Egypt v. Vietnam (redux)
From my e-mail of October 11, 2005, after I had just returned from Vietnam:
In the moments that I swallow my guilt over traveling sans famille, and among other luxuries, sleeping in a real bed for three weeks (a feeling that was assuaged considerably by having shipped in Vanessa, the Rolls Royce of babysitters, for the time I was away), I pinch myself over my remarkable fortune of the past few months. Spending five weeks in one overly hot, so-called “emerging market” (and former imperialist outpost) of 80 million people or so, followed by three weeks in another, counts as one of the most interesting and challenging opportunities of my life. As I sat in my hotel rooms, absorbing the ever-present blurblings of CNN – war, terror, election, natural disaster, market force (repeat) – I could not help but engage in my own endless stream of macro-musings. They went something like this:
Are Egypt and Vietnam more alike than they are different? Of course not: One is a desert, the other is a soupy opposite of desert. Then again, so many other things line up. They are both variations on the single-party theme, mired in bureaucracy and determined to maintain their opacity, yet also bursting with young people who need jobs and who cannot be assuaged forever by the patriotism that drove their parents. They each have a stake in perpetual veneration of certain leaders – posters, billboards, statues, and busts of, respectively, Hosni and Ho, are planted everywhere. Both countries are ever-mindful (and legitimately proud) of their assets that appeal to outsiders: Egypt has its A-list antiquities, of course, while Vietnam is simply the prettiest girl in the class (Ha Long Bay, the Mekong Delta, and gorgeous, charm-infused Hanoi are all of the order that stops traffic). Both Egypt and Vietnam are interested in – but, for reasons of recent history and bone-deep culture, highly ambivalent over – the international forces that are constantly pushing them toward one set of “best practices” – human rights, trade, law, environment – or another.
Yes, to a certain extent, they are very much alike. The police officer who drove his camel over to ours behind the great Pyramids in August so that he could laughingly collect his baksheesh is clearly a not-so-distant cousin of the jokers in Hanoi that shook my driver down for cash – on two different occasions! – based on patently manufactured traffic violations. The excuses that abound for pervasive public corruption (salaries are too low, everybody does it, extra grease improves efficiency, blah, blah, blah) are identical. English-language newspapers in both countries share a remarkable absence of interest in subjecting the deep and important thoughts uttered by their countries’ leaders to any significant scrutiny. And, because both countries are poor, their national treasures – the Nile, the Bay, both sets of countrysides – are assaulted daily by the endless stream of garbage produced by their inhabitants, who seem to have nowhere else to throw it.
But, then again, again. How different they are. Vietnam has grown at a rate of about 7.5% each year since 2000, while Egypt is stuck – peanut-butter stuck, as far as I can tell – at 3%. Although Vietnam’s ranking of 99 among 148 countries recently rated by the World Bank for “ease of doing business” is nothing to write home about, Egypt’s ranking of 141 (beneath, oh, Uzbekistan and Sierra Leone) is simply unforgivable. To a person, the aid professionals I spoke with in Vietnam say that it is, from a development perspective, positively unique: Although engaging in technical assistance in most recipient countries (not just Egypt) typically has a pace-of-grass-growing quality about it, things happen at near-blinding speed these days in Vietnam. For example, the country is hell-bent on joining the World Trade Organization by the end of this year, and so the marching orders from the top are clear: Pass new laws! Adopt new standards! Create new institutions! Do it, do it, do it! I spoke to a lot of people while I was there – lawyers, business people, judges, NGOs – and, however sloppy or superficial the outcomes, they really are doing it.
Other differences in Vietnam strike the senses just minutes after stepping off the airplane. Unlike most of the “transitioning” world, the Vietnamese never seemed to lose a sense of public aesthetic. They generally avoided the horrific architectural tendencies of their fellow communists in Eastern Europe; they have yet to develop the nasty modern habit – especially terrible in Egypt – of abandoning half-constructed apartment buildings by the droves; and, at least to a certain extent, they respect the validity of the sidewalk. The tall and narrow residences of Hanoi, even the new ones, are painted green and pink and preserve the more charming instincts of the French designers who camped out there for 80 years or so, not to mention the Chinese who built lots of pretty things before that. And, as the rest of the world for the most part gets plumper, the Vietnamese carefully guard their extra-lean figures. By six a.m., their lovely parks and other public spaces are full of old ladies posing athletically with fans or swatting birdies over netless badminton courts. For less conspicuous reasons, all of the younger women, and most of the men, are impossibly, just inconceivably thin.
Oh, I could ponder this forever: Egypt and Vietnam are different, of course, but also quite alike, but also very different, but, then, it seems, alike again. In the end, where is Vietnam to end up if, notwithstanding all the change these days, it refuses ultimately to abandon its governance by a single party, which includes all the secret, terrible things that must be done to stifle dissent? How far can it go without confronting its corruption menace? What about all that garbage that gets thrown into the lakes and rivers and countryside – how long can Vietnam remain the prettiest? And what happens when McDonalds arrives, which it fully intends to do the very second that per capita income hits the level that enables the average Hai or Phuong to afford a Big Mac? Is Vietnam destined to actually GET FAT? And, ultimately, like Egypt, STUCK?
Well, those are my questions, anyway. I am back in Egypt. Happily so, actually, and not feeling stuck at all. We are now over a week into the 30-day observance of Ramadan, which, as Anna reports from her weekly Egyptian culture class, is observed by Muslims for the purpose of exercising self control and gaining empathy with the poor. You can bet that, when an entire country deprives itself of food and drink between sun-up and sun-down for a month, daily life unfolds a bit differently. Adults are exhausted, parched, and ornery by 2 p.m., and everyone quits work early and sits down for dinner (and, for many poor souls, a cigarette) the moment the loud-speakers wail out the go-ahead, around half-past-five. (This is the time that Brian chooses to take the train home this month – at all other hours, on all other days, it is completely saturated with people.) We have also been hearing a bit of commotion in the middle of the night, when second or third meals are consumed. Anna, Evie and I enjoy spotting the large, gold lanterns that stand or hang from most apartment buildings – they are lit up at night, and the whole atmosphere in our neighborhood is a bit like, er, Christmas.