The Goat Milk Baby: Memoir of a Vietnamese-Born Australian Scientist

By Jeanette Nguyêt Pham

When a little girl was born in Saigon a few days after the end of the war, she was named, Minh Nguyêt (Bright Moon). When the baby was two months old and her mother had no breastmilk left, a kind relative gifted the family a goat. Every morning for three months, her mother gathered enough milk to feed Minh Nguyêt. And so began the goat milk baby’s journey through life.

In a captivating memoir, Pham chronicles her family history and coming-of-age experiences as she relied on her instincts, learned from mistakes, focused on her studies, married, became a retail pharmacist, had a baby, and gave her blessing for her husband to travel to Australia for work. But when South Vietnam began losing one town after another to the Viet Cong and she made desperate arrangements to escape to Australia, Pham had no idea that she was securing passage on the last plane to leave Saigon. While disclosing how she rebuilt her life and overcame diverse challenges, Pham also reveals how an encounter with a special bacterium presented her with an unexpected yet exciting scientific discovery.

The Goat Milk Baby is the autobiography of a Vietnamese-born Australian scientist who navigated through early difficulties to become a better, stronger, and happier person.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Jul 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781982297732

Jeanette Nguyêt Pham

Jeanette Nguyêt Pham left her job as a retail pharmacist to journey as a refugee from Saigon, South Vietnam, to Australia, rebuild her life, and study again while working. After suffering a repetitive strain injury, Jeanette continued working for the next three decades, eventually making an exciting scientific discovery. Today, she shares her experiences with others so she can fulfill her dream of providing education to underprivileged children.

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Copyright © 2023 Jeanette Nguyêt Pham.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-9772-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-9773-2 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 12/15/2023

Contents

Preface

1. The Goat Is Gone

2. My Mother

3. My Father

4. It’s Quiet

5. Ghost Stories

6. The Rented Terrace

7. Please Can I Go to School?

8. Cooking Rice

9. The Poorest Girl in the Prestigious School

10. The American Embassy

11. My First Student

12. Shorts for Orphans

13. Unprepared Retail Pharmacist

14. The Christmas Logs

15. The Purple Bougainvillea

16. The Married Life

17. The Passport

18. The Refugees

19. The Oldest Trainee

20. A Good Team

21. A Very Special Friend

22. Mindfulness Practice

23. First Trip to France

24. Our House

25. Rehabilitation

26. The Unexpected Project

27. The Proof of Continents Link

28. The Mutants

29. The Best Beer

30. My Eldest Sister

31. Retirement

32. The Desk

33. Don’t Be Afraid

34. My Sister Gem Lotus

35. Princess Gem Lotus

36. Covid and the Dahlia

37. My Younger Brother

38. The Phoenix

Acknowledgement

Preface

Dear Readers,

A few days after my seventy-seventh birthday, during one of my three times a week forty-minute walks in the neighbourhood, on the lovely path around the university campus, a thought jumped into my head: I am the luckiest person!

Where does that come from? I realized the smooth paved path in the natural strip peppered with gum leaves and nuts was indeed a comfortable environment for happy thoughts. I was lucky to be still in good health seven years after my retirement from forty years of service.

A few walks later, it dawned on me I might be the happiest person too! I had everything I had ever wished and much more. After more walking and more digging into my past, I worked out what made me the person I am today.

I was really excited when I realized I can share my experiences and perhaps my luck and my happiness, as they are one. A life without struggles would soon become boring, while early difficulties often help us appreciate what we have even more. They also make us a better, stronger and happier person if we managed to overcome our weaknesses.

The last but not least of that line of thoughts was that my ultimate dream of helping underprivileged children will be fulfilled, as the totality of the sale of my memoir will go to the charity funds I have been supporting.

1

The Goat Is Gone

Mummy, the goat is gone! my seven-year-old brother cried out when he opened the door of our rented terrace one morning in February 1946. The cord my father used to tie the goat to the lone jackfruit tree in the tiny front yard was there, but the precious animal was nowhere to be seen.

Traditionally, our given names take inspiration from flowers, things in nature, or desirable qualities. As I was born in autumn 1945, a few days after the end of the war, around the time of moon festival, my parents gave me the name Minh Nguyệt (Bright Moon).

When I was two months old, my mother had no milk left to breastfeed her baby daughter. Food was scarce. She gave me the liquid of rice porridge sweetened with a little brown sugar my father had bought on the black market.

It was a stroke of luck when a kind relative, realizing the situation, gave us a goat that had borne babies not long before that. Another luck was the mature jackfruit tree in the front yard. The goat apparently loved jackfruit leaves.

At first, my parents wondered where the baby goats were but did not think much about them soon after. Every morning, for three months, my mother would wash her hands, clean the goat’s nipples, and get enough milk to feed me.

When the goat disappeared, my father went for hours looking in vain for her in the neighbourhood.

A few months of goat milk allowed me to move on to rice porridge and other semisolid food. When I was a young adult, everyone said I was a little stronger and taller than my three older sisters at the same age. I often thought of the rich nutrients in the goat milk I had received as a young baby and thanked the baby goats whose bad fortune gave me a good start in life.

