I can’t believe this is really happening. 

It all started with a conversation between a Czech student from Charles University and myself, a clueless young Vietnamese girl trying to get more information about Liberal Arts studies. Consequently, the curiosity and interest of both of us turned the conversation from the university mentoring into an interesting exchange of ideas, knowledge and opinions.

It’s surprising that not many people know about how Vietnamese people arrived to Czechia. I found a nice article by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes which explained the political background and historical context of this topic. Martin showed his interest in the Vietnamese culture and it seems like he is keeping himself updated about the world quite regularly. To be honest, I didn’t know much about the history of Vietnamese people in Czechia apart from what I heard from the elders. I felt a desire to find out more about what it has to do with Totalitarian Regimes…

I had a pleasant time chatting with Martin, an initial anxiety from speaking to a stranger turned into excitement from having a meaningful conversation. I found out that we have similar life experiences. As an OSN volunteer, he is very concerned about global issues and still, he is very interested in engaging in civil life and projects with social impacts. He changed his life path and academic choices from studying science to humanities as I am planning to do and he has been living and working abroad as well. And thanks to his curiosity and open-mindedness I felt like he could understand the cultural identity issue and the international and generational gap I was concerned about.

Martin couldn’t tell me much about my bachelor’s studies, because he was a master’s student of oral history, but he was quite passionate about history and his interests were contagious. 

We put two and two together. “Would you be up to writing a project with me?” By using oral history methodologies we can interview the first generation of Vietnamese people in Czechia to complete the narrative of Czech history. “Cool, I am missing some immigrant narratives in Czech history anyway” Martin added “Moreover we can address the perception about Vietnamese people and improve the relationships between Czech people and the Vietnamese minority.” “We can learn so much from the past, let’s involve young people to join us. It would be very useful to do research on family history and create a space for exchange. I am sure it would be very interesting to have these kinds of conversations when a young person can learn more about his/her own ethnicity and cultural identity.” “Let’s write a Solidarity project, this could be a good idea of how to share Solidarity values while gaining some valuable life-skills.”