Money from afar

A Vietnamese proverb that says a father sacrifices his life to reinforce his son's.

Aug 18, 2024

Dear friends,

Per my request, my cousin bought me ten tubes of toothpaste, all the way back from Japan.

She called me while riding a bicycle home on a scorching summer afternoon, questioning whether I was sure about the purchase that a tube on my checklist cost $10.

“Really? $10 for one?” she made no effort in hiding her surprise, or judgment, even.

“A girl on Youtube said it whitens teeth very well. Let me try,” I told her.

It has been four years since my cousin left Vietnam to be a guest worker in Japan. She was among the last batch of labor exports the country sent out in early 2020 before halting the activity in response to the first wave of COVID-19.

My cousin is a college graduate. She was trained to be a teacher, first for the primary school level then later decided she liked it better to work with smaller kids, hence changing the track half-way to the kindergarten one.

$100 was the monthly salary of an entry-level kindergarten teacher in my hometown. And it was so hard to get a job at public schools which offer better benefits and insurance schemes as one must have connections to get hired.

As a result, most of her classmates resorted to signing a yearly contract with private kindergartens. Days in, days out, they show up at school at 6 AM and return home 12 hours later. They chose the path as the way to do what they love, to devote themselves to a higher cause and to live close to home.

To them, it seemed to be a fair exchange.

For my cousin, it was not. Her youngest sibling was about to matriculate at a medical school, and her parents just hit their 50s. She could never find herself at ease seeing them working on their paddy fields all day.

With the help of the extended family, she took a $1000 loan to pay for the labor export company and eventually paid back after a year.

Like many other guest workers, my cousin works hard in Japan and save every penny to send money back home – to renovate their downgraded house, to support her sibling’s education and to save for her own future, full of uncertainties, when one day she will come back.

To her, a tube of toothpaste should only cost $1. Anything that’s more expensive implies a scam.

In 2023, Vietnam recorded the highest-ever number of workers sent to Japan with more than 74,000 people. It is also ranked top among 15 countries dispatching technical interns and skilled workers to Japan which contributes to the $16 billion of remittances received last year.

According to the State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese, the amount of remittances to Vietnam between 1993 and 2022 reached over $190 billion, almost equal to the amount of FDI disbursed in the same period.

While global tourists flock to Japan as their new budget destination, comments seen under VNExpress’ reports on the weakening of yen read people’s hope for its exchange value to soon pick up.

A reader named Kiên Cường wrote: “A brother friend was born in 1993. After finishing university he wanted to go back to his hometown for stability. A few years back, his job was unstable, and he wanted to go abroad to work. After working abroad for 7-8 years, he returned home and could only save a little to repair the house and buy things. He told me after nearly a decade, real estate prices in Vietnam are too high, he had no expertise, and his foreign language skills were only average. Meanwhile, his friends in Vietnam have more working experiences and connections. With such high costs and the value of the yen, it is really too difficult for overseas workers who are working and will return home in the future.”

I was amazed as a kid going to the Quang Tri branch of the Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Agribank) – the country’s largest commercial bank – one day before the Tết Holiday many years ago. There was such a long queue of customers – a lot of them, farmers – waiting for their turns.

Behind the counter hung a big poster that says “Remittances season – receiving money quickly, getting more chances to win rewards for every transaction”.

I now think I can really imagine faces who worked hard days and nights in strange lands to earn and send those banknotes back home.

Two weeks ago, my cousin came back to Vietnam for her eldest brother’s wedding.

My uncle and his friends, who stayed over at her place during their trip to Tokyo, threw a small farewell party when she was in Hanoi to catch a flight back to Japan.

As we said good-bye, an aunty pulled me aside.

“Have you ever asked her about shortening the contract and going back to your hometown?” she asked me.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Poor little girl. She stands for hours in the grocery store’s kitchen, frying tempuras. You know? Hot oil and such. Some people in her team have their arms burnt,” she exclaimed.

The aunty works for a financial institution that provides many ODAs to Vietnam.

In front of her, one official of my hometown bursted into tears as they announced the loan withdrawal due to sluggishness in a project’s execution.

Till next time,

P/S: thank you my copy editor for guiding me through a slum of words

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