Making Sense of Sneaky Sneakers

We've now been in Saigon for a solid two weeks, working at our internships, mucking through the Vietnamese language classes, chilling with our roommates and exploring the city. To the left we're grabbing some dinner at one of the street-vendors, and the right is a photo of Turtle Lake, an urban oddity near my guesthouse.




Usually after our internship, Matt and I will wander the streets talking to people, keeping the Vietnamese economy well-oiled, and soaking up city life.



Here's a photo of some cool kids Matt and I befriended. The boy in blue really impressed us by nearly swallowing a lizard. We typically have great conversational results by buying too many pastries from a nearby bakery and sharing them with whatever stray yokels we find. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, with a few exceptions, eclairs and cream puffs are transcultural!

These boys were playing around a nasty, nameless river nearby. The stench was somewhat overpowering, and the sunlight caught on the flotsam moving at a snail's pace downstream. Very disturbing.


There' s much, much more outside of bustling HCMC, however.







Recently we visited some of the hinterlands area around HCMC, driving through a flash flood (see the photo to the left) and beside some verdant rice paddies. We were going to check out one of the realities of Viet Nam most well-known to Americans: a Nike factory.

In 1996, some of yall may remember that CBS News on its "48 Hours" show covered the exploitation of female workers at particular Nike factories in Viet Nam, citing outrageously subterranean wages and even physical beatings. Since then a plethora of anti-Nike organizations, websites and boycotts have plagued Nike's reputation and sales.

At least in Viet Nam, Nike no longer owns its own factories, but rather subcontracts with shoemaking factories. The largest of these near HCMC opened its doors to us, and we were privy to the rows of assembly-line cobblers.

When we first arrived, we were ushered warmly into a room with a billboard proclaiming "Welcome CET!" and a table spread with crunchy snacks and soda. An average-looking Philipino man introduced himself as the general manager of the factory, and informed us that usually the factories are not run by local Vietnamese but rather by foreigners supported by South Korean investors. A public relations lady more accustomed to giving tours to English-speakers gave us a fascinating PowerPoint presentation with statistics concerning factory production, wage earnings, seasonal demand, and worker turnover.

Following her talk, we ambled after the general manager, snapping photos and asking him questions nonstop. Most of our questions, given Nike's public sins and our American tenderness towards paesanos, went like this:

Would you mind telling us about the average work week for the factory women? Do they have time to sleep, eat and breathe?

Are they paid minimum wage, or do you make them pay you to work here?

Do you honestly believe they derive satisfaction from the mind-numbingly repetitive work for which they receive little gratitude and even less sufficient compensation?














Honestly. We were harsh. He was very open with us, and explained that the workers are indeed paid far above the average wage in Viet Nam and even the average wage for other factories of this kind. (Average was 700,000 dong a month, these women earn approximately 1.2 million dong a month)

We walked through the lines of machines and watched the nimble-fingered women sew, glue, spraypaint and generally assemble one of the most popular types of footwear that hardly anyone in Viet Nam wears.

The women truly did seem happy.












Some of the most investigative-inclined among us got Didi to translate Vietnamese-English and ask some gently probing questions of the factory ladies, such as "Are you happy working here? Are you paid enough? Are you being forced to smile? Do they beat you?"

None of the answers gave cause for alarm. Instead of the horrific documentaries one sees concerning assembly lines in which conditions are dirty, dangerous and depressing, this particular factory was clean, airy and fairly humdrum.

Here are some photos of the ladies hard at work, occasionally smiling up from their work at us. There are a few bundles of the celebrated Nike swoosh, boxes ready to be shipped to depots all over the world, and seemingly endless lines of whirring multipurpose machines.

We had a few intense altercations on the bus ride back, arguing the pros and cons of assembly-line organization as well as minimum wage and outsourcing.

I certainly don't know the answer to reaching the idyll of well-paid workers in a comfortable work environment and optimized production at reasonable prices to the consumer, but I figure if we can at least verbalize our goals, we're getting closer. The more open Nike and other big corps are in their manufacturing processes, the more the public can get involved in selecting the process they want for their goods.

So we're currently trying to learn what it means to be Vietnamese by living here and talking to everyone who doesn't shy away at our broken Vieglish/Englamese. Below are the two boys again, communicating with the age-old ridiculous one-upsmanship common to all tough 10-year-olds. Also here is a Catholic man who spoke to us animatedly in French for a solid fifteen-minutes, before realizing that our "Oui, oui...uh...bonjour...um, eclair?...un peur..." were hardly indicative of fluency. He was chalking a meaningful paragraph by the side of the highway, telling readers that although life is hard, by trusting one another and working together goodness can be achieved.















So we work together--English- and Vietnamese-speakers--trying to make a better understanding, better shoes and better life in general.