SFA | Oral History | New Orleans Eats

“We have to go all natural, which means organic farming. We’re trying to bring in alternative energy; we—we’ve been researching into wind-power, windmills, bio-diesel and solar, to see if we can generate some of this energy based on the nature of the wind and—and the sun instead of ruining the air with gas-burning engines.”

– Peter Nguyen

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In July 2005, the Southern Foodways Alliance presented the Ly Family with the Guardian of the Tradition award for their vision in spearheading the spectacular Vietnamese farmers’ market that opens at 5 a.m. every Saturday morning in New Orleans East and wraps up around the time that most New Orleanians are getting out of bed. The market takes place in a parking lot of a shopping strip, right outside Ly’s Supermarket; before Hurricane Katrina, it spilled into another lot behind the supermarket. There, mostly Vietnamese elders sell the vegetables, fruits, herbs, and roots that they grow in their home gardens, many of which thrive along the bayous in this neighborhood.

According to a study of the Vietnamese farmers’ market (called cho chom hom in Vietnamese, referring to the crouched stance of its vendors) conducted by the Safe Neighborhood Action Plan New Orleans Inc., no one knows the market’s exact inception. Around 1979, Vietnamese immigrants who settled in the area after the Fall of Saigon began selling homegrown produce from the backs of trucks and carts. In 1991, the Lys and a couple of others pooled resources to purchase the building that now houses their supermarket, providing the market with a stable location. At the time of the study, around 2000, the average age of a market vendor/worker was 59 years old.

While the Lys graciously provided SFA with information about the Vietnamese section of New Orleans East—sometimes called Versailles—it was a newcomer, Peter Nguyen, who ultimately agreed to sit down for an oral history interview. Born in Vietnam and raised in Illinois, Peter moved to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to work on a community garden project and otherwise help the area recover. Having grown up in an Americanized neighborhood himself, he is passionate about preserving the dying customs of his ancestral people.

Listen to this 1-minute audio clip of Peter Nguyen talking about the time dedicated to eating and drinking in Vietnamese culture. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

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What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Subject: Peter Nguyen
Location: Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, New Orleans, LA
Date: February 22, 2007
Interviewer: Sara Roahen, writer and SFA member

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Sara Roahen: This is Sara Roahen for the Southern Foodways Alliance. It’s Thursday, February 22, 2007 and I’m in New Orleans, Louisiana in New Orleans East. Could you tell us—state your name and what you do for a living?

Peter Nguyen: Okay, my name is Peter Nguyen; I work for Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corporation. My main job is project manager for community gardening. And besides that, whatever job needs required for—for us to perform my community service. We also provide a translation for our community members that doesn’t speak English.

You came to the New Orleans area at some point after the storm—after Katrina?

Yes, back in August—the beginning of August. I heard about the project, I guess, earlier in the year but at the time I was—I just got another job. Basically I was farming at a family farm in Florida, and I just needed some time off, so I was just like ignoring this and just take my time off and travel a little bit. In August when, you know, my brother James keeps mentioning it. You know he’d say Come on over. So I came and—and spoke to Father Vien, and he’s the visionary of how this—how we should rebuild this place and make it so that it is keeping up culture as farmers and fishermen. We need to create programs and projects that will keep it going, right, because our elders are getting old; our youngers are doing new things and moving on. They’re not—they’re not catching onto—to our old ways and culture. So there’s this community garden. We’re hoping to educate and—and have a living witness so that children can come and—and visit the elders and watch how they do things, and hopefully some of the skills will pass on to that next generation and encourage them to continue.

Is there a community garden that’s located somewhere?

Not at this time; there are many gardens in our—most of the community members. Instead of having grass, they use the front yard, back yard, and some of them—if they don’t have a yard, they’ll move onto other people’s land and they will be squatting like. Over the levee, even some of the vacant lots that hasn’t been developed, they’ll come in there and—and build a little garden.

Well I have a lot of questions about the sorts of things that are grown, but first: where did you grow up?

I was born in Vietnam. I came here when I was 11; our family was sponsored by an American Catholic parish up in Illinois. Basically educated, got my college degree up in—also in Illinois, you know, and moved down to Florida and decided to do some farming. But what I know from—from the point of entry here in the United States, from—from there to now, is—it’s all American. This is the first time that I even lived in an area that have so many Vietnamese in this place. And I’m glad to be here because many times I feel I’m losing my language and—and I’ve only been here four months, but I’m learning a lot.

