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from hectic to slow life
Although she had been to LaVieVuLinh last April during our Festival, she rediscovers the place under a different atmosphere: in stark contrast with the festive tumult, this time she is greeted with calm. And she cheerfully understands that the place has its own rhythm: “LaVieVuLinh can sparkle and burst of energy, but also gently breathe, be in contemplation and slumber…”
At first though, she finds it hard to adapt: used to the functionalist efficiency of the city, she struggles to find a place. “I arrived with clear objectives formulated in an engineer’s jargon: deadlines, brainstorming, management… Words that have no meaning here. I quickly understood that I had to change my approach.”
Instead, she has to let the place’s spirit and own pace of time guide her (and her work schedule): weather and local people’s natural inertia won’t care about her frustration, “things are done when they ought to”. Slowness and flexibility teach her about “slow life“, a liberating concept that allows her to take a step back and better apprehend her place in the community.
Beyond the formal title of her internship (Optimisation of the agro-forestry project and rehabilitation of the clean energies project), she integrates the team and the residents of LaVieVuLinh to learn off the beaten track the fundamental values of patience, autonomy, humility and sense of family. She adapts to the rhythm of the lodge that only with the arrival of new clients would leave its inertia and prepare in just a matter of a few days to welcome groups of 90 people (such as the group of cooks from Hanoi who chose to have their team-building event on the lakeshore). She participates in getting VuLinh ready on those occasions, but also on the longer term, eg by setting up the ‘explanatory path’ through the Agroforestry park project area. |
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