Besides the episode linked with the goat, each year the jackfruit tree gave us several enormous fruits weighing around three kilograms each. The yellow flesh was deliciously fragrant, sweet, and crunchy, a special treat for us all. The boiled seeds tasted like chestnuts. Some years when there were too many fruits, my father had to pluck off some while they were still green and small, double the size of a large grapefruit.

Green jackfruits made wonderful dishes, especially appreciated by vegetarians. My mother would gently boil them in a large pot of water for about half an hour, until just tender. After the outside layer was shaved off, the inside was sliced thinly and mixed with crushed roasted peanuts or sesame seeds, shredded Vietnamese mint, and a dressing of sweet, sour, and spicy fish sauce or soy sauce for a vegetarian meal—my favourite salad, virtually free. For a more luxurious version, my mother would add a few slices of cooked pork belly and a few cooked school prawns, a truly delicious and healthy dish. She would also make a lovely soup with green jackfruit and prawns topped with shredded coriander leaves and green onions.

Sometimes my mother made an absolutely beautiful vegetarian stew with chunks of green jackfruit and fried tofu seasoned with soy sauce and pepper. What a wonderful tree! When I was in my twenties, the jackfruit tree died of old age. We truly missed it.

Before I was born, my parents had three boys and three girls aged from seven to seventeen, effectively one or two years between them. When my older brother Khánh (the Bell) was six, my mother found out she was going to have another baby. It was quite unexpected. Then three years later came my younger brother Thanh (Delicate). We were referred to as the little ones.

In February 1945, with a relative normality in everyday activities starting again in Saigon, my father, a schoolteacher in the government system, was summoned to a post in Saigon. My pregnant mother followed my father to his new post. They brought along my six-year-old brother Khánh and the two eldest, my seventeen-year-old brother Thạch (Precious Stone), who was quite ill, and his younger sister Nga (Swan), aged sixteen, to help my mother. They left the three middle ones, my older brother Quí (Precious) and his two younger sisters Hương (Fragrance) and Liên (Lotus), in a village in Nha Trang with my maternal grandmother, who was in her late sixties. Nha Trang was a beach town in the centre of Vietnam, where my father was a schoolteacher before the Second World War. My parents were not sure about the accommodation the government had promised for newly arriving public servants. My father eventually went back for my three older siblings a few months later.

My brother Thạch passed away when I was three months old. My poor mother never completely got over the loss of her firstborn, a kind-hearted, bright, gentle, sportive, and handsome young man. My mother used to tell me about him loving to swim along the beach in Nha Trang. One day my brother caught a cold and never recovered from his pneumonia. When my family moved to Saigon, our cousin who was a doctor found out Thạch had tuberculosis. My poor brother loved so much his new baby sister but refrained from embracing her and instead kissed her heel for fear of infecting her. My mother told me years later when I was old enough to understand. Thạch died in his prime due to the lack of antibiotics.

My mother eventually found consolation and peace in the study of Buddhist philosophy, having learned the impermanent nature of all things and acceptance.

2

My Mother

My mother’s given name was Thược Dược (Dahlia) but misspelled in her birth certificate as Dực. She was a daughter of a mandarin at the emperor of An Nam’s court, as Vietnam was called at the time. The mandarin, twice a widower with four children, two with each of his first two wives, married my grandmother, a daughter of a retired mandarin. Not long after the birth of their eldest son, my grandfather married the youngest sister of his first wife. He fell in love with the pretty maiden when she came to visit her niece and nephew, who had lost their mother at the tender age. My grandfather lived with his fourth wife, providing my grandmother with a meagre allowance. He visited my grandmother in Nha Trang every now and then, only long enough to have my mother and her two younger siblings.

When my mother turned fourteen, her father did not allow her to continue her studies. She had eagerly prepared for her third year of school, sewn two áo dài (Vietnamese long dresses), and bought a couple of exercise books. Tears and pleading were in vain. A girl has to learn to cook and other home duties, she was told. Although heartbroken, my mother never had hard feelings towards her father. To me, that was truly admirable but incomprehensible for my generation. What I also admired was the true affection and consideration between my grandfather’s children, as I had the opportunity to observe long after he passed away.

As a young adult with limited financial resources, but as a mandarin’s daughter no less, for her pocket money, my mother used to make embroidered lampshades using French catalogues. She was a real beauty. None of her daughters were as attractive as her. The handsome young teacher of my mother’s younger sister fell for her at first sight. They were married not long after their first meeting.

The teacher’s salary had always been modest. My mother made sure her children ate well, nutritious and tasty homemade food. To save money, she learnt to make Chinese sausages, a tasty and popular food item but relatively expensive. It was a long process, including air drying for some time. Once the sausages were ready, she divided them equally between all her children. An amusing anecdote we often heard about Chinese sausages was one concerning my brother Quí. He loved the sausages so much he finished them before everyone else. Watching his siblings eating theirs made him so miserable that my mother ended up