The Way Things Were—as I Remember Them (Vietnam before June 30, 1975)

My family lived in the third district of Saigon, near Vuon Chuoi Market. Dad was a major in the South Vietnamese Army, a nurse practitioner, head of the patient admissions department in a local hospital. Many army officers got rich by accepting bribes, but not my dad. As a result, his salary was not enough to cover our family’s cost of living. Our family of 10 lived in a two-story, 1200 square-foot house, with one bathroom and two bedrooms—one room was for my grandma and the other for my mom and dad. All of us kids slept on the floor on the second floor. I was one of seven siblings, the third child and first daughter. As soon as we kids reached middle school, we got jobs to help bring in money for the family.

Following a tradition in Vietnam, a rich family adopted my mom to be their relative. That family supplied my mother with money, and she would use the money to lend to street vendors in the morning, and in the evening, collect it back with interest. My mom and the rich family shared the interest. Mom always feared the street vendors’ families might use the money for drugs or alcohol, or waste it on something else, but the street vendors respected my mom. They didn’t dare cheat her. The rich family trusted my mom, too, because of my dad’s reputation and status. In this way, my mom served both the rich and the poor, and the poor loved her for her honesty in dealing with them.

Because our house was close to an open market, we were surrounded by shops of every sort. After school, my siblings and I would go to these shops and ask for work to take home. Sometimes we were given cardboard boxes to put together or paper bags to fill. We didn’t earn much, but it helped cover our daily meals. We were cute kids and trustworthy, so we always had work. My younger sister and I also sold ice cream in front of our house to kids on their way to an elementary school down the street. Every day my dad or my brother bought ice cream from an ice cream factory and brought it home for us to sell. We did very well in this enterprise because it was always hot in Saigon. These were happy times.

My mom was a Catholic and my dad a Buddhist, although I never knew him to set foot in a Buddhist temple. When we were young, Mom took us to a Catholic church every Sunday, but I didn’t learn anything about Jesus except His name. My grandma, however, was a devoted Buddhist believer. She was blind and would ask me to read Buddhist scriptures to her every night. The scripture was written in a language I didn’t understand or know how to read. It was probably in Gandhari, the oldest Indian (India) language. The meaning of the scripture was not translated into Vietnamese, only the written words, so the reader and the listener didn’t understand the meaning of the text. One time, I read something to my grandma and then asked her what it meant. She tried to explain it to me. The next day, I read the same text and asked her the same question, and she told me something else. How could we understand it since neither of us had studied the language? My grandma passed away when I was 12 and I missed her very much, but I was glad I didn’t have to read Buddhist scriptures anymore.

When I was 14, my mother wanted me to learn to be a seamstress. My family had added a room to our house and rented it to a couple who were skilled in sewing. They taught me the basic concepts of measuring the body and cutting the cloth to fit. I practiced at home on our family’s sewing machine and began sewing clothes for my siblings. Later, I got training at a trade school the government set up to help poor people learn trade skills. I wasn’t qualified to get the training, due to my age, but a friend of my mom sponsored me because she could see I had talent and skills.

My teenage years were filled with keeping up with my schoolwork while working to make extra money for my family. I had little time for myself. But I was an obedient child and did what my mother wanted me to do. I felt my life was meaningless and aimless. I needed an anchor—a place to rest my soul. There was an emptiness in my heart that needed to be filled. I believed there surely must be something greater than my current life.

The Way Things Were—as I Remember Them (Vietnam after June 30, 1975)

The historical event that occurred on April 30, 1975, disrupted everything in South Vietnam, including my family. A few weeks after North Vietnam took over the South, my dad was sent to re-education camp. Before he left, he called me to his room, and with tears in his eyes, said, “I’m leaving the welfare of our family in your hands. You must take care of the family now.” I was barely 17 years old.

I didn’t understand the reason my dad placed the responsibility of our family’s welfare on my shoulders and not on the shoulders of my two older brothers. But as years went by, I could see the reason. The government intentionally deprived men of work in the city. Young men were sent to new economic zones, which really were forced labor camps. Food rations there were very limited, and without sufficient equipment, they often had to work with their bare hands. Three of my brothers were sent to the economic zones, and my dad was in the re-education camp for five and a half years. He was released only when he appeared to be dying. He arrived home just skin and bones.

Under communist martial laws, work and food became scarce. In Saigon—renamed Ho Chi Minh City—many families were near starvation. To buy food and water, people sold household items such as beds, furniture, TVs, refrigerators, even kitchen utensils to people from the North. Once when we ran out food and had nothing else to sell, my mother bought rat poison to prepare for the whole family to commit suicide. But that evening, a neighbor secretly dropped a big bag of sweet potatoes in front of our house, and with that, we were able to survive until things turned around.

