I was driving home on a motorbike without a helmet, something I promised I’d never do. The wind was whipping through my hair, when the silence of the ride was broken by Thai Ang signing “you cold?” “A little, but I’m fine” I replied holding my hands out front so he could see. I should have left it at that. I should have sat tight and let him drive. Not distracting him, not increasing the risk that my unprotected head would wind up smashed into the pavement. But the desire to communicate was to strong. “It’s 16C in California right now, this is fine” He laughed.
At the next stoplight the seconds counted down in digital red print 26, 25… “were going to pass a bunch of deaf people drinking up there.” Sure enough I looked and I could see the hands flying, 10, 20, 30 pairs of hands, all talking quickly at a little cha da stand on Ton Duc Thang street. If I had blinked I would have missed it. “They there every night?” I asked. “Yes.” The family on the motorbike next to us stared. I guess it isn’t every day that you see a deaf person signing to a foreigner on the back of the motorbike in Vietnam. Even the deaf people in here stare at me sometimes. Asking “you deaf? you American? why are you here? why don’t you want to be an interpreter?” I always laugh, watch people ask the same questions to Thai Anh to reconfirm, and then we laugh some more. That night Thai Anh just waved and smiled at the family staring at us, that shut them up fast.
As we drove further on I was hit by just how easily we could communicate. Here was a deaf man, my teacher, who knew Vietnamese Sign Language, Vietnamese and a touch of ASL and international signs. On the other hand there was me, a hearing American who knew only English, American Sign Language and a few weeks worth of Vietnamese Sign Language lessons. Yet just that evening he had explained to me his family story at a little café where we were hanging out with a few other deaf people. How his younger sister was disabled and he had to work to support her. How only his mom knew how to sign. How he tried to attend school in Hanoi but couldn’t understand the teachers. And how he only learned how to communicate with his father after returning from a deaf school in Saigon where he finally learned to read and write. I had understood all of that, and now I was on the back of a motorbike where I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t catch the facial grammar so important to signed languages, and yet I could still understand him.
As we passed a university off of Nguyen Trai, he signed “ I teach here tomorrow at 9:00”. “Another sign language class?” I asked. “Yes, I teach 4 different places, all at night.” Wow, I was floored. I knew he was dedicated to his work, but I hadn’t realized that he had managed to generate enough interest to open up four sign language classes. After all there are only 6 interpreters in Hanoi currently and because there is no government funding pay is low enough that all of them have other jobs as well. His four VSL classes would a huge potential to change life for the deaf in Hanoi.
As he dropped me off at my dormitory the language barrier slowly started to set in again. “Can I go to your language class tomorrow to film stuff?” I asked. I was planning on making a short film to help the deaf community get grants from abroad, and needed to get more footage. “Let me see” he replied, “I’ll text you”. My heart sunk, I knew that even if he did text me it would be in Vietnamese, a language I can barley understand. “I’ll try to find a friend to translate it” I said, knowing that that might not happen.
Before he drove away I thanked him profusely. He said it was nothing, his house was near. But it wasn’t really the extra kilometers I was thanking him for. It was the experience of a life time, a window into deaf life in Vietnam, something I never Imagined I would have done. And to think I would have missed if I had just said I wanted to wear a helmet.
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