A fragment of Indonesia in Vietnam

A fragment of Indonesia in Vietnam

By Dewi Anggraeni

HO CHI MINH CITY (JP): If you met Mohamach Abdoula in a
restaurant in town and heard him speak Vietnamese fluently and
flawlessly, it would never occur to you to tell him apart from
other local gentlemen around. He has the fair complexion and the
slim build of every second good looking young man in Ho Chi Minh
City.

Mohamach, however, is not a full blooded Vietnamese. In fact,
technically he is not Vietnamese. His father is a migrant from a
small Indonesian island of Bawean, to the north of Madura, East
Java, and his mother is a Vietnamese woman. Born and brought up
in this city, then known as Saigon, he speaks the language and
knows the local customs well. When he was 13 his parents sent him
to Jakarta, where he went to school and college. Graduated as a
computer analyst, Mohamach then secured a position at a
multinational company, to be posted some time later as the
company's representative in Vietnam. Mohamach is one of the
success stories of the Bawean community in Ho Chi Minh City.

Meeting the community in their mosque after the dusk prayer,
we were invited to share their meal and hear the story of the
beginning of this community in Vietnam.

The story took us back beyond the turn of the century, to the
time just before 1880, when a merchant ship from the coast of
Bawean sailed north in search of profitable trade. In Saigon,
then a booming commercial center between mainland China and
Southeast Asia, the ship dropped anchor. While the passengers
were busy selling and buying goods with other traders, the crew
wandered into town, looking for a little adventure and trying
their luck at occasional small jobs. They found that they were
able to earn fair amounts of pocket money working for local
landowners.

Some of them were recruited by the French colonial masters to
look after their horses and drive their coaches. It was fun and
the money was good. When the time came for the ship to move on,
however, these men found that they were unable to return to
rejoin the crew. Their French employers found them too good to
replace, hence prevented them from leaving. Being pragmatic and
full of resilience, they resigned to their fate, married local
women and made this foreign land their second home.

Eventually, those at home in Bawean received news from their
brothers living in Saigon, exhorting them to come and join them,
to soothe their homesickness. Increasing numbers of Baweans
arrived on the southern shores of Vietnam, and many sailed on
after spending some time there.

Of those who decided to set up families here were the
forefathers of the present community whose members mostly speak
Vietnamese.

Their Vietnamese born imam, Imam Ali, speaks some Indonesian
and has taught his Vietnamese wife and their three children to
speak the language. Jamila, their eldest, 24, helps her mother in
their food stall.

Like the other families, Imam Ali's is officially stateless.
"We have problems accepting the state ideology, communism," they
explained.

The community of around 500 members has a close association
with Indonesia instead. Not only does the present consul general,
Sudaryomo, and the other Moslem consuls worship in their mosque.
The mosque itself is evidence of this link. It was built in 1880,
using modest materials, such as timber and thatching. In 1972,
funding came from the then Garuda Indonesian Airways, to rebuild
the place of worship, this time using mortar and bricks, with
beautiful tiling and designs. It was then officially named Rahim
Mosque. No less than former Malaysian Prime Minister Tengku
Abdurrachman once visited and worshiped here.

The mosque is central to community life. While there have been
mixed marriages, they insist on the non-Bawean partners
converting into Islam. And the wedding ceremonies are always
conducted in Islamic tradition.

The Vietnamese government does not appear to limit these
people's freedom of religion. Even the regular azan (call for
prayer), amplified by microphones, has never been prohibited.

Apart from the occasional out-of-the-ordinary story like
Mohamach Abdoula, the Baweans in Saigon are mostly trade people
or involved in small businesses.

In the wider picture, this small fragment from Indonesia is
but a piece of the mosaic of various ethnic groups who have
settled in Vietnam. In Ho Chi Minh City alone, there are eight
mosques, serving some 5,000 Moslems from different communities.
Each of these leads a normal life while maintaining its
respective culture among their semi-exclusive community.