Under the Con Phen valley

(Baonghean) - Huu Khuong is the most disadvantaged commune in Tuong Duong district and Con Phen valley is the center of the commune. However, the most civilized place in the commune still evokes a feeling of remoteness for anyone who comes here for the first time.

When I go to the highlands, I have a habit of asking about the meaning of the name of a land. Most of the highlands of Nghe An are in Thai and are associated with a mountain, a stream, a river, a rapid or a story about the ancestors of the highland communities searching for new land. However, names like Nhon Mai, Huu Khuong, etc. are difficult to explain. Because when naming an administrative unit, the authorities of many places are used to adding Kinh elements when calling it to make it sound good. After calling it for a long time, people completely forget its original meaning. Then one day, someone wanted to find the origin through the old name of the land, which was a very difficult task. With Huu Khuong, just the word "khuong" evokes a sacred feeling in me. In Thai, "khuong" is close in meaning to the word "sacred" in Vietnamese.

Village in Con Phen valley

I returned to that sacred land on a rainy day. The weather was approaching autumn, under the rain.

"Strange person" Pit Thi Mo is very good at housework.

We arrived at the old Xieng Lam boat dock at around 5pm. From here, it was almost 2km to the commune centre. The boat owner warned: “If you don’t want to get lost, follow the people returning from the fields”. On this rare concrete road, there were 4 Khmu people, 2 old, 2 young, running. On the shoulder of a young girl about 20 years old, she carried a basket with skillfully woven legs. They were people who had just returned from the fields after spending days sleeping in huts weeding rice. The girl named Hoa had big, round eyes looking at me with apprehension.

I was used to this when interacting with Khmu girls. The young man who had just passed school age quickly started a conversation: “This season the water receded so I had to work hard. In September and October, the water rose, the boat reached the foot of the commune committee.” Then the young man confided that after finishing 9th grade, he stayed home. He wanted to go to school but had no money. The state would still support him in the commune, but if he didn’t study well in the district, it would be very difficult. The funny conversation with the new acquaintances made the streams at my feet recede very quickly. It was getting dark, and I had just arrived at the Huu Khuong commune committee. It was late but the committee was still working. The reason was that the commune People’s Council meeting had many important contents, so it lasted until late afternoon and the next morning. The committee headquarters was located on a small hill below the Con Phen valley. Looking down from here to Con Phen village, the most prominent feature is the red-roofed kindergarten, next to it are the palm-roofed houses, interspersed with a few corrugated-roofed wooden houses of the well-off families in the village. The village has more than seventy households living together. There are Thai and Kho Mu people.

Mr. Nguyen Trong Hung, who was the Deputy Head of the Internal Affairs Department of Tuong Duong District, was promoted to the position of Chairman of the People's Committee of Huu Khuong Commune. He boasted that when he was working at the district's education department, he was a typical contributor to Nghe An Newspaper, but his new job left him with no time for journalism. Especially since he started working in this area with so many "no's", he could not write any more articles, although he still enjoyed it. Even if he did write an article, he would not know how to send it. In the age of information technology, there is no phone signal here, so how can one send an email? Two-way communication between the commune and the district is therefore very difficult. To make a phone call, one must go to high mountains to find a signal or take a boat to Ban Ve Hydropower Dam to make a call. As a result, when returning to Huu Khong, all mobile phones have turned into music players, cameras and game players.

But the most difficult thing for Huu Khuong is still transportation. From the commune center to the villages, it is almost impossible to use motorbikes. The only way is to wade and take a motorboat. This is the only commune left in Tuong Duong district where cadres cannot go to the village by motorbike, and people who have money to buy motorbikes cannot use them. The distance from Yen Tinh commune is still a few kilometers to Xan village, adjacent to Yen Tinh commune. When this road is completed, it will contribute to solving an important problem, which is transportation in this remote commune.

Night fell quite quickly. After dinner, I was allowed to sleep in the vice chairman’s room. The room was given priority for one light bulb. Before going to bed, the vice chairman had instructed that the electricity and water supply would only be enough for one electrical device. I had to give up the power source to my camera battery which was about to run out…

Sleep came to me with difficulty. There was a thought that kept creeping into my mind and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I thought about the people of Con Phen village and the residents of Ban Ve lake. They had sacrificed a lot for a key national project, some had to accept leaving their hometown. However, the dream of a national grid power source was becoming a distant dream. They were having to live with self-generated electricity that was unsafe and unstable, just like their lives in this remote mountain area.

A peaceful morning has returned to the Con Phen valley. From the hill of the committee headquarters, I looked down at the residential area. A day has begun. A Khmu child brings water to the village entrance to brush his teeth. Women leisurely sit in front of the door to comb their hair. I walk along the path down to the village. From the windows, curious eyes follow the stranger. A head pokes out from the wooden door of one of the most spacious houses in the village: "Please come in, teacher." I only know "yes" and am not surprised. Because the highland villagers are used to the sudden presence of new teachers. They come at the beginning and end of the school year and go to another village. The person who invited me into the house was a young girl holding a child of about 2 years old. When she learned that I was a journalist, the girl introduced herself as Pit Thi Mo, who had just finished studying Forestry at the University of Forestry. She had not yet started working, so she stayed home to look after her child.

Through the conversation, I learned that Mo was the first person to pass the university entrance exam in Huu Khuong commune. One arm was paralyzed since she was 9 months old due to polio. This studious girl had to spend 3 years learning to write and the same amount of time in first grade. After mastering the pen, the villagers witnessed her breakthrough. During her high school years, Mo was always at the top of the whole school. In 2010, she officially passed the entrance exam to the Forestry University. After 4 years, she brought home the first regular university degree in the commune, to the admiration of everyone. With her great determination, this disabled girl from the mountainous region has known how to overcome her fate and is very confident that she will find a stable job with her own abilities.

The meeting with Pit Thi Mo left me with a very special impression. It shows that life is really strange, we can find miracles everywhere, even though they are often very simple.

It is the beginning of August, which means that the new school year will begin in just a short while. The career of educating people is still full of hardships, especially in areas like Huu Khuong commune. It requires everyone here to make every effort. So it is not difficult to understand why Huu Khuong will have the same achievements as Pit Thi Mo the following year. When I sat down to write these things down, I kept remembering the words of the young teacher Tran Anh Tuan: “Up here, each person will naturally become multi-talented. We not only know how to teach, but also know how to build huts, garden, work as bricklayers, and work as mechanics.” Those are the special things I saw in the Con Phen valley.

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