What is it that drives you to go forward?
When you have no choice and you have to go and do it?
For me, this big leap forward was in October 1975,
when a Red Cross plane tore me away from my sweet family cocoon in Saigon
to drop me in the grey suburbs of Paris.
You know, at the time, I did not get at all the measure of such an effort,
of such a change, because for me,
France, 8,000 km away, at the age of 17,
had the features of Alain Delon coming out of the pool in full sun;
Mireille Darc, so blond, or the bonhomie of the Gendarme of Saint-Tropez.
You can imagine that France is not just that!
But let’s go back together.
What happened to me that made me leave?
In April 1975, the war was at the gates of Saigon.
It was necessary to leave the country at all costs.
And for me, obviously, it was to go to France!
I must meet Alain Delon!
And many of my compatriots risked their lives
on makeshift boats in the China Sea,
and I note with sadness that history is repeating itself on other seas.
But I was much luckier:
I could do a sham marriage to go to France.
The rare pearl is called Omar,
a poor Indian from Pondichery,
and you probably know, from your geography lessons,
that Pondichery is a former French trading post,
which implied a French passport.
I lost track of Omar but I owe a lot to this fake husband.
Omar helped me, Omar saved me, write it as you wish!
(Laughter)
Omar opened…
(Applause)
Omar opened the doors of France to me.
From a poor country at war, I discover,
I’m coming to the land of lights.
And there, in fact, I discovered more than Alain Delon and Mireille Darc,
I discovered an open and warm people.
Well it was all very good, but you can imagine
it was not easy, it was very difficult.
First of all the harshness of the Parisian climate,
which was so far from my flamboyant tropics.
Then, studies, you have to study,
and in difficult conditions.
You know, I wanted to be a stewardess
to satisfy my urge to discover the world.
I was told, “It’s too hard, you cannot do it. “
Disappointed, I joined a preparatory class, Normal Sup,
and a few years later, I passed the “agrégation”.
(Applause)
Everything I tell you seems easy
but it was not easy at all, first competition exams are difficult,
in fact, my parents could not send me any more money.
So I had to manage to both work and make a living;
and my classmates told me:
“But it’s unfair, you do the same studies as we do,
take the same difficult competitions as us and you’re struggling
while we are paid, we have scholarships, etc.
It is absolutely unfair.”
And more than once, I was tempted to stop studying
to take a job to pay the bills.
And then I wondered: do I have a choice?
I thought, and said: no, giving up would have been a failure,
a failure for Omar, a failure for my parents,
for those who believed in me and all those who would have liked to be in my place.
So I had to go on, I had no choice.
So years later, I come back to my parents’ home country,
a small village in the Mekong Delta, you may have been there before.
And I get to know the life of poor peasants
of this rural village.
People work a lot, they have a very hard life
and women are largely burdened.
Women in the fields work as much as men
and then, in the evening, what do you think men do?
They go karaoke, drink rice alcohol,
and still karaoke is a lesser evil.
Not for the neighbors but for the family.
And then the women go on, they have the housework,
they have pigs to feed, they have children, etc.
My mother comes from a very large and very rich family from this village.
This is our family photo, I’m the little one,
but this family was steeped in traditional Confucian culture:
everything was for the boys.
They had everything, my uncles, they inherited land,
they did calligraphy, geomancy, feng shui,
all was fine, and the women, the girls, my mother, and my aunt
were illiterate, and married at 14
with men they had never seen before the day of the wedding.
I imagine, you imagine, these two girls, at 14,
leaving for an uncertain future
in a family they do not know.
There is a Vietnamese saying that the fate of a woman
is like a boat coming into a harbor:
if the harbor water is good and beautiful, so much the better,
if the harbor water is cloudy, you have to deal with it.
My mother had no choice so she made her life as she could
but she guided us, her five daughters,
because we were eight children including five girls,
she really imposed us, guided us to something:
to be autonomous, to be master of his destiny.
That’s really the lesson I learned from her.
The women of my village, I find them very cheerful.
They are very cheerful, combative, they speak of the future, the harvests,
breeding, they also talk about births, deaths,
death anniversary because there,
we do not celebrate birthdays but death anniversaries
so as not to forget our loved ones.
