In the cold of the highlands on the last day of the year, after a journey of more than 120km from Thach Giam town of Tuong Duong district, passing through Ky Son district on a winding road, we finally arrived at the border commune of Mai Son of Tuong Duong district. Stopping at Pieng Mun village, asking about Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa, the people pointed to the production area on the other side of the Nam Non river: "The Village Chief has gone to dig for beans, he is very diligent, working all the time!"
The phone call was out of coverage area, so when he saw a few boats of people casting fishing nets on the Nam Non River, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of Mai Son Commune Lo Van Dien asked them to call over. A moment later, he heard the clear voice of Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa echoing from afar, "Wait for me a moment, this trip is over!". More than 30 minutes later, an aluminum boat docked under an old tree with a lush canopy right near the Pieng Mun community cultural house. Two women in work clothes got off, shovels in hand, and a heavy bamboo basket with freshly dug up jicama tubers still covered in dirt on their shoulders.
“The person in front is Pieng Mun Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa, behind is Ms. Bui Thi Lan - Vice Chairwoman of the Commune People's Council, assigned by the Commune Party Committee to be in charge of Pieng Mun Village,” Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee Lo Van Dien introduced. As if feeling guilty for making visitors from far away wait for a long time, Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa smiled brightly, explaining, “Someone ordered jicama, but by mistake, they had to dig it up early to send it on time for the bus. Jicama grown on Pieng Mun land is crispy and sweet, and it is harvest season. My sisters and I often post on Facebook and Zalo, so many people come to order, sometimes we don't have time to collect it to send to customers…”
In the intimate conversation that followed in the cozy stilt house, quickly peeling fresh, white-fleshed jicama that had just been dug up and brought out to serve guests, the energetic female village chief confided her joy and the indescribable hardships when shouldering both "village and family affairs".
Pieng Mun used to be a “4 no” village: no road, no electricity, no market, no phone coverage, to get there you had to go by boat along the Nam Non river. Now the asphalt road runs through the village, the lives of the people and the face of the village have changed a lot. The girl Thai Kha Thi Hoa never thought that one day she would become the village chief.
During her student years, despite many difficulties in life, Kha Thi Hoa was determined to finish high school, then get married, develop the local economy and actively participate in movement work. A short time later, she was elected as the Head of the Women's Association of Pieng Mun village and joined the Party when she was in her 20s. In February 2020, Kha Thi Hoa was elected by the people as the village chief. When she first received the assignment, Kha Thi Hoa was quite worried because she was a woman, her husband worked far away, she had two small children, she had no experience, there was a lot of work in the village and it was inevitable that there would be conflicts.
However, with the support of the Party cell and the commune cadres in charge of the village, she gradually overcame the difficulties, convincing everyone with enthusiasm and a sense of responsibility for the people's affairs and the village's affairs. For things she did not know or did not understand clearly, she asked for opinions and sought the consensus of the village elders, prestigious people, and senior party members in the village. At first, Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa did not know how to use a computer. After Ms. Bui Thi Lan - Vice Chairwoman of the Commune People's Council asked for a computer and gave her instructions on how to use it, Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa took the opportunity to learn, then explored and drafted documents for the Village Management Board and the Party cell.
Becoming the head of the village, Ms. Kha Thi Hoa also worked hard to update information, learn more good things, valuable experiences in production and in mass mobilization to create consensus among the people. She believes that when working with the people, nothing is more convincing than being exemplary, "saying what you say, doing what you do". For example, to deploy the construction of a system of stadiums and stages from state-supported cement in 2022, Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa, together with the Party cell and the Village Management Board, persistently carried out mass mobilization work so that households with livestock barns, vegetable gardens, and fruit trees would voluntarily relocate to clear the land. Many households initially hesitated for various reasons such as waiting to sell the pigs, waiting to finish harvesting the fruit, waiting for the end of the vegetable season... but after seeing the village chief's family take the lead in donating the buffalo barn and 3 vegetable gardens, the remaining households also voluntarily relocated to clear the land for the village to deploy the stadium. In addition to 15 tons of cement provided by the state and 60 cubic meters of sand and gravel taken from the forest protection fund, the village also mobilized people to give up workdays, divided into groups to build the common project.
Now Pieng Mun has a spacious concrete stadium with a spacious stage with a total area of 450m2.2, with a total cost of more than 40 million VND to build a place for community activities and entertainment, everyone is excited. As for the road to Khe Ly production area, the village has mobilized people to build the road twice. The first time was in 2021, when Ms. Kha Thi Hoa had just been the village chief for more than a year. Seeing that the road leading to the people's production area was narrow, causing difficulties in traveling and transporting agricultural products, she and the village management board directly went to mobilize the family of Mr. Lo Minh Toan, a 36-year Party member, former Chairman of the Commune Farmers' Association, to donate land with a red book, and move the garden back 1m to widen the road to the production area.
By 2023, she continued to mobilize the people of the entire village to build a road to the production area with a total length of more than 50m. Thanks to that, traveling and transporting agricultural products of Pieng Mun people became much more convenient. The village management board also coordinated with the farmers' association to mobilize families with houses along the national highway to plant more than 100 poinsettia trees to beautify the landscape and environment.
Pieng Mun village has 52 households, 227 people, people's lives are still difficult. To improve life, increase income for people, the Party cell, the village management board has mobilized people to focus on exploiting aquatic products in the lake, growing rice, cassava, raising buffaloes, cows, black pigs, growing banana leaves, jicama, pineapple... In which the families of cadres and party members are exemplary pioneers such as the model of raising 50 goats, raising black pigs of party member Lo Van Nghia. The families of Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa and Party Cell Secretary Kha Van Dung are also well-off households in the village.