What was your college degree?

Mathematics—Statistics.

And what kind of farming did you do? Was it on a Vietnamese farm?

No, it was on—owned by my mom. We were doing some tropical fruits: longan, cherimoya, jackfruit.

At the Vietnamese market that’s here in this area on Saturdays, I see a lot of those fruits. Are they mostly grown in Florida and other places, or are those fruit trees here?

Some of them are grown here, but in very low quantity because of the weather. Most of them you grow either near the house or they need to be covered in the winter, so quantity-wise they’re very low. But most of the fruit is probably coming from Florida—Miami area.

I know that, you know, you just recently arrived, but can you tell me what you know about the market that happens in this area on Saturdays?

Very early in the morning—5:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.; I have come out once or twice, but at the time they were beginning to pack up. But I’ve seen stuff that, you know, like people selling rabbits and some—some vegetables that they—they grow from their own little garden at home—whatever they have to bring out to sell. I don’t know if they make any profit, but just being out there, being able to involve themselves into an activity that—that, you know, they don’t make money but they’re meeting people.

Is it your sense that that’s like a sort of a glue for the community, having that there on Saturdays, or how is it viewed by the community?

With all the modern grocery stores, they can ship in tons and thousands of pounds of almost anything. But that—that’s too easy, you know. You’ve got to do—you’ve got to know where it come from, how the fruit became and how a good one has entered your body, you need to know where it comes from. That’s why we’re promoting organic only, because before I was farming chemically because that’s the fastest way to get things done. So for now, because the landfill—we don’t want none of that in our community. We want it to be healthy.
And then from there we have to keep on going. We have to go all natural, which means organic farming. We’re trying to bring in alternative energy; we—we’ve been researching into wind-power, windmills, bio-diesel and solar, to see if we can generate some of this energy based on the nature of the wind and—and the sun instead of ruining the air with gas-burning engines.

And how is that received by the community? Are people open to that?

Most of our older members don’t quite grasp the concept of—of new things. So what we—what we do now is for the next—for the future generation. So we do things presently—create the community garden, yes, to start out with the elders; it’s designed for the next generation; the cleaner fuel is for our next generation because they’re the ones that’s going to be using all of it, not the elders. Elders here, they would love to walk to church every morning; that’s why everything is so close. That’s why all their homes is built around the church within one square mile, so that they can walk to church. And we want to keep it going because we look at our elders that’s 80, 90 years-old and still walk to church, you know, and nowadays people are dying of cancer [in their] teens, babies—20—30s, you know. And they—they are doing something right that we need—we need to know, and we need to keep it going.

Do you think within the gardening traditions of the elder people in the community, are there a lot of organic practices already or not?

Naturally; they do a lot of organic already.

So can you describe to me sort of what’s going on when I see these gardens that seem to be right on the bayou? Are people growing things—things in the water, or how does that work?

They’re not in the water; just on the side. They grow on the sides, near the water—have to move the water. The water is heavy, and if you do it by hand you—you don’t want to be walking buckets of water too far away, so if you grow along there, and basically it just takes care of itself.

Irrigation?

Irrigation, yeah. One of the reasons we want to do a community garden because that bayou water—we’re not sure it is clean. Because that same body—body of water runs by the landfill that Waste Management dump basically right next to it; so any drainage from—from the landfill, it drains into the bayou and it runs through the community. And we’re not sure the water is clean enough for them to use it to—to irrigate the vegetables and fruits.

When you go to the market, do you personally recognize all of the things that are grown?

I recently been visiting some—some of the homes, some of the gardens, and catalog what they grow, so that when we have a community garden—we’re—we’re trying to persuade people not to plant the same thing. Because a lot of people would basically eat the same type of vegetables, and if everybody—if you have 30 or 40 gardeners planting the same thing and there are other herbs that we need and won't get...so I catalog them so that later on when we have our garden, when we divide the lots and assign or rent them out to people, you know, we’ll—we’ll try to have some kind of system to have say Okay, this season you plant this amount of herb and vegetables and—and then next season you get to plant something else; you know, keep doing that—rotating—so that people get to basically grow everything and have experience and—and learning so that we have a variety of vegetables instead of just 10 or 12.

