A Can Tho Walkabout

Inadvertently, I think I have discovered a wonderful way to get to know the local culture a little better. Normally, I run/jog about 20 – 30 miles a week (I know, it doesn’t look like. What can I say?). Because of the condition of the sidewalks here or sometimes their nonexistence, and the fact that they are more often than not blocked with an assortment of people standing, sitting, squatting, or working; chairs; motorbikes; supplies; parts; food stands; or dogs, I reverted to simply walking at a 15 minute mile pace. I often simply walk in the street, gladly joining the almost constant stream of motorbikes, bicycles, pedestrians, trucks, buses, and an occasional automobile moving up and down the streets. I am usually out for about an hour. Strangely enough, I feel quite at home in the street, and not at all at risk.

Walking the streets of Can Tho during our three-hour lunch break has become, for me, a bit of a midday adventure into the daily lives of the residents of Can Tho, at least in the area in which I walk. Each walk seems to reveal a deeper layer of the onion, offering up new sights or friendly encounters with different people who are curious about this rather “large” white guy walking up and down the streets at a fairly rapid pace, in the heat of the noonday sun, dressed in shorts, expensive running shores, and a t-shirt. I have to admit it takes a modest degree of ego strength. To say I am conspicuous on the street might be an understatement. Kris and I both decided to jettison the sunglasses. Almost no one else here, interestingly enough, wears them, and we didn’t need anything more to help us stand out.

So I have found that walking seems like a marvelous way to gradually learn about different aspects of the new culture in which one finds oneself. Here in Can Tho a walk is filled with stimuli. It probably would be no exaggeration to suggest that different slices of culture are revealed about every ten feet along the street. With each shop that lines these corridors, a walker is treated to not only a new set of products being sold or service being offered, but also a host of individuals or social groupings on the sidewalks in front of the shops engaged in a variety of activities, the meaning of most well beyond my meager grasp. It is simply impossible to put into words the density of humanity, commodities, goods, services, and machines that occupy any given city block within this area. When I return from a walk, my mind is bursting with the torrent of images encountered on the day’s outing. Today I estimated that, at any given moment, counting the motorbikes that are parked, being worked on, and driving by on the street, a short city block bears witness to at least a couple hundred motorbikes. They are all over the place, and it would seem that every third shop is a repair place for motorbikes.

Admittedly borrowed from Australia (or wherever the term “walkabout” came from), walking the streets of a different culture seems like a great way to raise questions about what you don’t know, and about how folks half a world away are both different from and similar to you. When I return each day from my walk, I simply log the kinds of new things I saw that day. The list seems endless.