Not for profit love
A decade back in Hanoi, at some fancy expat event, I met a Vietnamese Australian gay couple.
The Australian was clearly quite a bit older but I guess my internal dialogue was the same as everyone else’s there.
That’s okay. I’m cool with this. Good for them.
And I inwardly congratulated myself on my tolerance.
Then I was told that although they were in their twenties and forties — the pair had first got together when the Vietnamese man was just 14.
So how do you process that?
You don’t. Or at least I didn’t. I let it pass. Just like everyone else.
Being an expat in Vietnam was a bit like that then. You’d hear of sordid behaviour, chalk most of it down to gossip and just get on with your life. Much like when we were kids and we heard urban rumours about celebrities.
Then those celebs got arrested.
When I worked in Cameroon, a very smart, successful doctor talked about how love was there.
He told me that the western concept of “love” was based around good looks and physical attraction. In Africa love came from being cared for, being provided for, being looked after.
Power, wealth and opportunities offered were equally attractive traits.
It stuck with me and I wrestled with it.
In my first spell in Hanoi I had never dated a Vietnamese woman because I knew I’d leave. And I was pretty sure that any relationship with an imbalance of power wasn’t going to be healthy.
When I returned, I hadn’t given it a conscious thought but suddenly I didn’t want to be sat in bars having expat conversations any more. When my (now) wife (earning more than me at the time) — asked me out and insisted on paying, my concerns over an unbalanced local relationship disappeared.
Me in my early 40s and my wife in her late 30s, we were also old enough to balance attraction with pragmatism and I was happy with that.
I still am.
In an earlier posting I arrived in country and was immediately part of a larger NGO welcome event. One man couldn’t stop to have evening drinks with us. He’d set up dates (plural) ahead of arrival with local girls. We sneered, slated him in his absence…and let it go.
Later I also let it go when I was pretty sure an African volunteer from a neighbouring country was paying for prostitutes.
By day he would do workshops on HIV complete with NGO jargon, empathy and advice. Years later I blocked him on Facebook when he called for the death penalty for homosexuals.
The same man had complained about a lack of prayers before and after meetings.
Meanwhile a gay British volunteer who had been told not to tell anyone of his sexuality due to local laws — fled when a hook up turned into a violent blackmail situation. What was the right reaction here? Should I get angry at the oppression of homosexuality or angry at the British man cheating on a partner at home? After all he had risked his safety, work, employer and relationship for this.
I shrugged and let it go.
While we’re on the subject there was an older sleaze who told everyone of his wife fighting cancer back home in Canada while having assorted affairs. I couldn’t look him in the eye so I just avoided him.
Do you let things go because there’s a big picture and you can’t fight everything? Or do you refuse to accept every transgression?
I have a lot of sympathy for Oxfam and its recent troubles and, as a comms person I can understand how they go to be where they are. A small issue becomes a bigger issue as attitudes change. By then you’re trapped.
Institutionally it’s so easy to try and let it go. So easy to hope that it never comes out because Plan B is just too horrific to contemplate.
But now I think we’re finally on the same page — these issues need to be black and white. We cannot accept them.
