Since the city’s beginning centuries ago, Saigon’s complex system of rivers and streams has provided its dwellers with sustenance, transport and even a livelihood. However, today the city is developing at such a dizzying rate that at times life could prove to be too much for some, who use the same river system that used to feed their ancestors as a way to take their own life.
This is where local samaritan Nguyen Van Chuc comes in. In a recent feature by VnExpress, the news outlet told the story of how the 58-year-old man became Saigon’s most famous lifesaver, literally.
Chuc and his wife Nguyen Thi Hinh live on a boat in the vicinity of Binh Loi bridge which connects Binh Thanh District with Thu Duc District. Since his first rescue mission in 1978, the couple has spent 40 years fishing suicide victims out of the local river, dead or alive. They don’t have a proper address, household registration or a bathroom. Even electricity is a relatively new addition to the household.
Apart from saving lives, Chuc and Hinh make ends meet by transporting goods and passengers across the river. In the span of four decades, he shared with the news source that they have prevented hundreds of suicide attempts, mostly because of broken hearts, loneliness or financial struggles.
They have hone their suicide prevention skills to a craft: he gets them out while she scares them into never doing it again. Chuc shared that he learnt CPR from the television programs. On her part, she tries to be as grotesque as possible in her persuasion.
“I just describe what it’s really like to drown in the Saigon River. I tell them: ‘You’ll end up stuck in the stinking muck at the bottom — do you know how polluted it is nowadays? Oh, and the fish. They’ll just love nibbling away at your flesh until someone finds your body, usually long after your eyeballs and hair have already fallen out of your head,” Hinh told VnExpress.
In their first few years in the business, local police used to suspect that they had something to do with the deaths. Chuc used to spent a whole day in police stations to write reports on how he came across the bodies. However, things have gotten much easier for him nowadays, when he just brings in the corpses and the police will take care of the rest. Sometimes they would even buy him lunch.
Like many of Saigon’s water bodies that have succumbed to the pressure of overpopulation and lack of environmental protection, the river where the couple lives is too polluted for fishing. Life is not easy for Binh Loi’s best lifeguard team.
There used to be a period when their previous boat was leaking so they have to be prepare to get water out at any time during the day. “This is the biggest and nicest boat we've ever lived in,” Hinh told the news source.
They have five daughters who all grew up on the boat. They couldn’t attend school because the family doesn’t have an official household registration; the children only learn to read and write at a church nearby.
“We always feared that one of them might roll into the river while they slept.” Hinh shared. She also explained that the girls are all grown up and working on the shore: one sells cosmetics, another groceries, two work in factories and the last one works as a live-in nanny for a well-off family in town.
Chuc paused for a while when queried about the thing he wants the most in life.
“I hope to have a piece of land,” he said. “Somewhere stable enough to rest and to be buried in when we both die.”
[Photos via VnExpress]
