A party member in Nam Nhoong

(Baonghean) -I had the opportunity to visit the Nam Nhoong mountains of the highlands of Que Phong, where the Quang River embraces the peaceful villages of the Kho Mu and Thai people, who are still poor but full of love. I met village elder Lu Tat Thanh - a "big tree" of this land.

Different from the image of a village elder that I imagined on the journey to Nam Nhoong. Welcoming me in the still-cold morning was a small, agile man with a friendly smile. The moment of surprise passed, giving way to the intimate stories that village elder Lu Tat Thanh told, when he took me to visit Huoi Cam village - a typical example of building a new rural area in Nam Nhoong commune.

The story begins with memories of decades ago, when his parents and four siblings lived simply in the middle of this wild mountain forest. Life was full of hardships, struggling to make ends meet, but fortunately, the father was determined to send his children to school, because his own life experience showed that: "Only education can escape poverty". The boy Thanh was able to study to the end. In 1972, after finishing grade 7 in the district, he joined the army, then went to B.



Village elder Lu Tat Thanh is mobilizing people to comply with the Party and State's policies and actively develop family economy.

During the 1975 Spring Campaign, his unit was one of the vanguard troops that smashed the enemy's Xuan Loc defense line (now in Dong Nai) to advance to liberate Saigon, reunifying the country after 21 years of division. After the country was unified, he continued to stay in the army and stationed in Dong Nai, and in 1979 he set off on an international mission to help the Cambodian people liberate themselves from the Khmer Rouge genocidal regime. Intelligent, brave, and with many achievements, he was awarded the title of Emulation Fighter by his unit three times in a row. Even more honorably, on June 26, 1979, he was admitted to the Party right on the Cambodian battlefield.

In early 1981, he returned to his hometown after nearly 10 years of fighting. “Since joining the army, I only went home to visit my family once after finishing training, before going to B,” he shared. Returning to his hometown of Nam Nhoong, the country was at peace and unified, but life was still difficult. The soldier’s nature, forged through the battlefield, urged him to find a new direction, to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty. He crossed the forest, followed the Pa Met stream to find land to reclaim and grow wet rice. He said: “I reclaimed 35 hectares of rice fields. I still do it now. Before, I grew two crops, now I only grow one crop a year and harvest 800 kg to 1 ton of rice, enough for my family’s needs.”

Mentioning rice cultivation is because Mr. Thanh is also the first Khmu person to reclaim land for wet rice cultivation in Nam Nhoong, opening up a new way of doing business for the entire Khmu ethnic community who were not used to growing wet rice. And in the old days, the image of hard-working and diligent young man Lu Tat Thanh captured the heart of a girl named Moong Thi Vinh from the same village. The two became husband and wife in 1982.

Since 1983, he started doing “commune work”. He has held many positions from commune team leader, vice chairman of the People’s Committee, then deputy secretary of the Party Committee… until he retired in 2010. “At that time, being a commune cadre was very hard. It took 3 days to go to a meeting in the district, on foot. Meanwhile, at home there was only a wife and small children, their labor force was not as good as mine, and their family situation was very difficult! But I thought that since I was a party member and had been trained in the army, when society needed me, I had to contribute,” he shared.

That was in the past, but when the country was innovating, trade and travel were more convenient, he invested heavily in the family economy with a comprehensive livestock model. With a herd of 17 buffaloes, 7 cows, 3 fish ponds, 8 sows, 18 pigs, nearly 100 chickens and ducks, the family's income in a year was nearly 150 million VND at peak, and nearly 100 million VND at lowest. In a locality where the poverty rate is still over 90% like Nam Nhoong, Mr. Thanh is truly a good economic example for many people to follow.

… After retirement, Mr. Thanh still does not stop doing housework and village work. In the past two years, implementing the New Rural Construction Program, he was the pioneer in mobilizing people to donate land to build concrete roads. Imagine, in an area like Nam Nhoong, with rolling hills and mountains, houses built on the mountainside, how precious each square meter of garden land is to the people. Therefore, at first, when he went to mobilize people to donate land, many households firmly disagreed. "No matter how difficult it is, there is a way to overcome it", he thought, then he donated 500m2 himself first, then persistently mobilized; "slow and steady wins the race", finally the whole Huoi Cam village understood and understood the purpose of building a New Rural Construction.

More surprisingly, each household also agreed to contribute 500,000 VND to buy sand and gravel plus cement supported by the State to build the road. "We do this without having to hire workers. Every household sends someone to mix and pour concrete," he said. Now, going around Huoi Cam village, winding through winding mountains and hills, there are sturdy, spacious concrete roads running under the stilt houses. Talking to me, Ms. Luong Thi Que, a villager, excitedly said: "After the new rural road is completed, it is convenient to travel, and there is also a place to dry rice and corn. Thanks to Mr. Thanh's efforts, our village is like this now."

Not only did he campaign for the new rural area, but when listening to the villagers' stories, he was an excellent "people's activist" of the village. Because before that, even before he retired, he successfully campaigned for many students not to drop out of school and stay home to get married. Thanks to that, for a long time, the whole village did not have any cases of early marriage. Then, the traditional wedding of the Khmu people still kept the custom of the groom's family having to take care of everything for the bride's family to organize the wedding. Seeing many families struggling to prepare their sons for marriage, he carefully analyzed, confided, and campaigned for the whole village to organize a light wedding, with the bride's family joining hands to take care of the happy day for their two children... Therefore, Huoi Cam village is not only the pioneer in building new rural areas in Nam Nhoong but also the first cultural village of the whole commune.

The sun was setting on the other side of the western slope of the Truong Son mountain range. I said goodbye to Nam Nhoong and returned to the lowlands when Mr. Thanh was preparing a report to come here to attend the conference to review 2 years of implementing Directive 03 on "Continuing to promote studying and following the moral example of Ho Chi Minh" in Que Phong district.

Mr. Lu Tat Thanh is also one of three outstanding individuals of Nghe An province honored to attend the conference to review 2 years of implementing Directive 03, to be held in Hanoi in the near future.

Thanh Duy