The "special" people in Keo Bac

Perhaps while I am typing these lines, Xong Ba Phong's summer vacation has begun. Phong is a student at Keo Bac village school. Phong's class 5C has only 6 students.

Class 5C, Na Ngoi 1 Primary School, Na Ngoi Commune, Ky Son District (Nghe An) is located in a purely Mong community. This place is over a thousand meters above sea level. From Phong's school, you can see the Truong Son range with Pu Xai peak, the second highest in Vietnam, after Fansipan peak. For more than a year now, there has been an asphalt road running right next to the fence and students can cycle to class, but the school of Phong and 36 other students in Keo Bac village is still very makeshift. The school has 5 classrooms. One is closed because there are no second graders this year. All the classrooms are covered with wooden planks. I noticed the wooden planks warping in the summer sun and the roof showing many gaps. The teachers have to cover the classroom with a thin layer of canvas to prevent leaks when it rains.

Phong is a special student.

In just a few days he will finish primary school but Phong is even shorter than a first grader. His homeroom teacher, Mr. Hoang Minh Hieu, said that he had health problems when he was a baby, which caused his physical development to be slow. Nearly 12 years old, Phong is only about 1 meter tall. However, his height is not a big problem that prevents Phong from communicating with friends or absorbing lessons. During recess at the end of the year, I witnessed my classmates quite enjoying their friend. The children took turns carrying Phong around the classrooms as a healthy joke.

During the short conversation, Phong proved his quick wit. The boy looked at my notebook and exclaimed: “You wrote it wrong! Question mark. Phong!” Despite his small stature, Phong is the eldest brother in the family. After Phong, there are three younger siblings who are all studying at the same school as his older brother. Although he is the oldest brother, he is the shortest in the family. However, for the past two months, Phong has taken on the role of a real big brother while both his parents are working as rubber workers, which he said he doesn’t know where. Early in the morning, when the rooster crowed for the third time, Phong woke up with his grandparents to cook breakfast for his younger siblings. Then he woke up his younger siblings to have breakfast and then went to class together.

“What will you do in the future?” I asked, noticing that he was still eager to chat with the strange guests whom he initially thought were teachers, so he said “hello teacher”.

“I want to fly a plane in the sky. Pilot” – He said seriously. His eyes looked straight at me, not mischievous like at first. Phong’s ability to express himself in Mandarin was much better than his peers. The children responded with clapping. Perhaps Phong’s group of friends all thought that his dream of becoming a pilot was serious and could be realized in the near future.

In class 5C, Vu Y Lu is also a special student. Lu is 13 years old, the oldest in the class and also the oldest student at Keo Bac school. Lu likes to wear long-sleeved shirts and a large yellow bow at the back of her neck, this style of clothing also shows that she is more mature than the other girls at the school. She has problems with her voice and pronunciation. Lu's bright eyes always seem to want to say more than what she says. Currently, she lives with her uncle and 11 other members in a small house. Lu said that she really likes going to school. Rain or shine, she never misses a day. The house is so small that the classroom at the school has become her only place to review old lessons.

Teacher Hieu said that although Vu Y Lu is slow in pronunciation, he has a good academic ability. He learns lessons normally like other children. Sometimes Lu is like an older sister, willing to help other children sweep the school yard or clean the board.

Teacher Hoang Minh Hieu and teacher Nguyen Thi Diep are also special characters in Keo Bac. They are one of the few primary school teacher couples who have been attached to the land of Na Ngoi for 15 years. The two met when they were still students of education in Vinh city. After graduating, after getting married, they went to Ky Son to apply for jobs. Then they were both assigned to teach in Na Ngoi, a completely new land for both of them. Although they moved to many locations, the school leaders always created conditions for them to be close to each other. In the 2017-2018 school year, Mr. Hieu and Ms. Diep were 2 of 4 teachers in class at Keo Bac school.

Mrs. Nguyen Thi Hoi and Mr. Vi Van Son are also special people at Keo Bac village school. They came here at the beginning of the school year. However, neither of them is a teacher. Mrs. Hoi came from Thanh Tuong commune (Thanh Chuong) to Na Ngoi to look after her grandchild while her daughter teaches. Since his wife returned to teaching after maternity leave, Mr. Son has also followed his wife nearly a hundred kilometers to the school to look after the child.

“At first, I couldn’t get used to the weather here,” Mrs. Hoi recalled. Her hair was white, but because of her son’s job, she said that she didn’t mind. Since the beginning of the school year, Mrs. Hoi has lived in a dormitory with her daughter, teacher Doan Thi Thuy. The room is made of wood and canvas, with a makeshift wooden roof. Son and his wife rented a house from a villager right next to the school. When I visited, Mr. Son was holding his second child who was just one and a half years old. He seemed happy to have someone to sit with and talk to in Thai. Not knowing Mong made it difficult for Son to communicate with the locals. Most people in Keo Bac only speak Mong. They hardly know Thai. Except for the students and men who are fluent in Mandarin. The rest are all faltering. They also have a son studying at Keo Bac school. Minh Quan has the strangest name and is also the only Thai student in the village.

Son, Hoi and Xong Ba Phong all start their day at five in the morning. While Phong is cooking breakfast for the children, Hoi and Son are also preparing breakfast with their family members for the teachers to start their new teaching session. They can get up later on weekends.

“I feel fine.” Phong said when I asked him if he found it hard to cook for his juniors. I got the same answer when I expressed my sympathy for the hardships of those who have to babysit in Keo Bac like Mrs. Hoi and Mr. Son. “It’s all because of my wife’s job.” Mr. Son said in Thai. Mrs. Hoi just smiled with relief.

Our conversation in the small yard in front of the school was interrupted by a sudden downpour. The children shouted and ran all the way into the classroom. Some seats were still flooded with rain. The children helped each other carry the desks away from the water. The rain passed after a while. Teacher Hieu said that when summer comes, Na Ngoi often has sudden rains at noon and in the afternoon. The rains here are also special, coming suddenly, lasting for ten minutes and then stopping. The sky was clear again as if no rain had ever passed.

Today, the children in Keo Bac had their last class of the 2017-2018 school year. Next year, Xong Ba Phong and Vu Y Lu will enter 6th grade. It will be a big change for the students in Keo Bac when they move to a new school.

Next to the dormitory, Mr. Hieu built a tarpaulin parking lot for his car. The pickup truck he bought at the beginning of the school year was also a big change for this border teacher's family. He said that when the new road was built, he spent all the money he and his wife had saved from more than ten years of teaching in Na Ngoi and borrowed money from relatives to buy a car. "People in the city buy cars to show their status, I bought a car to make my wife and I's travel less difficult."

“Less hardship” is also the wish of students at Na Ngoi 1 Primary School, where 6/7 school campuses are in a makeshift state.