Fishing village thirsts for knowledge

(Baonghean)According to statistics from the Provincial Rural Development Department, along the Lam River in the districts of Hung Nguyen, Nam Dan, Thanh Chuong, Do Luong, Anh Son, there are currently about 735 households with nearly 3,500 people living by fishing, who are in need of resettlement. The early resettlement project for fishing villagers will not only help fishing villagers "settle down and make a living" but also bring fishing village children closer to their dream of education...

We arrived at Van Tai hamlet (Vo Liet commune, Thanh Chuong) in the hot afternoon sun. At the foot of Ro bridge were old, tattered boats. Waves crashed into the side, making Mrs. Nguyen Thi Ha's boat sway and drift away. Tying the anchor rope to an iron stake on the shore, Mrs. Ha said: "My whole life has been attached to this part of the river, to the profession of fishing. The fishermen are homeless, without a single inch of land to settle down. My fate is acceptable, but the future of my children is also very uncertain...".

Her children all went to the South to make a living, and she sent her three grandchildren to raise. The youngest one was in first grade, the oldest was in fourth grade. Vo Liet Primary School was not far from the shore, and every day the children walked together to class. Their parents scrimped on tuition fees, and they borrowed old books from friends. But the hardest part was not having a place to study properly. The home of the four grandmothers and grandchildren was a dilapidated boat, flooded with water. On the roof of the boat was a worn-out backpack, containing all the books, pens, and blackboards of the three children. At the end of the boat was a thin plank placed on some bricks as a study table. “They put it up there, but they rarely used it because the boat was low and cramped, and if they sat they had to bend their backs, so they complained of sore shoulders and necks. Usually, all three children spread out a mat in the middle of the boat and crawled out to study... On rainy and windy days, they went ashore to take shelter at their friends' houses. I felt sorry for them,” Mrs. Ha sighed, her eyes looking far away at the river shimmering in the sunlight. Perhaps because of the hardship of studying, 40% of school-age children drop out of school and go to the South or North to make a living.



Mrs. Nguyen Thi Ha (Van Tai hamlet, Vo Liet commune, Thanh Chuong) and her grandchildren on a dilapidated boat.

Nestled behind a barren bamboo grove, outside the dike is hamlet 16 (Hung Long, Hung Nguyen). The whole hamlet has 70 households, 300 people, 100% of whom live on the river. Of these, only 30 households have land to build houses, while more than half live on boats. Life fluctuates with the tides, so all families are poor or near-poor. To have money for their children to study, parents have to go back and forth, today anchoring their boats on this stretch of river, tomorrow anchoring in another place, casting nets and fishing. The children follow their parents here and there, and when they are old enough to go to school, they also venture ashore to build temporary thatched huts so that their children have a stable place to go to school. Mr. Luu Van Tinh (Hamlet 16, Hung Long) said: “The two children are now old enough to go to school. The older one is in 7th grade, the younger one is in kindergarten, so we cannot take them with us. We know that building a house on the shore is a violation of the Land Law, but we have to take the risk to give our children a stable place to study...”.

Other families, when their children reach school age, try to send them to their grandparents' or relatives' homes on the shore so that they can have the opportunity to study. Parents work on the river, and are away for days at a time, leaving the children and teachers to study, whether successful or not. Mr. Luu Van Thong, head of Hamlet 16, said: "The children's education here is very difficult. They go to school twice a day, and the time they spend at home is up to them, without anyone to urge or train them. Parents do not know which teacher or class their children study with. Parents have to ask their grandparents to attend the parent-teacher meetings several times a year.

The most worrying thing is the children's ability to go to school during the rainy and flood days. On flood days, hamlet 16 is isolated like an island. To get to school on the other side of the dike, families use boats to take turns rowing. When the water is low and the boat gets stuck, they tie clothes and books in plastic bags, and parents carry their children on their shoulders to get to class. Despite the difficulties, the children here still go to school." Having said that, Mr. Thong opened his notebook and boasted: 100% of the children in the hamlet are of school age, the number of high school graduates is increasing, especially in recent years, the hamlet has had 5 children studying at colleges and vocational schools. "Our lives have been miserable because we could not get a proper education. No matter how difficult it is now, we must try to let the children go to school. Who knows, in the future, "children will be better than their fathers"..., they will not have to drift on the river anymore..." - he wished.

For children in the fishing village at the foot of Do Luong bridge (Dang Son commune, Do Luong), education is a distant dream. With no land to settle down, life is difficult when shrimp and fish are exhausted, and the transportation of sand and gravel on the river now has large motorboats, winches, excavators... Making ends meet is exhausting, so investing in their children's education is just a "secondary" matter. Nguyen Dinh In's family has 7 children, but only Nguyen Dinh Ngoc (born 2000) can go to school.

Ngoc's siblings, Nguyen Thi Hoa, Nguyen Dinh Hong, Nguyen Dinh Dung, and Nguyen Dinh Ung, all had to drop out of school in the first and third grades. The reason why In's six children could not go to school was because they were too poor, and their parents did not have enough money to pay for their children's tuition and construction costs. In confided: "The life of "temporary residence" on the ferry, mainly depends on fishing, the income of the whole neighborhood fluctuates with each tide. Working hard from morning to night, but the income is only 1 million VND/month or less, not enough to spend, let alone pay for their children's school fees..." That is why, although many fathers and mothers love their children, they still have to go fishing for a whole month before returning. And when they do not have enough strength to manage, they have to grit their teeth and accept letting their children drop out of school halfway. Hoang The Anh, an 8th grader, said: “My seniors dropped out of school after finishing primary school. I am a boy so I was given priority to go to secondary school. But now my family is in difficult circumstances so I don’t know when I will have to drop out. I want to go to high school, go to university, and become a civil servant...”.

At dusk, the wind from the Lam River blows into the makeshift huts on the riverbank, the boats bob along the water, under the flickering electric light, the children are still diligently studying. Born and raised experiencing the hardships and misery of the fishing people, the drifting life of grandparents and parents on the river, so the younger generation wishes to go to school, strive to study to rise up, to escape the curse of the river (living homeless, dying without a burial place). And I believe that, with the attention of the authorities at all levels, the thirst for knowledge of the fishing children will be shared, and their future "children will be better than their fathers...".

Thanh Phuc