Unity in Ghost Town: The Slums of Saigon

By Cyren Wong

Photos by Cyren Wong

On Day Five of the trip, the students made their way to Chuong Trinh AIDS, a NGO that helps the HIV/AIDS patients of Ho Chi Minh city through multiple channels. Having ties with a number of organizations and sub-groups, we met Mr. Pham Thanh Van, the co-ordinator, whose organization liaises with community efforts to collectively come together as one and aid HIV/AIDs patients. It was into these community efforts that the students were then divided into for the day’s session. While some were assigned to visit the Pagoda’s community effort, others went to see how individual community members had taken on leadership roles to aid others within the community.

The common thread binding all four groups is the social pandemic HIV/AIDS, showing just how ubiquitous the disease has become and how various walks of life have incorporated it into their community efforts to deal with it as effectively as possible.

This particular account has been written by a student who visited the ‘ghost town’ of Kay Dim, a close-knit community. - Editors' Note

Somewhere in the interiors of Saigon, located surreptiously behind the hustle and bustle of the Kay Dim street market are the slums of Ho Chi Minh city, more commonly known to the Vietnamese as the ‘ghost town’. An affectionate name used by the slum dwellers to describe their homes, the term ‘ghost town’ is in fact an allusion to the unique historical location of the slums. Once the grounds for one of Saigon’s largest of cemeteries, the ‘ghost town’ developed first as a smattering of small tents which were erected amongst the tombstones as a means of shelter from the elements for the extremely poor and homeless in Vietnam. Eventually, as more and more people began to move into Saigon, the number of dwellings in the cemetery grew till it reached a point where permanent structures were erected in place of the more temporary tents. The ‘ghost town’, as it exists today, is a far cry from the temporary squatter zone it once was. As opposed to many slums in the world, several developmental projects have already been implemented to aid the standard of living and health of the slum dwellers, some of which include properly paved roads and sewage systems. 

But perhaps what is more interesting about the ‘ghost town’ is the way in which its community seem to differ from what we may commonly infer of people living in such conditions. Rather than adopting the ‘every woman/man for her/himself’ philosophy which one might expect of people living under such dire conditions, the residents of the ‘ghost town’ have seemed to portray how socialism and communism, when properly applied to the living conditions of the people may work in fact to increase the standard of living amongst the poor of the nation. Of course, this is not to say that there are no social ills resulting from the slum dwellers (prostitution, substance abuse and domestic violence for instance) rather, it can perhaps be posited how these social ills and deplorable living conditions seem to have been relatively reduced in Vietnam as opposed to the slums in other Southeast Asian countries – Malaysia or Indonesia for example. 

Children of the Ghost Town

 As a result, it is perhaps not surprising at all that a strong sense of solidarity exists amongst the entire slum dwelling community. Quick and unhesitating to place their neighbors before their individual needs, the people of the ‘ghost town’ have shown great strength and enthusiasm when it comes to helping out members of the community.

“He recalls how when a little girl was sick with Japanese fever, or when a woman is giving birth but cannot afford to go to the hospital, that the people will all collect a little money to give to them to cure,” translates Than, our very own student guide when we asked Hoang, a slum dweller,of the availability of medical facilities for the slum dwellers. More interestingly, it would seem that even the various localized gang come together to act as defenders of the slums. “There are gangs here,” Hoang says, “but they never fight in here. In here, we are like family. If someone comes to disturb our lives, they will chase him away. If they have any problem with each other, they will fight elsewhere. But never here. Never at home.” Truly, it would seem that every dweller of the slum works together to do their part to make the collective living conditions slightly more bearable.

Indeed, Hoang himself is doing his part for the community, acting as the community development leader for the ‘ghost town’ slums through the organization Chu, literally meaning love. Together with many other corporations and organizations – mostly from Korea – they try to ensure that children have enough funds for education while slum dwellers attain awareness to cull the spread of HIV/AIDS through substance abuse and prostitution. Furthermore, in support of the female slum dwellers facing domestic violence, Chuong Trinh AIDS provides legal support as well as shelters for women. When asked about the  greatest challenges faced by the organisation, Hoang responded, “We have no challenges here, no difficulties. The government works some developmental programs for the slums like bringing in electricity and proper roads, and many other organizations help us with food. The only problem maybe is a lack of monetary funding. But we can’t do much about it because of economics”. The slums are also home to many foreigners – Koreans, French and Dutchmen who have married local men and women and then moved into the slums – another indication of its comparative success with other parts of the world. 

Certainly, it is all this diversity and activity which makes the ‘ghost town’, contrary to its name, very much alive. In actuality, the hustle and bustle of slum life in the “ghost town” seem to be an irony against the countless graves and human remains which still exist in the bowels of the village – a beacon of hope that through communist ideology, the solidarity of the people working together for the betterment of the community can work in some contexts after all. However, all the while, high rise buildings still tower around the slums of Saigon- bedecked in their spangled facades of metal and steel – a constant reminder of the ever increasing income gap between the rich and the poor.

Behind bars(?)

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Cyren Wong, an Honours student, is just your everyday-average-feminist-naturespiritual-environmentalist-and-amateur-lepidopterist trying to rediscover his roots with Mother Earth.