Katrina pretty much destroyed most of the gardening that was going on here before.

Uh-hm.

Were there plants that were lost that haven’t been replaced yet?

Some grow the same stuff, but we haven’t been able to find out what—what some species have been destroyed. I mean, I’ve been hunting down seeds and—and I have a list that lists—that list seems too short for a lot of the vegetative that we eat. I recently found a—it’s a root type of—what you call it? It’s a root, it’s like a sweet potato—similar—but the species has to come from Vietnam. So what I found, it came from Thailand; yeah, so it was slightly not exactly the way they want it, but it’s acceptable for now because the other breed is not available.

Where did you find the one from Thailand?

Houston.

And you found the seeds or—?

It’s a root; it’s like sweet potatoes, which is—they sell at the market. I have a friend that she keeps—she works here and then on the weekends she goes home to Houston. And I say Hey, you want to do me a favor and stop by the Hong Kong market that is big in Houston and see if you can buy me this root? So that request—I gave her—I asked her that two months ago; she just—she last weekend, she just found it. It took her that long to get because it’s seasonal, I guess.

And then are you able to reproduce it just with one of the vegetables?

Yeah, it’s—it’s a root so it’s—they can slice it a certain way and you bury it underground.

What about from Vietnam?

The problem is importing anything. The seeds, they don’t make it through customs. Unless you package them—if it looks like coffee, it will pass through, but otherwise as soon as they find out what it is, they won't let it through.

I have so many questions. What about, do you know when this community started being developed?

Seventy-seven, I believe; seventy-seven. The Fall of Saigon in ’75—everybody, I think they started building this back in ’77 or ’79.

It seems like from what I’ve heard—and you can tell me if I’m wrong—this is sort of an unusual community even like within the rest of the United States: the concentration of the culture. Is that true?

It’s the densest outside of Vietnam, anywhere in the world. Within one square mile before the storm was like 6,500 population, just in one square mile, door-to-door.

Have you heard theories, or do you have your own theory, about why that is—why that happened here? Do you think that it had anything to do with the land being similar to what’s in Vietnam?

Climate and mostly, I think, it’s—it’s their faith. Vietnamese Catholics, they revolve themselves against—around the church. I know because my mom is that way. [Laughs] Her dreams is to be able to live right next to a church and walk to church.

I want to ask you about pho: do people eat that at home?

Yes, but usually on the weekend only because it takes time to—to make the broth. When you—when you make it at home, you tend to make it more from scratch and you put in a lot of carrots, so it takes a lot more time to cook than a restaurant would do it; so usually they save it for the weekend: Saturday and Sunday.

What about—I have the impression just from, you know, reading the paper and just sort of urban legend that the Vietnamese fishermen have also made a really big comeback relative to the non-Vietnamese fishermen in this area. Does that ring true?

I know a lot of them is in trouble, but there is—the thing with Vietnamese, when they’re down they’re down. I mean they’re—if they’re in business they don’t have to turn a profit, right. Your labor is your profit, and a lot of businesses—especially American businesses—don’t understand that ‘cause if you go to work for someone else, you get paid the same and then you’re taking orders from someone else, right. If you open your own business and your profit is your labor, you’re making about the same and then you’ll be your own boss. Why not do it? And a lot of times it is hard at the beginning because that’s what you have to do until you can expand your business. That’s how you survive, right; that’s—that’s how you survive through some of the tough stages. I guess statistics say 50-percent of—50 or 75-percent of any business fail the first year, right. Not true with Vietnamese because they’ll stick with it until—to the point where Okay, I give up. Otherwise, if they don’t make a profit the first three to five years, they’re going to stay with it; if they know that’s a good idea, they’re going to keep on working at it because they sort of make some money to—to—for them to get by and keep on going.

Do you get the sense that the Vietnamese people here consider themselves New Orleanians?

Yeah, they do. I mean even the root—their root is Vietnamese, but they’re here to stay. They’re—they’re not here to plan one day to go back to Vietnam. Otherwise they wouldn’t—they wouldn’t be opening up businesses and sending their children to good universities and start a family and stuff. They’re here to stay, and they’re—they’re not here as a temporary place. This is their home now. Even though their culture is back in Vietnam, yeah, sure they can come home—go there and visit anytime, but this is their home. This is where they work and their children are growing up there; this is their home.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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