The Difficulties

My birth year was also the end of Vietnam-American War in 1975. As a child growing up in post-war Vietnam, I saw a lot of Vietnamese people that had to go through many hardships they endured from the war; such as injured soldiers, the loss of people’s lives, the destruction of infrastructure and social institutions, thousands of companies were shut down and many civilians lost their job. How difficult it was for people to attempt to adjust to normal life. One of the examples is my family situation because we had a lot of depressing experiences. The Vietnam War had an effect on my family that made life difficult for all of us.

After the war, my father had to transfer from his work in the city to the countryside far way and he had to stay over there apart from my family. Father was a physics professor and he had worked for the City Education University in the central city of Vietnam. He really loved his job. Because of the war, his university ran out of school funds and professors were dispersed throughout the country. Almost half of his university professors had to transfer to many different places of the countryside, and my father was among of them. My father, in addition to teaching during the day, worked all the rest of a day as a worker to help repairing factories damaged by bombs, after the war. He was usually too busy with work to come visit our family. Due to how far away was from our family, and because transportation was poor and difficult, he rarely came back home to our family. My mother and I often cried because of missing him a lot.

My mother’s import-export trading business was shut down after the war, and she had to become a worker in a garment factory. It was not easy for my mother moving from the owner of the company to being just another worker. The business of my mother was a main source of my family income, so the closing of my mother is trading company made my family fall into financial difficulties. Moreover, she had to sell our house to pay off the business debt, and that was the worst matter for all of us. Then my mother and I had to move out of the city and into my grandmother’s house in a small town. At that time, especially after the war, it was really hard to find a job so my mother had to work for a factory that was quite far from my grandmother’s house. My mother and father had to work very hard to be able to gain enough money to care for the family. The factory was far away, and in order to get to work on time my mother had to move into the factory dormitory. This time it was my mother who was taken away during the post war.

It was not easy at all being a six year old child, staying away from parents; especially without my mother’s care. I had to do almost everything by myself such as going to elementary school, washing clothes and dishes, and preparing meal. Even though, my grandmother was my caretaker, she old and her health was fragile. So I often took care of her when she got sick. I remember one time when I heard that my mother was hospitalized near her working place. I really wanted to go to see her, but I didn’t know how to get there since my grandma was too old to take me out. Moreover, her small home town had poor transportation; especially after the war. I could not do anything except I cry and wait for the news of my mother with all of my worries.

In conclusion, it was difficult for my family to survive throughout the post war. With my father having gone to the countryside, my mother’s business closing down, and my having to stay with my grandmother, it took many years before we could come back together and have a happy life. Today there are tremendous changes and development in economics, policy, business and culture in Vietnam. Looking back on the poverty and difficulty in post war Vietnam, my parents are amazed by these changes and they could not believe that good fortune happened to our family; that we now have a big successful business again after many years of every effort from my parents’ working hard. However, the difficulties of post war Vietnam with a lot healing experiences and suffering are memorable for everyone in my family.