In 2023, the whole village will grow 4.4 hectares of upland rice; 1.5 hectares of wet rice, 2 hectares of medicinal plants, 8 hectares of corn, 4 hectares of cassava, 2.5 hectares of various vegetables and beans, 5 hectares of pineapple, 1 hectare of ginger; a total herd of 82 buffaloes, 158 cows, 155 pigs, and 1,150 poultry.
Understanding the difficulties for people in agricultural production is still the output for products, Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa together with Ms. Bui Thi Lan - Vice Chairman of the People's Council of Mai Son Commune in charge of Pieng Mun Village has guided members of the Women's Union and Farmers' Union to actively promote agricultural products on Zalo and Facebook channels, when there are large orders, they collect them to help people consume and send them downstream. Especially in the season of wild bitter melon - a plant that grows naturally along the banks of the Nam Non River from May to August, wherever the water recedes, the plant grows there.
“Previously, wild bitter melon was a wild fruit that people collected to use as food or dried to make drinking water because it has high medicinal properties, is very good for health, and supports the treatment of many diseases. In recent years, thanks to active promotion on social networks, many people know and order it, thereby bringing income and creating seasonal jobs for people in the village. In the first year of 2021, the whole village sold 40 million VND worth of bitter melon, in 2022 it increased to 70 million VND and in 2023 it was 100 million VND, any family that diligently goes to pick it every day also has an additional income of 500 - 600 thousand VND from bitter melon”, said Ms. Kha Thi Hoa.
“Seeing that bitter melon has high economic value, the village chief also encouraged people to bring bitter melon plants to test in their gardens, and at the same time protect the available area in nature to harvest and increase income for the people. This year, the village chief's family alone earned about 10 million VND from bitter melon,” added Ms. Bui Thi Lan - Vice Chairwoman of Mai Son Commune People's Council.
What makes Pieng Mun people trust and love the village chief Kha Thi Hoa is her concern and sharing with those in difficult circumstances. With the thought of "doing whatever is beneficial to the people, try your best", she mobilized the villagers, especially the women's association and the farmers' association to help single-parent and sick families weed the fields, harvest crops, and collect firewood. For example, Ms. Vi Thi Thu (born in 1958) suffered a stroke and had limited mobility, but was supported and shared by the villagers. Or when the Covid-19 epidemic was in a tense phase, despite the difficulties, Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa and the Pieng Mun village's mass organizations mobilized the villagers to contribute 1 ton of vegetables to a charity association in Vinh city to support quarantined cases.
As the Head of the Women's Union, Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa is also very interested in the movement to build a cultural lifestyle and a cultural family; change backward customs, innovate weddings and funerals, maintain the movement of arts, sports, especially the activities of folk song and dance clubs, thereby preserving and conserving the cultural identity of the Thai ethnic group. Environmental sanitation work is also of interest to Ms. Kha Thi Hoa and the management board of Pieng Mun village, directed through the core role of the Women's Union and the Youth Union. In 2023, the Management Board of Pieng Mun village organized an inspection of environmental sanitation work in the entire village, thereby reminding and guiding 22 households that violated environmental criteria to overcome existing problems and shortcomings to maintain public hygiene.
Accompanying us to the area, the Chief of Mai Son Commune Police Va Ba Cau said: Pieng Mun is also a village that has made great efforts in building a "drug-free village". In the memories of the elders in the village, they said: Many years ago, Pieng Mun had a fairly high number of drug addicts, including small traders due to its terrain bordering Laos (about 2 km) and Ky Son district. Currently, Pieng Mun is drug-free, a few drug addicts in the village have been sent to community rehabilitation, and people are highly aware of building a drug-free village.
Through the conversation with Mai Son Commune Party Committee Deputy Secretary Lo Van Dien, we also learned another interesting detail: Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa and Party Cell Secretary Kha Van Dung are two sisters. This is also a unique tradition of this Thai village, because before that, Pieng Mun also had a pair of siblings who were very trusted village leaders. They were Mr. Kha Trung Tien, former Party Cell Secretary, and his younger brother Kha Xon Phon, former Village Chief.
“Currently, the Party Cell Secretary and the Village Chief are also sisters, but they are united, impartial, responsible for the people's affairs, the village's affairs, and are both pioneers in economic development, hunger eradication, and poverty reduction. The Pieng Mun Party Cell currently has 13 party members, and last year only admitted one female party member, Ms. Kha Thi Huong, born in 1994. In 2023, the Pieng Mun Village Management Board was classified as excellent, and Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa was classified as a typical excellent party member,” Mr. Lo Van Dien shared.
Saying goodbye to Pieng Mun when it was past noon, walking along the road with clumps of bright red poinsettias swaying in the wind, radiant under the sunlight, Village Chief Kha Thi Hoa saw us off to the village entrance, then told us: During the pineapple season, I invite you to visit the production area of Pieng Mun people, to enjoy pineapples grown on the village's land, with a unique sweet and fragrant flavor!
Having said that, the “leader” of Pieng Mun village quickly walked back to arrange work, preparing to hold a meeting with the people to deploy the plan to build a corrugated iron roof in the stadium area to serve community activities, celebrate Spring and Tet. “How to make people’s lives change more and more, the village become more prosperous…”, that is always the concern and the biggest thought of the only female Thai ethnic village chief in this remote border commune with many difficulties…