Cuc

Cuc is a woman who works at the handicrafts store where I stopped my bicycle because there looked like some nice things for sale that I could bring home for Elena or my family. Anyway, she spoke a little English and was curious about background and asked me some questions.

In the course of a twenty-minute conversation, I learned some interesting things about Cuc. Her name is very close to the pronunciation for the English word "cook." First of all, her name comes from a flower that blooms every autumn, but now is apparently grown year-round. It sounds like from her description like she works 60+ hours a week at two different stores owned by the same family. She gets no holiday, no day off from work during the week. She is living with and taking care of her younger sister who is a university student in Hanoi. She lives very far away from the rest of the family, and she only gets to see them once a year during Tet, the Lunar New Year holidays.

The rest of her family lives in a village 200 km north of Hanoi. They are rice famers who grow enough to subsist on their crops. They sell the rest of their crops for a profit that works out to be around $25 a month, which goes a lot longer way in Vietnam. Cuc sends a lot of whatever earnings she has after the expenses of her rent, motorbike payments, petrol, and groceries back home to her family so that they can have basic amenities like a TV and a radio.

If her takeout lunch hadn't arrived, she might have told me even more. I am really enjoying how friendly Vietnamese people are and how willing they are to have genuine conversations with foreigners. I wish for the hundredth time that Elena was here to share this experience with me. It's only been two days, but it seems like a much longer time without her since she's so far away.