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.