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| The granaries in Sa Vang are empty. |
For months now, the people of Sa Vang village (Ta Ca commune, Ky Son district), with 78 households and 444 people of the Khmu ethnic group, have been facing hardship. Mrs. Moong Me Lieng, now 76 years old, still has to toil in the forest searching for cassava and sweet potatoes to eat each day, or gather reeds and dig up ginger to sell, earning 5,000 or 6,000 dong a day to "add money to buy rice..." as she puts it. Meanwhile, Mr. Moong Van Doanh, suffering from illness and unable to do heavy work, still tries to work as an assistant for a timber company in Laos to earn money to support his wife and children. Village head Chon Van Que said that recently, households in the village received the first batch of flood relief rice, 3 kilograms per person. This meager amount, mixed with sweet potatoes and cassava, will only last about ten days. Therefore, the adults in the village are trying every way possible, doing everything they can to earn money to buy rice each day. Women go to the fields to dig up cassava roots, while men and young people go into the forest to cut firewood to sell or go to other villages to work in exchange for rice to bring back home.
Sa Vang is preparing for a new farming season. According to the village chief, "if the weather is favorable this season, it will be another five months before each household has rice in their granaries." But we are worried about one thing: how will the people here live until then?
Duc Duong
