The Dan Lai people are good at Thach Son.

(Baonghean) - Through the Nghe An Newspaper's "Hotline", we rarely receive positive and joyful information like the call from the people of Thach Son village (Thach Ngan, Con Cuong) that: journalists should come back and set an example for Mr. La Dinh Tham - the head of a Dan Lai family who relocated and resettled in Thach Son village, who proactively wrote a request to leave the poor household...

The Thach Son resettlement village is about 20 km from Con Cuong town. In the village, Mr. Tham's family house is quite prominent, with wooden panels, a large cement yard and a corrugated iron roof. My first impression of Mr. La Dinh Tham was that he was a Dan Lai man with a kind and approachable face. When asked about escaping poverty, he smiled gently: Thanks to my wife. And so on, the story of his youth, the story of meeting a Thanh girl and then getting married, the story of working hard to have a little money to eat and then carrying out the call for writing a petition to escape poverty were all told to the stranger.

The house of Mr. La Dinh Tham and his wife in Thach Son village.

Mr. La Dinh Tham was born in 1962 at the end of Khe Khang, Mon Son commune, where the Dan Lai ethnic group in Con Cuong district resides. As a young man, he studied the 7+3 teacher training program. He recalls that at that time, there was still a subsidy system, so after graduating, he was able to do an internship in Tan Ky district. But he had to drop out because it was "too hard", he could not stand the life of eating bo bo for every meal day after day. Returning to his hometown, seeing his family with many backward customs, living in isolation in the mountains and forests, making a living by slash-and-burn farming, going down to the streams to catch snails and shrimp, he tried to trade in bamboo and rattan. The trade gave him the opportunity to expand his relationships, meet and socialize with many people. In 1992, he met Nguyen Thi Huong, a girl from Thanh Hoa who often went to Con Cuong to sell wine yeast. Then the two developed feelings for each other and became husband and wife. Knowing that it would be extremely difficult, but "accidentally" falling in love with the young man Dan Lai, Mrs. Huong decided to go with him to Khe Khang to build a new life. Here, the couple worked together to grow rice, raise livestock and poultry and had 4 children together.

"In 2006, my family's life began to change," said Mr. Tham. That was the year Con Cuong district started to build resettlement areas to relocate the Dan Lai ethnic group from their old place of residence in order to change their lives according to the government's policy. Mr. Tham's family, Mrs. Huong's family and 50 other households in Khe Khang were moved to the new village of Thach Son. At their new place of residence, the government gave them "a stilt house and rice fields" and instructed them in "science and technology in farming and raising livestock to make a living". During this period, like other households, his family was also recognized as a poor household and received other types of support such as food, salt, electricity bills, holiday money, etc. However, because they still carried the heavy burden of customs and backward farming methods from their old place of residence, their lives had not changed much.

After a year of moving to the new place, during a visit to his wife's hometown, he realized that growing cassava here brought high economic efficiency. Thinking that in Thach Son there were many hilly areas, he discussed with his wife to collect and borrow money to buy cassava seeds, and at the same time mobilized his children and brothers to organize land reclamation for planting. Fortunately, "heaven did not let down those who had worked hard", that cassava crop was successful beyond expectations, his family recovered the capital, paid the laborers who helped them and earned tens of millions of dong.

From the results of the first crop, in the following years, he and the Dan Lai people of Thach Son village continued to expand the cassava growing area, bringing in a good income. At this time, he not only reclaimed land for cultivation but also worked with his wife to purchase cassava for the villagers and then imported it to traders. Thanks to their diligence and simplicity, the couple was trusted by traders, who provided capital to buy cassava and other forest products such as banana seeds, rattan seeds, etc., which were very available in Thach Ngan. He said: "Like this passionflower, it is also a forest product that our customers ordered us to buy. We are responsible for guiding the villagers to go into the forest to harvest and we organize the purchase at the price of 1,500 VND/kg of fresh plants. After that, we spend time chopping them into small pieces, drying them, packing them into bags and importing them at the price of 10,000 VND/kg. Thanks to that, the villagers also have additional income and I also earn a few million VND per month...".

Mr. and Mrs. Tham Huong's assets are now the best in Thach Son village, "with 2 buffaloes, 3 cows; a few rice fields and 2 hectares of acacia hills, not to mention livestock and poultry". Because they "have better conditions than the villagers", at the end of 2013, Mrs. Huong discussed with her husband to apply to leave the poor household. Although he knew that leaving the poor household would mean losing out on benefits, he agreed with his wife. And in 2014, Thach Ngan commune had the first Dan Lai household removed from the list of poor households.

Mrs. Huong confided: My husband and I's experience is simply that we must be diligent and hard-working; when we are informed about scientific advances, we must know how to listen and apply them. We must work hard, from which we can draw experience for ourselves, but talking about the Party and State's concern for the Dan Lai people like that is too much. If we hope for more concern, we only hope to promote the education of the children in the village to a higher level. The awareness level of the villagers is still very low, for nearly ten years now, Thach Son still has no children who have passed grade 12...".

According to Mr. Luong Van Canh - an officer of the New Rural Office of Con Cuong district, Mr. La Dinh Tham and Ms. Nguyen Thi Huong are very dedicated to the people. They not only know how to apply what the district technical staff has instructed but also guide the people in the village to follow and thereby gradually change their old way of thinking. Currently, Mr. Tham and Ms. Huong grow oranges and bring in high income, so they have proactively asked to test planting over 100 orange trees. After a year of planting, the orange trees have taken root on Thach Son land. In a few years, if the orange trees produce good results, other households in Thach Son will also follow suit.

According to Mr. Ngan Xuan Nhung, Chairman of the Commune People's Committee, the most valuable point of Mr. Tham and Mrs. Huong's family is their independence. Mr. Nhung said: "The weakness of the people is that they are often passive, waiting for support from the state. With Mr. La Dinh Tham and Ms. Nguyen Thi Huong, it is not like that. The independence of this couple is very high. Through their own efforts, they have proactively risen up in life, not only escaping poverty but also creating jobs and increasing income for the people in the village. They are truly an example for the Dan Lai people in Thach Son village to follow...".

In Con Cuong district, people's initiative to leave poverty has become a movement. And Thach Ngan commune is one of the localities with many such households. From 2013 to now, Thach Ngan has had more than 30 households requesting to leave poverty; the poverty rate here in 5 years 2013 was 38.2%, by the end of 2014 it had dropped to about 30%. What families like Mr. La Dinh Tham's have done, voluntarily giving up the benefits from the poverty standard to strive to improve their lives with their own abilities is truly admirable. And that action is truly an example for society to follow.

Nhat Lan