And then one day I ask them…
but I remember that Vietnam War,
this atrocious war of Vietnam passed by there, in this village.
I ask them, “How did you lose your husband 25 years ago?
How did you lose your child who was 15 years old?
And you, how did you find yourself orphaned at 3 months? “
And everything they tell me freezes my blood,
because in fact they lived terrible things
and they always seem so happy, carefree.
And I ask them, “But why don’t I ever hear you look back?
Why don’t you ever complain? “
Do you know what they answered to me?
“What is the use of complaining?
Who will listen to us? We do not have a choice.
We are all on the same boat,
we must move forward for the future of our children.
My father was a village notable
and often men come to borrow small amounts of money,
to have an income-generating activity.
So all this to avoid the usurer:
look here, this is the usurer in the village
which lends 10 to 12% per month.
So once you start, it never ends.
So I substituted for my father to lend small amounts of money.
We were already doing microcredit without knowing it.
And in 2001, with my companion and accomplice Gérard Feldzer,
who is here, we created Zebunet.
Zébunet is an NGO that makes microcredit for family breeding,
so small animals, calves, farm animals,
that allow farmers to have an income-generating activity.
So hello calves, cows, pigs, broods,
and of course hello zebu.
The zebu is this animal, it’s a humpback ox,
it is also an animal that lives in southern countries
and which is symbol of the earth and toil.
So what is Zebunet?
We invite you, each one of you,
to lend a sum of money corresponding to the purchase of an animal
which will be lent, I say lent, since it is a loan,
and loaned to a peasant family from the South.
So the farmer raises the animal and reimburses you
once he has successfully reared.
So to make it really believable,
something real,
we issue you an investor certificate
on which you have the picture of the animal,
the photo of the host family with their contact dedails
and we invite you to give your pet a name.
We have seen that our subscribers have really a lot of imagination.
They follow the cinematographic activity, politics etc.
All this is real, I’m not inventing anything.
That’s it… so that’s it.
That’s an English-speaking zebuphile,
the privileged public of Zébunet, they are women, why?
Because women are more serious,
I apologize to men, but often…
(Applause)
So in fact women are more serious
to the extent that they care more about children etc,
and in addition we lend small animals,
therefore sheep, goats, sheep, chickens.
Managing all this is very easy for them,
they do that at the same time as the house work,
it gives them a certain autonomy.
I remember once at a meeting in Niger,
people knew that I, the president of Zébunet, was going to come,
and there was a woman who had walked
20 km in the dust with her child on her back.
She said to me, “Madam President,
next time, for a loan campaign,
I would like to have money to raise 4 goats.
And don’t worry, you know, I’m poor,
but I’ll pay you back no matter what. “
And the dignity of this woman moved me.
A loan is 140 euros, what are these 140 euros
if we do not pay back?
It’s not going to happen; but she was really keen
on pledging her honesty to have this loan.
So, in Zébunet, there is no begging, no charity.
We do not give charity to people.
And so we lend, we help, we support people
but in a peer-to-peer mentality
respecting the everyone’s dignity.
Through all these experiences, I find that these farmers from the South
do not have the chance to be born on the good side of the planet
and they have to struggle
with a daily life that is often difficult and I find it unfair.
My friends, my neighbors, my cousins in the village
were born next to my home, next to where I was born
and do not have the same destiny as me
because they were not born in the same family.
These injustices revolt me and I try to accompany people,
I try to support the poorest to lessen this injustice.
I was lucky in my life, I had difficulties,
I met people who helped me
and I think it’s just normal that I repay this chance
helping people in return.
It’s my karma and it’s the principle of give-take,
you take and give, take, help, take
but then you have to help and give back.
The actions of Zebunet, like my small actions in the village,
are not great actions.
We are not going to change the world,
we will not wipe out poverty in the world,
but I think that in life, we should not hesitate to do actions
even if they seem small.
Lao Tzu said:
“Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. “
I would add, better try to go forward
rather than cursing injustice.
Go forward,
fight,
and along your way, you will find Omar, Zebunet,
people who open their hearts and their arms.
(Applause)
”
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