“I miss my wife but I can­not meet her. The only way is to fol­low her. But once I fol­low her, I will not come back.”

Trinh: “I can­not believe that you are 90 years old. You look so young! I thought you were just 60 or 70.”

Ngat: “My dad died in 2011 when he was 116 years old,” he says laughing.

“I used to be a teacher in pri­ma­ry school. I can speak 3 lan­guages Jarai, Bah­nar (eth­nic lan­guages), and Vietnamese.”

“(Dur­ing the war), they (the South gov­ern­ment) forced me to go to the army. I didn’t want to, so they put me a prison in Nha Trang for 1 year and 6 months. In the prison, I couldn’t sleep and was not allowed to walk around when­ev­er I want­ed. I had to go to bed at 8 PM, if some­one walked around, they would arrest and hit you. There were thou­sands of peo­ple in the prison. There were rooms for drug addicts, com­man­ders, sol­diers, women. Preg­nant woman gave birth there. I didn’t like the war.”

A Ngat, 90 years old
Gia Rai (Jarai) Eth­nic Group
Kon Tum, Vietnam