T A B L E_T A L K

Travel by foot: It's slow, but it can be rewarding. Discuss in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

__BEWARE THE SUPPLE FINGERS OF SAIGON _|_ page 2 of 2

My deeper knowledge of the lives of these children came from a little-known document called "Street Children in Ho Chi Minh City," published by an organization called Terre des hommes. In conjunction with the Vietnamese government -- which is aware of the problem and seeks to remedy it humanely -- this organization spent six months interviewing street children, mimeographing the results in a fascinating report that gives new perspective on their plight.

Street children are not solely a Vietnamese phenomenon, of course. In truth, they are far better tolerated by the authorities than in Brazil, for example, where self-appointed police vigilantes have murdered tens of thousands of them (as documented in the chilling book "Brazil: War on Children").

The Vietnam War broke up families and denied them fathers; street children are the result. In particular, Saigon's street children are the flotsam of development, drawn by the magnet of the city, whose bright lights promise better money than they can earn in the countryside. Most of them work to support their parents (usually a single mother) and siblings who sleep on the sidewalks or in packing crates or under bridges. Others sleep at home but, finding the family or school situation intolerable, slip out to join friends in foraging for money or having fun. Some are teenage boys who do not know their names or origins and have been on the streets since they were toddlers. Others have found themselves at odds with structured society and prefer the streets to the confinement of home and the strictures of school. These last are the true street urchins and the ones most likely to get into trouble.

The city districts shape the ways they earn their livings. I saw them at the Ben Thanh Market, scavenging among the discarded vegetables and fruits, picking up anything edible or salable. At the Western Bus Station, many have steady jobs cleaning buses, earning a pittance but being allowed to sleep on them as guards. At the Railway Station, they wait by the tracks and jump on incoming trains, scurrying through them to find whatever lost items or discards they can before the train reaches the platform. Among them are some who cannot resist the urge to create "lost" items; I saw one boy who seemed to specialize in stealing the rubber sandals most newly arrived Vietnamese wear.

Those in other districts tend to stray ever further over the line and risk arrest. At the Ben Thanh Market, gangs of young pickpockets and shoplifters cruise through the crowds, lifting whatever they fancy. They give them to a Fagin who fences them and provides protection from the authorities.

Across the five-street intersection from the market operates a gang of young motorcycle accessories thieves. Leave a motorcycle untended for a moment and they will strip it of its mirrors, battery covers, lights. They are aided by a gray market of dealers who pay for their booty. Those at the port pilfer from cargoes or cooperate with organized criminals engaged in smuggling goods.

It is those in District 1, the downtown tourist area, that the visitor is most likely to meet. They sell gum and cigarettes, they beg and they are cute and innocuous. They are the façade behind which the pickpockets and the snatch thieves operate. For the visitor, it is impossible visually to separate the good ones from the bad. Are the children hanging around the foreigners drinking at tables outside the Q Bar just curious, or are they waiting until a tipsy traveler tries to wend his way homeward before removing the contents from his pockets?

The even darker side to this are those children some foreigners coerce into sex. Few boys or girls actively pursue the foreigner because it is still a new game. Even after being introduced to the practice, they are more likely to wait to be approached rather than make the overtures themselves. Fortunately, AIDS has yet to make a major impact in Vietnam -- but such practices pave the way for a potential epidemic.

Through the Terre des hommes study, the amorphous mass of children became individuals, not anonymous petty thieves. It would be facetious to suggest that my involuntary contributions to their upkeep became more bearable, but I became aware that they were struggling to survive and I just happened to be the means to their making it for another day.

On my last afternoon, as I emerged from a bookstore on Ho Huan Nghiep Street (near the renamed infamous Tu Do Street of whores), a young man backed into me. He was wearing a denim baseball cap that he seemed to be putting on with an elaborate movement, sweeping it up his back to reach his head. In the process, he nearly clipped my nose. I was startled, but as the sidewalk was crowded, paid no attention to it. A few moments later, I reached into my shirt pocket for my pen and came up empty. New generations, old skills: Vietnam is living by its wits -- and the visitor's momentary lack of vigilance.
SALON | March 9, 1998

Karl Vetas is a journalist based in Asia.