While most families in Vietnam are preparing to welcome the lunar New Year (Tet), there are others who are not so lucky. VietNamNet profiles the people unable to celebrate Tet.
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The Phiac hemlet in Cao Bang province. |
Story 1: The man who didn’t even know of Tet
Ban Gioc waterfall in the northern mountain province of Cao Bang is known for its wild beauty but nearby there is also great sadness.
“The most miserable thing is that he doesn’t know how miserable he is”
The first house we visited in our trip to Trung Khanh, Cao Bang province was the house of two mentally disabled men Ly Van Nhuong and his son in Phiac hamlet, Dam Thuy commune, one of the most isolated border communes in Trung Khanh district.
The unexpected rain made the border area colder and more solitary. The pathway was messily sticky. Phiac is the most distant hamlet of Dam Thuy commune, which is next to the Vietnam-China border.
Hamlet chief Ly Van Nham said: “He is the most miserable and poorest man in this hamlet. But it is most miserable that he doesn’t know that he is miserable and what the future will be for his son. He has been mentally ill since he was a child”.
Nhuong’s house is very easy to identify because it is smallest in the hamlet, with weeds surrounding.
We knocked the door several times but nobody answered. The hamlet chief Kham pushed the door. Dim light poured into the dark house, exposing rain water pools on the foundation. A cooker made of three pieces of stone was cold. A empty rice basket was placed right at the door. Some aluminum pots without handles lay about the house.
Ly Van Son, 4, Nhuong’s son was at the kindergarten. Nhuong was lying down on a bed in the house’s corner, covered by a torn blanket.
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| Ly Van Nhuong sifts the remaining rice he has. |
After a while, our eyes were familiar with the house’s darkness and we saw chickens standing in a corner. These were all Nhuong owns.
Nhuong, a Nung ethnic man, was born in 1978 in Phiac hamlet. At the age of 7, he lost his parents. Nhuong lived thanks to his neighbors’ assistance but they were also very poor like him.
Nhuong lived together with a neighboring boy named Chu, who was also an orphan and mentally ill. The two kids earned their living by working for neighbors or gleaning ore from nearby mining sites.
In 2005, Nhuong also got married a girl, who suffered from heart disease. Nobody dared to marry her, but Nhuong.
His only happiness is his son, left by his wife, who died two years ago. Once again, Nhuong needs his neighbors’ help to take care of the child.
“He doesn’t know about Tet”
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| Ly Van Nhuong’s charity house. |
In 2007, Nhuong was chosen as beneficiary of a charity programme, under which he was allocated with 5 million dong ($300) to build a house. The hamlet chief bought construction materials and neighbors joined in to build the house for Nhuong and his son.
The hamlet chief said that Nhuong has a donkey to carry ore. Since the government banned illegal mining activities in the nearby mountains, Nhuong was not hired to carry ore anymore so he sold the donkey for 800,000 dong.
Looking into the empty rice basket, the hamlet chief said perhaps Nhuong used that money to buy rice.
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| This man doesn’t know about Tet. |
Seeing strangers in his house, Nhuong sat up and walked down the bed to a wood trunk in the middle of the house to scrape some handfuls of rice, put it in a flat basket to sift, then poured it into a pot.
“He has over 400m of field. We help him to plant and harvest rice, around 300kg rice/season. In addition, he has social allowances totaling over 100,000 dong ($5-6) a month. That’s the means of support for him and his son,” the hamlet chief said.
We asked Nhuong about the coming Tet festival. He said nothing and smiled dully.
The hamlet chief Kham answered on Nhuong’s behalf: “He doesn’t know about Tet. Tet holiday is a free day for him because nobody hires him to work these days”.
Leaving Phiac village, we think back to Kham’s statement: “He is the most miserable and poorest man in Phiac. But it is most miserable that he doesn’t even know that he is miserable. He has never known about Tet.”
Readers who wish to help Ly Van Nhuong can send gift or money to him to the following addresses:
1: Bank account Benefiary: VietNamNet Newspaper Account number: 0011002643148 The Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank), 198 Tran Quang Khai, Hanoi.
2. Direct assistance Hanoi: VietNamNet Newspaper, 141 Ba Trieu, Hai Ba Trung District HCM City: VietNamNet Newspaper’s representative office, 65 Truong Dinh, District 3 |
Kien Trung
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