Goodbye Vietnam by Whelan

Goodbye, Vietnam
By
Gloria Whelan

Characters: Mai, Anh, their father Tran Vinh, the grandmother who tells fortunes and practices the old world religion , their mother, their little brother Thant, the police, Quach Loc and his wife, Bac si Hong and her daughter Kim, Captain Muoi Pham Van
Tho and his family, Vu Loi, a boybrescued from the sea
Setting: A small boat on the sea from Vietnam to Hong Kong

Because of the grandmother worshipping the old religion and practicing healing, she faces arrest in present-day Vietnam. The Vinh family decides to flee their small rice-growing village in the Mekong Delta and escape by sea to Hong Kong. With his skills as a mechanic, the father has secured passage for the family to ride on a small boat. Thirteen- year-old Mai tells of their odyssey in this story. To prevent capture by the Vietnam soldiers, the family steals away in the night. They would go to Hong Kong.
Before boarding the boat, the Vinhs become acquainted with a female doctor and her daughter Kim from Ho Chi Minh City which once was called Saigon. This story describes well the hardships many of America's newest refugees endured and is one of the few accounts available on Vietnam's boat people.
For the grandmother, parents, younger brother and sister, and Mai, it is a voyage of tragic dimensions. They trudge through the swamps of the Mekong Delta toward the sea, where Mai's father's skill as mechanic for an ancient boat engine is their ticket to freedom. The gut-wrenching trip to Hong Kong is just another step toward a new life, which the family eventually finds. The story is riveting, haunting, and memorable, reflecting the human virtues of determination, hope, love, and courage in the face of the most devastating of circumstances and injustices.

The boat on which the Vinh family had to travel on was awfully small. In fact, it was too small to accommodate all of the people who had paid to ride on it. When the boat pulled off, some people were still left standing on the shore, although they had already paid their fares. Their money was not refunded to them.

People who did board the boat were herded down into the hold of the boat. It was very overcrowded. Still more people waited on the wharf wishing to get on the dangerously small craft, to get away from Vietnam.

The boat was like a small crowded village with all kinds of people. Old people, families with children, young men, people traveling alone, people who looked as if they came from the country, and city people.

The captain was not a creditable navigator. His navigation map was a page which seemed to have been snatched from a book

Sea sickness overtook most of the passengers and they spent much of the time leaning over the sides of the boat, retching. The boat kept breaking down and they drifted off course. It was said that the captain’s compass was not working and often they found themselves going in wrong directions.

On one auspicious day while on the boat, they had a birth. Dao, a passenger on the boat, was blessed by his daughter-in-law giving birth to a son. Some folks say that a birth and a death have ways of crossing one another. So it was in this story. While the family and the people on board the boat welcomed the baby, they were saddened to witness Dao’s, the grandfather’s death a few days later. To make matters worse, he had to be buried at sea.

In February, Tet, the first day of the Vietnamese lunar new year, arrived while they were still travelling on the boat. While they couldn’t celebrate as they would have had they been home, they went through some semblance of celebration for three or four days. The grandmother wrung the neck on one of the ducks she had brought with her and allowed it to be cooked on the boat. Everyone on the boat got either a tid-bit of duck meat or a bit of the broth.

After several weeks of suffering, and drifting on the sea, the boat finally arrived in Hong Kong. They were checked for medical related concerns and then placed in a huge ware house until they could be parceled out to another country, or if necessary, sent back to Vietnam.

The warehouse was not the safest place for the Vinh family to be. There were gangs and much pilferaging and robberies. People lived in fear. After a time, the Vinh family were allowed to move on to America. Soon, they would be on an airplane and would be up in the sky looking down. Everything they would be leaving behind would grow small, but not so small that they would ever forget it.