Travel with Ger

Tang Ti Ger was one of the most remarkable people we met in Viet Nam. She spoke a sprightly form of English, but could not read or write, and she also spoke very little Vietnamese. She lept along rice dikes as if she were a wood nymph, and our two-day journey with her took us to the most impoverished and most gracious of homes. At eighteen, she is old to be unmarried; when she was fifteen, she fled her home and spent three days alone in the mountains to avoid matrimony. At night, she is secretly learning to read and write.