Before the fall of Vietnam, a friend of my mom’s had had a tailor shop, and now she wanted to open a sewing corporation under the sponsorship of her communist relative. She invited me to join because I was skilled in sewing. Later, the government opened a social sewing corporation, and I got a job there. I did not tell the whole truth about my family history—the communists held grudges against South Vietnamese officers and their family members. The corporation had hundreds of workers, divided into two groups. One group consisted of skilled seamstresses who made clothes to export to Russia. I was in this group. The other group made clothes to sell within the country. Each group had around 20 employees. Because my skill and talent stood out, the officers invited me to join the Communist Party. I knew there were many privileges associated with being a Communist member, with benefits of housing, rations, and power. But I refused. I did not want them to investigate my background. If they found out I had not told the whole truth, they could imprison me.

I tried to keep a low profile, but the happy days of working in the corporation were short. The employees urged me to take charge of distributing the daily rations. After a few months on the job, I was summoned to the division office. The division head asked me to let her take the leftover food from the employee meals to feed her pigs. Normally, kitchen staff sold this leftover food and used the money to buy extra food for the employees. I explained that the leftover food was for the benefit of the employees whose lives were already hard enough. A few months later, an excuse was found to demote me to be a product controller in a workshop. Later I was demoted again to work in the ironing room. I now had to work with hot equipment all day. This profoundly impacted me emotionally and spiritually. I couldn’t trust society—everything seemed deceitful to me. Though suicide was not in my thoughts, I didn’t care about life anymore. I had to quit this job!

During this time, my family remained scattered in different places. Dad was still in the re-education camp, my two older brothers were still in the new economic zones, and my younger brother was in the youth volunteer force, fighting in Cambodia. For years we had no news whether he was still alive, until one day he arrived back home.

My younger sister and I opened a tailor shop in our house. At first we struggled, but gradually our business picked up, especially after the government opened to allow Vietnamese who were living abroad to return home for visits. Many of the clothes I designed and made were for the returning Vietnamese. We had more customers than we could handle. My sister and I were the main breadwinners, with our mother doing what she could. We barely made enough money to supply rations for my dad and brothers—and for my younger brother who was often sick after he returned home. People in the camps had to rely on their relatives to survive. With the money we earned, my mom bought rations and clothes for my dad and brothers.

The Love of Christ Followed Me

While not caring for life, I concentrated on working hard and faithfully attended a Catholic church. I longed for something to lighten up my soul. I had questions about life, but I did not find answers in Catholicism or Buddhism. A friend of my mom’s came by our shop once or twice a week to talk to us about hope, love, faith, and salvation in Christ, but in my ignorance and arrogance, I didn’t want to listen to her. To me, all religions, including Christianity, were nonsense. Each time this friend came and tried to share the gospel with me, I would run the sewing machine fast so that the loud noise would block out her voice. One day, she came by again. I was sitting alone on a sofa, thin and pale, with hopelessness written all over my face. After asking how I was doing, she came close and said softly, “Please go to church with me this Sunday.” Without emotion and without knowing what I was saying, I said “yes.” I was like a thirsty person begging for someone to give me water.

At 8:30 a.m. sharp she arrived at my house on her bicycle. I jumped onto the back seat, and she pedaled me to her church. What the pastor said that Sunday was like living water for my soul. He said something like this: Christ, the only Son of God, came to die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins. In Christ, we have hope and salvation. Our future is secured and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ. All we must do is believe and accept His offer. One Bible verse he quoted touched my heart: “For I know what I have planned for you, says the Lord. I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I have a plan to give you a future filled with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). It may sound crazy, but I felt as if I had undergone brain surgery! My mind was opened to receive Christ! He had a plan for me, and my future was in his hands. On the way home, on the back seat of my friend’s bicycle, I whispered to myself, “I’m going back.”

For several weeks my friend picked up me, and after that, I went to church on my own. I started studying the Bible, took the underground Bible classes that pastors conducted, believed in Christ with all my heart, and got baptized. At night after everyone in my family went to bed, I turned on a small lamp to read and study the Bible. Soon, I was called to teach and care for the youth Bible class at church. Visiting my students in their homes, I noted that many of them had no skills with which to make a living. Trade schools were expensive and beyond their reach. So, I asked a friend who had a sewing machine and a large room in her house to host a sewing class once a week for four hours. I wanted the sewing class to be free for church members and pastors’ wives. My friend happily agreed, and I taught this class for four years. Some of my students were able to make a living with the skills they learned; others used the skills to help poor people in their communities.

Afterward

Today, I sit in my home in America and reflect on my life—before 1975 and after 1975. What I see is that God’s love always followed me. He had a plan for my life to give me a future filled with hope. It was God who gave me the seamstress skills to use for the sake of my family and others in the Christian community. God used all the promotions and demotions in my roller coaster life to mold me into His Son’s image for His Kingdom’s sake. When the time came, He sent one of His servants to lead me to Him. Through it all, I have come to know Him. And day by day, His love continues to follow me, drawing me ever closer to Him.

AnhDu Thi Nguyen immigrated to the United States in 1991. After marriage, she worked with her husband to start a Vietnamese church in Tacoma, Washington. Besides serving in the children’s ministry at her church, AnhDu worked as a social caseworker, senior citizen advocate, and drug and alcohol counselor for a Korean Women’s Association. She is the happy mother of two grown children.