Entrepreneurs

I spent a lot of time during my tour pulling guard at Firebase Buttons near Song Be.  Buttons was large enough that it required a dump area outside of the firebase to bury trash.
During the day, I would be assigned now and then to a dump detail.  The job was to take my M-16 rifle with me and guard the truck driver who was hauling trash to the dump.

At the dump, I would always see these young Vietnamese entrepreneurs like the two kids with the bike in the snapshot.  They always had something to sell.  There was nothing ever bashful about them.  They would be on you, like the other kid in the picture who is standing on the running board of the truck, asking for a sale as soon as you arrived.

We would pay them with the military money we all carried or with cigarettes.  Military money, by the way, had the look and feel of Monopoly money.  We were not allowed to carry or use American dollars in Vietnam.  It had something to do with the value of American dollars on the black market.  When I think about it, when I paid them with military money, what did they do with it?  How did they exchange it?  I have no idea.  When we paid with cigarettes, it was a very good deal because we could get packs of cigarettes for free.

The kids with the bike were selling cans of Coke.  If you look carefully, you can see they have a white foam cooler sitting just behind the seat.  I have no idea where they got the Coke or the ice.  What I can tell you is it was always freezing cold.  For me anyway, it was a rare event to have an ice cold Coke in Vietnam.  I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Coke from them, even though they charged a dollar a can.  That was a lot of money to pay for a coke back then.  Back in the States, you could buy it for a dime a can.  I didn't care,  It was that good!

Those two kids are probably worth a lot of money now.

Drinking Water

For many of us, we take it for granted that the water that comes out of the faucet at home is good quality.  It is good enough that you don't even think about it when you drink it.  Well that was not true in Vietnam, at least where I was stationed.

The first time I drank potable water, I gagged.  It was horrible.  Have you ever swallowed heavily chlorinated water from a swimming pool?  That is how our potable water tasted.  To drink the water, it had to be laced with a little Kool-Aid.  Everyone did it.  Just enough Kool-Aid to take the taste of chlorine away.  In the jungle, I carried a two quart canteen with Kool-Aid for drinking and used  other canteens with plain water for washing and cooking.

Late in my tour, I learned where the water was coming from.  The snapshot below will give you an idea of the quality of the water before it was treated.  It was chocolate brown in color and know one knew what living thing had pissed or shit in it recently.  So to make it drinkable, they used specialty trucks that contained a water treatment plant.  Back then I didn't know a damn thing about water treatment.  In my engineering career that followed the Army however, I learned enough to surmise what was going on.

The truck, in the picture above pumped water directly out of the river and into a settling chamber.  There, the larger solids that float or sink were removed.  The funnel-shaped tank on the right side was likely used for settling.  Then,  the water passed through a sand filter to remove the finer solids.   Water leaving the filter would have looked a hell of a lot better than where it was pumped from.  It would have been reasonably clear and look drinkable.  If you tried to drink the water however, you soon would be doubled over and puking from the bacteria that still thrived there.

So the final step was chlorination.  Chlorine bleach was metered into the water.  In the States where bleach is used for water purification, just enough is added to kill the bacteria and leave behind a very small residual for safety.  The residual is so small that you generally cannot taste it.  In Vietnam, they overdosed with chlorine because the system was not very sophisticated.  Better to be safe than sorry.

When my tour was up and I left Vietnam, I was thankful to leave behind a lot of nastiness and one of those nasty things was the drinking water.          

Fun In A War Zone

It didn't seem to matter to the South Vietnamese kids in this snapshot that their country was at war.  They were having fun even though their country was being ripped apart.  And that is how it should be.  Let kids be kids.

War should be something that adults alone worry about.  Why force children to dwell on war if they don't have to?  Let them have fun instead.  Kids were kids in South Vietnam.  Rich or poor, I found that kids were doing kid things for the most part.  Just like I did when I was a kid.

I expect that the lives of North Vietnamese kids were a lot different back then.  My impression was the Communist government of North Vietnam didn't allow their kids to have fun.  Instead, they were indoctrinated in the ways and beliefs of Communism starting at a very early age.  They turned kids into little soldiers.  The same thing is happening today in many Muslim countries.  Kids are immersed in religion at a very early age.  As part of their religious training, they are taught to hate.  I don't think anyone should be taught to hate.  Let kids find out about hate on their own if they must.

The world is a better place where kids can be kids.

Pet Monkey

The monkey that you see on my shoulder belonged to a guy who worked in artillery on Firebase Buttons.  He was able to keep a pet because he worked on a firebase full-time.  I was always on the move so I couldn't have a pet even if I wanted one.  I took these snapshots because it was rare to see a pet over there.

  What is it about human beings that drives at least some of us to want a pet?  With dogs, I can understand.  They consistently give back much more love and friendliness than they receive.  Cats are different.  As kittens, you can have fun with them by dangling a a piece of yarn in front of their nose .  Once older however, they just do their own thing.  I don't understand the attraction in owning a cat.


At the time, I thought it might be cool to own a pet monkey.  This one was young so it felt like I was holding a baby in a way.  It didn't mind at all being held.  It was playful.  I've read since that when monkey's are young, they are at their best from a human point-of-view.

The trouble starts when they are older.  Monkeys do not mature like human children do but remain permanent toddlers.  If unhappy, they can be very difficult to deal with.  And making them happy is not easy.  Monkeys need a lot of room to roam.  Allowing a monkey to roam your house however may not work because it will be into everything.  They need social interaction with other monkeys so one may not be enough.  They are not as clean as you might expect.  Monkeys cannot be toilet trained.  Worse, they have been known to pick up and toss their shit around and paint with their urine.  Monkeys have there own specialized diseases that can be passed on to humans.  Finally, you must keep in mind that monkeys cannot be domesticated.  They will grow up into a wild animal that can be very aggressive and bite.

Sounds pleasant.  I hope the owner didn't try to take the monkey home with him.