastic stools where people stop for morning pho. Children ride bicycles too big for them and the morning market is buzzing. Butcher tables display any cut of meat one can imagine is edible, open to the air and certainly not refrigerated. There are barrels of snakes, small crabs, snails, and other still-living delicacies. Fruit is fresh and skillfully cut at your request. The pineapple is tremendous.

Through all this weave motorbikes that negotiate tight spaces with reluctance to yield to anything. For my first few days here I walked my commute, but I was quickly forced to join the stream of motorists out of necessity. Despite my preventative strategies, it became a sweat issue - though there is a shower at my office it might seem strange to my coworkers if the new guy needed to use it every morning. Riding through the alleyways is harrowing, but with cautious confidence it isn’t too difficult to get a feel for the wild traffic. Helmets aren’t often worn, which is probably because it’s hard to find one as nifty as mine.

Go blue!

I emerge from the chaos at the Van Phuc Diplomatic Compound, where I park alongside the rows of other motorbikes and seek refuge in the air-conditioned VBCF office. VBCF stands for Vietnam Business Challenge Fund, my employer for the summer. Challenge funds are unique impact investment vehicles that seek to promote a specific business innovation – the “challenge”. Prospective companies submit applications for funding of business ideas that are in some way innovative, have profit potential, and are inclusive of the poor. Inclusive in this context means that the businesses engage the poor either as producers, consumers, employees, distributors, or owners. Sustainable social impact is the goal. As these business models are inherently risky, challenge funds exist to help shoulder the risk burden and provide financing that hopefully leads to follow-on private investment.

Through a meticulous selection process, the VBCF has built a portfolio of 23 companies with promising and innovative ideas to serve Vietnam’s poor populations. The fund is transitioning to its management phase in which it will provide guidance to its portfolio companies through the end of 2015. It’s an interesting time for the VBCF, and I’m lucky to be involved.