"The Ferryman" in Mon Son

(Baonghean) - At Mon Son Secondary School in particular and throughout Khe Bung, Khe Khang (Con Cuong) - where the Dan Lai ethnic group mainly lives, teacher La Thi Mui is always mentioned with endless love and respect...

Teachers at Mon Son Secondary School spoke highly of Ms. La Thi Mui's achievements: a teacher with many years of experience in mobilizing students in the most remote areas, the most creative and friendly "Physics" Ms. Mui, a brave teacher who has fought many times against backward customs to bring literacy to the children of the local people... I could not have imagined that the slender woman with a small face, bright eyes and a very gentle smile who was talking to me was the enthusiastic and dedicated "ferryman". This year, Ms. Mui turned 35 years old, she herself is a daughter of the Dan Lai people in Mon Son, grew up drinking Khe Khang water, enjoyed the education of the Party and the State and became a student of Nghe An College of Education, then nurtured the dream of sowing literacy in the difficult highlands of her homeland. After graduating, she volunteered to teach in her ethnic minority area, because "the Dan Lai and Thai people... still live in poverty, some people have limited awareness of the importance of education, children are born and grow up innocently like trees and grass in the forest, they are very disadvantaged!" - Ms. La Thi Mui confided.

Teacher La Thi Mui and students in Physics class.

Loving the children of the ethnic minorities as much as she loved her own deprived childhood, Ms. Mui nurtured the determination to coordinate with her colleagues, organizations, and local authorities to carry out the work of mobilizing students well. The days of riding motorbikes, taking ferries across the river, and then walking for hours in the deep forest to find students' homes, whispering, and persuading families to send their children to school became a familiar journey! Every few months, or at the beginning of the school year, there was a trip back to the mountains like that. But it was not easy, for the Dan Lai people, hundreds of years of closely tied survival to the primitive jungle, to hunting and gathering, had given birth to many backward customs, many prejudices that were deeply rooted in their thoughts.

Many memories are so funny that they make you cry, because many times when they saw the teacher's shadow from afar, parents hurriedly... hid their children in the forest to avoid going to school, or some students cried in the middle of the road and asked to go home... Ms. Mui shared: "The situations that were both funny and sad when mobilizing students could be counted all day. But I am also a Dan Lai native, so I had an initial advantage in that I understood the customs of my people such as early marriage, fear of learning difficulties, fear of thinking... I understood, but to explain to my people clearly, I had to have experience, give real, vivid examples of the benefits of studying. Even every time I went to mobilize, I brought a small gift as a way to show my goodwill."

Little gifts from Ms. Mui, sometimes a picture book with many funny pictures for children, sometimes a new fabric-scented school bag, a few packs of candy, a delicious cake... She chatted sincerely with the elderly, whispered to the children in the simple dialect of the ethnic group. "Slow and steady wins the race", in the 2014-2015 school year, Mon Son Secondary School had 425 students, nearly 1/3 of whom were children of the Dan Lai ethnic group who went to school regularly, partly thanks to the great contribution of teacher La Thi Mui. Those contributions, surely have not stopped with this devoted and enthusiastic "ferryman"!

Article and photos:Phuong Chi