Sweet, not rich, Chocolate lives on the streets

December 26 2002 – The Age - Australia

Her name was Chocolate. Street urchin, leader of a gang of small girls and 11 years old. Never been to school in her life. But she was also the best English speaker I'd ever heard in Vietnam.

"Wanna buy a postcard?" she asked, shoving three dirty, tattered cards in my face as I sat on the railings by the harbour watching the world go by. A gaggle of small, dirty children descended on me like a flock of chattering budgerigars, each one offering cards or cigarettes or gum for sale.

"No thanks."

"What's wrong with ya? Real cheap they are, just eight dollars."

I trotted out the standard "go away" line: "I've already got some postcards" (I didn't).

"Not like these you haven't," she shot back, fast as a snake. "Come on, have a look."

"No, I'm not interested." I turned away. Just another street urchin trying to scam me.

"How 'bout an icecream then?" That caught my attention. I turned and for the first time, really looked at the girl in front of me. Long dark hair framing a small, pinched face, smudged with street grime and dust. Tattered white blouse, also dirty, and long black slacks.

But with her shiny dark eyes staring intently back at me, I saw that this girl was different. She oozed intelligence.

I asked her name as she stood there, clutching her scraps of card for sale, suddenly self-conscious as if this wasn't part of the patter.

"Chocolate," she said.

"That's not your real name."

"Yeah it is. Chocolate."

"What about your Vietnamese name?"

"You don't want to know that. It's Chocolate and that's it."

OK. If she wanted to be called Chocolate, who was I to disagree?

"Why Chocolate?"

"Because I was dark when I was born and that's what my mother called me. Now, you gonna buy a postcard or what?"

I persisted. "You the boss here? Your sisters?" I pointed to the flock of small children harrying my friends.

"Yep. But not sisters, friends. We work together." She shifted her stance, dropped the postcards into her bag and stood watching, and waiting. "How much do you make a day, Chocolate?"

"Sometimes as much as 15,000 dong."

About $A1.50. Not much.

One of my friends made the mistake of assuming someone gave her the postcards free. Chocolate threw back her head and laughed. She looked at my friend as if she had just suggested she put her head down a toilet. "Free? Are you mad? No, I have to buy these out of my earnings. No one gives them to me free."

It wasn't just that I found myself having a normal conversation with a small Vietnamese girl on a remote island in Ha Long Bay, north of Hanoi, using normal words and speaking at normal speed; it was that she also understood all the nuances like a native speaker. All the subtle jokes and play on words. That's what was truly amazing.

Surely she had to be some prodigal well-educated scion of a local family. A child genius roaming the streets with her small gang of gangster girls extorting money from harassed tourists, trying to make some pocket money in her spare time like any other kid.

No. This was Chocolate's full-time job. Her career. Fifteen thousand dong a day was her wage. Her superannuation, her savings. And it was a deadly serious lark. Chocolate's money bought food for the family. Bit by bit I unravelled her story.

She was the eldest of seven children born into a poor peasant family living near Hanoi. Her family had sent her to Cat Ba Island to earn money for the family. That's where the tourists were. That's where the money was.

But where did she live? Who looked after this small girl? She lived with a family friend and her family on a small boat in the harbour that was not much bigger than a fishing dinghy. She went back to see her own family once a year.

Where did she learn such good English? At school?

"Nup. Never been to school. On the streets from tourists. Oh, and my mother taught me English a bit at home because she thought I was smart."

Mother got that right. We settled into an easy banter, all thoughts of selling postcards forgotten for the moment. I decided to test her. "How much profit do you make, Chocolate?" Aha! She didn't know the word "profit".

My friend - the same one with her head down the toilet - explained it to her. Chocolate listened intently, taking it all in.

Enough of my test. I decided to back up the theory with a practical demonstration to reinforce the lesson and pulled out some notes to make my point. Chocolate cut me short. "No need. I got it. I understand profit. The answer is about 50 per cent."

So she did. Chocolate was a fast learner. I guess she had to be, I thought sadly.

What about confabulate? That one got her. Fair enough. Got me, too, when I first heard it. I needed my boss to explain it to me.

We chatted on into the evening. I was mesmerised by this incredibly smart girl of 11, and the unreality of discussing all the gritty complexities of life on the street in Vietnam with her, while barely able to make myself understood buying a cream puff in the hotel creamery.

I wanted to know everything about her and her life. What did she want to do when she grew up? Did she like her life? It was amazing. It was bizarre. It was incredibly, heart-breakingly, unbearably sad.

Every now and then, I glimpsed the little girl through the hard street-wise exterior: when she lost some of her confidence she seemed suddenly very vulnerable; when she spoke of her mother teaching her English and how proud she felt; when she became uncertain as she spoke of looking after her smaller friends on the street, one of whom was doing her best James Cagney impression to extort the price of an icecream: "Gimme some money, you dirty rat!"

The waste seemed obscene. Chocolate would never go to school, never reach her true potential. She'd probably end up working on her back in a massage parlour, dead before her time.

This small, bright girl with so much to offer. So intelligent that even the layers of street grime and dirt couldn't dull her shine.

And there was nothing I could do about it. What she could be if only life had given her a chance. In Australia, she would be dux of her school, graduate with first-class honours at university and become a brilliant doctor or scientist or academic. My mind raced with possibilities.

An incessant tugging on my shirtsleeve woke me from my dreaming and the bubble burst.

"Icecream? You said we could get some icecream."

I looked into Chocolate's eyes and smiled. "Sure, Chocolate, let's go get some icecream. Gather up your gang."

And so we were led across the street to the icecream shop by an excited gaggle of small children, chattering and holding our hands - all business for the night forgotten. Just like a family on a Sunday outing at the beach.

Breathlessly, they picked their favourite brand under the suspicious gaze of the icecream vendor. We paid and quietly slipped into the night, leaving them fussing and chattering over what they had chosen. Chocolate, I remember, had an icecream sundae.

Tony Pollock is a Sydney writer.