Memories of Yam

(Baonghean) - After Tet, the yam shoots in the forest begin to grow above ground. February and March are the lean season. In the past, when there was famine, everyone in the village and the whole Muong went into the forest to dig yam to eat for meals. The yam holes in the forest were sometimes as deep as a person's head... creating memories of poverty and hunger of a time that can never be forgotten. Memories of living thanks to the forest, living mainly on the forest, being closely attached to the forest like fish to water!

Nowadays, the villages and hamlets are becoming more and more beautiful and civilized. Yam is no longer a simple and ordinary staple food; it has become a specialty, a hard-to-find and most valuable thing in the highland markets. A kilo of yam now costs over 60,000 VND. People who dig yam now have to pack rice and go far into the forest, searching and digging all day long. If they are lucky, they can only get about three or four kilos of yam. Three or four kilos of yam are brought to the market to sell, without any marketing or solicitation, people will still compete to buy them.

Wash the yam.

Earning about two hundred thousand dong a day is a very high income. Finding the vine and digging up the yam is not easy, so the price of a kilo of yam keeps increasing... By the end of March, which means the end of the yam season in the forest, the price of yam has reached 90,000 dong/kilo. It is not easy to eat yam now. The price of abandoning the forest is too high for the villagers and the Muong people today! Ms. Vi Thi On, in Chau Thanh commune (Quy Hop), once considered a yam "digger", confided to us her feelings that in just a few years, the yam in the forest will be gone, there will be no more roots to sprout. But people still want to eat yam forever, because it is delicious and nutritious... If only we could grow yam in the forest like we grow other types of potatoes, how wonderful would that be?

Mrs. On's feelings are exactly the same as the feelings of the villagers who have been attached to the yam in the mountains and forests of their homeland for generations!

Article and photos:Thai Tam