Jarrett Smith’s personal Vietnam

Smith (right) and filmmaker Brad Ley went to S.E. Asia to dig holes. It was worth it. (Photo courtesy Jarrett Smith)

Many Mammoth residents and visitors probably know Jarrett Smith best from her work onstage in local theatrical productions such as “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.” She also, however, has a day job as a consultant for nonprofit organizations. Her philanthropic side, however, doesn’t end there. This fall, Smith signed up for her first volunteer gig with internationally-known Habitat for Humanity, which recruits crews from various countries and sends them to build homes for needy families in war torn, disease stricken or other hard-luck locations.
Smith and other members of her Habitat team were to arrive in Vietnam on Oct. 10 for what was to be a two-week build in the Mekong Delta. “I’m into amazing adventures. I’ve taken trips with my kids before and always wanted to get to Southeast Asia. This was my big chance,” said Smith, who booked in with Habitat after visiting their website “on a whim.”
As with many Habitat excursions, the team is more a patchwork quilt of people who all meet in a specified place, in this case Saigon. The team leader, who Smith had only talked to in e-mails, was coming in from London, and she didn’t know anyone else on the build. Smith had a feeling things weren’t going to be smooth and easy, and that sense took root 5 days before her departure from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), when the Vietnam government suddenly disallowed volunteer visas.
Her trip wasn’t cancelled. The group said, “What the hell,” and flew into Saigon on tourist visas, deciding to see what happened once they were in-country. “Then I got my volunteer visa letter exactly 1 hour before leaving Mammoth for L.A. Not a visa, just a letter saying my visa process was in the works,” she said. “The last thing we knew was our volunteer visas were being processed, but we’d have to wait in neighboring Cambodia for 3 days.”
After landing at the Saigon airport, the four volunteers on the flight surrendered their passports to Vietnamese authorities. A long wait ensued, as the authorities fact-checked their passports, one at a time, for 45 minutes each. “I got a little paranoid,” Smith recalled. “No one even knew I was there yet. I didn’t have a local contact yet, didn’t know how I’d get home if I was turned away. It was just me and my backpack in the Saigon airport.”
Once she was allowed into Saigon, Smith met up with an American who, it turns out, had one of the highest security clearances issued by the U.S. government. “As we were walking by one of the official state buildings, a government agent came out and took our picture and stared us down, basically letting us know we’re being watched,” Smith said.
After a bus ride to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, there was little to do but wait and do some sightseeing. “We sat in the actual room where U.S. forces planned their losing strategy, and it looks like the day the Marines left in 1975. Charts and maps with troop movements are still on the wall. The red phone is still there,” she recalled. “It was chilling.” They also made a sort of pilgrimage to the famed Angkor Wat Temples. (“Aliens built those,” she quipped of the fantastic structures.)
By Day 3, the group learned that the Socialist Republic of Vietnam had declared them all “a national security threat.” At the American Embassy, the Vietnamese government explained that the group included an international correspondent from CNN, a documentary filmmaker, and two other civilians with very high U.S. security clearances. “The government decided we weren’t homebuilders, we were SPIES,” she said. “And not just SPIES, but SPIES with CAMERAS, and connections to CNN and Washington, D.C.!”
Not only weren’t they building a house in Vietnam, Smith thinks it’s likely Habitat’s entire presence in Vietnam is over. “Now all of us were stuck in Cambodia, unsure we could even get back into Saigon for the trip back to the U.S.,” Smith said. Working on a 200-home Habitat build that was affiliated with former president Jimmy Carter also wasn’t an option, since that project was deemed fully staffed. “We did get to help out on a couple of houses for families recently evicted from a dump in which they were living. If you can imagine anyone living in a dump.” That wasn’t very long-lived or comfortable, as local contractors had hired villagers and clearly weren’t happy that volunteers were taking some of the jobs. The work, she added, was often back-breaking, done with tools that she said “probably came from the stone age.”
“What sticks with me far more, though, is how much of Cambodia’s recent history is relatively unknown to both us and them,” Smith opined. “75% of the population is from the post-Vietnam War era.” Smith said the site that affected her most deeply was a visit to the Killing Fields, a number of sites where some 200,000 people were killed and buried by the ruthless Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Vietnam War.
“Our guide lost his whole family. He was hidden as a ‘farmer,’ since only peasants and farmers survived,” Smith noted. On the ground at their feet, the guide pointed out teeth, bones and clothing that have been surfacing from the mass graves below. She also went to Tuol Sleng, or Security Prison 21, informally known as The Slaying Tool, a former high school the Khmer Rouge converted into a torture facility, which she said is intact and is in use today as a genocide museum. Of the 17,000 persons incarcerated there, only 12 survived.
“I’ve been to Auschwitz and, as horrible as that place was, the Khmer Rouge brutality is simply beyond any description,” she posited. “And it was only 30 years ago; it’s closer to our frame of reference. I was 18 at the time, and I never knew those things happened. I wonder how many westerners know. Cambodia lost its doctors, teachers, artists, scientists … so much of that was hidden from us.”
In spite of all that, Smith said she found the Cambodians a “gentle” culture. “It’s amazing they can smile after all they’ve been through. But they do.”
At last, Saigon issued tourist visas to the group. “They wanted us in and out,” Smith thinks. Looking back, she’s still pleased with her Habitat almost-experience. “My hat’s off to them. They did the very best they could,” Smith commented. “I just feel sorry for the family that ended up losing out on getting a home because of the Vietnamese government.”
And Smith said she plans to return to Angkor Wat and nearby Siem Reap to volunteer at the Children’s Hospital there, which helps children who have lost limbs to the uncounted number of landmines that still litter the countryside.
“Look, I really have no room to complain. If things hadn’t gone so wrong, I never would have gone to Cambodia and had that incredible, life-changing experience,” Smith said. Then, a sly smile threads its way across her face. “Plus, I’m proud to be considered a national security threat to Vietnam. I can check THAT one off my ‘bucket list!’”