Bamboo shoot season in the rain forest

(Baonghean) -The rains in the highlands become thicker and heavier in late summer. The rain calls for storms, storms call for concerns about landslides. The rain in the highlands also calls for the buds to awaken, and thus a new bamboo shoot season.

During the bamboo shoot season, the people of Khe Nong production team, Chau Son village (Chau Khe - Con Cuong) become happier. Most of the villagers are Dan Lai, only a few Thai people come to marry in the village. This year's honey season has passed. The villagers said that this year the bees had a good harvest, but all the money from selling honey has been spent. Only those who buy and resell to middlemen have a lot of money. These families now buy bamboo shoots. By doing so, they can have enough money to last until the end of the year, and have money to have a decent Tet.

Putting down the bamboo basket at the foot of the stilt house, the village elder La Van Linh scolded: "You tiger. Why has it been more than a year since I've seen you? The road has collapsed, the village has moved, why haven't you come to visit me?" I explained: "You have to understand that we journalists have to go to many places to write articles, so we are busy." I found joy sparkling in the scolding and the eyes that were still not old, even though the old man was over seventy years old. He had been the captain, then deputy captain of the Khe Nong production team for 20 years, even though he had only finished first grade and could only sign his own name. Books, newspapers, documents, and papers all had to be read and written by others. Over the years, the burden of age was still nothing. His skin was still red, his voice was still loud, and he still ran as fast as a wild goat.

Old Linh was happy because the bamboo shoot season had come, and also because this year the government would re-establish Khe Nong village. "I've heard about it for a long time, but the other day I saw the district officials invite me down for a meeting. So they're really doing it." Before I could even go up the stairs to visit the "great solidarity" house that the border guards had built for my family since the beginning of last year, old Linh gathered me up to tell me the story of the district meeting with the district party secretary to discuss the establishment of the village.

Although it has not been re-established, people still call the Khe Nong production team "village". The root of this comes from the habit of the highlanders that wherever there are houses and people living there permanently, even if there are only a few households, they call it a village. Moreover, this production team currently has 36 houses and nearly 300 pairs of "working hands and eating".

From 1960 to the early 1980s, Khe Nong was a true village. But then the villagers moved to live in Chau Son village next to Highway 7, while 17 households stayed to slash and burn. The name Khe Nong also comes from the Thai people's habit of naming villages. Village names are often named after streams. Khe Nong village at the end of the stream is named after a tree whose sap the Thai people still use to coat arrowheads when hunting deer. The villagers call this tree "co noong" or "noong". The name of the village comes from the Huoi Noong stream. Later, the Kinh people came to the "new economy", and people who sold salt, lamp oil, and sewing needles changed the name to Khe Nong. In previous meetings with the Khe Nong production team, they all expressed their desire to establish their own village, because this production team is more than 20km away from the main village, and the land is under the management of Con Cuong Forestry Enterprise, so the people cannot expand the area of ​​forest land or farming land...

Old Linh said: I am happy because the wishes of the Khe Nong people are about to come true. I heard that from September 2013, the district committee and Con Cuong Forestry will send excavators to dig streams, build irrigation dams, level the land for rice fields, build self-flowing water projects, and expand roads. With rice fields and roads, this remote village will be more civilized. Old Linh must live a few more decades to see the village change.

During the rainy season, almost every household in the village, from the elderly to children as young as seven or eight, work as bamboo shoot pickers. Everyone seems to be racing against time, because there are only three months of heavy rain each year. When the rainy season is over, the bamboo shoot season is over. Everyone wants to pick the thick and sturdy early season bamboo shoots. When dried, each fresh bamboo shoot can yield 1kg of dried bamboo shoots. Each fresh bamboo shoot at the end of the season, when dried, will yield only half a kilo. So before dawn, the villagers have been carrying their baskets into the forest to pick bamboo shoots.

In Diem, Xat, Chau Son, Khe Choang villages... dozens of kilometers away from Khe Nong, many houses still lock their doors to the forest to both collect and buy bamboo shoots. People who live far away often stay in the deep forest for a long time, sometimes up to half a month. Thus, the deep bamboo forests at the headwaters of streams become bustling with the presence of hundreds of people every day until the end of the bamboo shoot season, usually in the beginning of the 10th lunar month. During the long winter and the following spring, the old forest will become quiet until the bee-eating season and the bamboo shoot season of the following year.

Before drying, bamboo shoots are split thinly.

Now that it is the beginning of the bamboo shoot season, Khe Nong village suddenly turns into a large "factory" for processing bamboo shoots. From 2 pm, bamboo shoot pickers have returned home to light fires to cook bamboo shoots. Entering the village, one can already smell the strong, sour aroma of ripe bamboo shoots in the kitchen smoke. Down by the stream, there are still groups of bamboo shoot pickers bending over, carrying heavy baskets on their backs, climbing uphill to the village.

The wife of the Khe Nong production team leader also joined the bamboo shoot picking army. She refused to give her full name, saying: "Don't put my name in the newspaper. I'm old but still have to pick bamboo shoots, it's very hard". She said: "I'm almost 70 years old but still look forward to the bamboo shoot season to earn money to buy rice". Her husband, the Khe Nong production team leader Lo Ngoc Quynh, supported his wife's basket and explained: "The village has few fields, only about 1 hectare. The land the villagers live on is currently under the management of the district Forestry Company, they prohibit slash-and-burn farming, so people have to run for rice all year round. They have to go into the forest, what else can they do?...".

Perhaps that is why all the villagers look forward to the bamboo shoot season. On a clear afternoon, this small hamlet becomes a real workshop for bamboo shoot processors. Men specialize in weaving bamboo baskets, weaving bamboo racks, chopping wood for drying, women and girls, after putting down their baskets full of bamboo shoots on the ground, immediately light the stove to cook the bamboo shoots. The cooked bamboo shoots are cut into thin slices and then pressed to remove the water before drying. On rainy days, bamboo shoots are mainly dried by drying on bamboo racks overnight.

Mr. La Van Manh, who specializes in drying bamboo shoots, said: Firewood is cut in the forest and then dragged back by buffalo. To dry one hundred kilos of dried bamboo shoots, it is impossible to calculate the amount of wood needed. The wood used for firewood must also be good to keep the fire going and the bamboo shoots to dry quickly. With skillful movements, Ms. La Thi Hoe split the bamboo shoots and told stories while splitting the bamboo shoots. "This year, each kilo of dried bamboo shoots costs 60,000 VND, which is almost double last year. Bamboo shoots are priced well, everyone is happy, but to pick beautiful bamboo shoots now, one has to travel farther than last year, so people often stay in the forest longer, dry a lot of bamboo shoots before carrying them back to sell."

Dry bamboo shoots in the garden.

The joy of the bamboo shoot season of the couple La Van Hung and La Thi Ngan is a little different from many families in the village. Despite the difficulties, they still send their youngest son to the commune center to study in secondary school. The money from selling bamboo shoots helps them cover their son's living expenses and education. Married for nearly 20 years, they have 4 children, but 3 of them are uneducated. Ngan said: "I want to try to raise my youngest son to study as well as others so that he will have less hardship in the future, and maybe he can find a job to help his parents when they are old and weak."

Thanh, son of Hung and Ngan, is one of the few students in Khe Nong hamlet who goes to secondary school. After finishing 5th grade, children here rush into the forest to pick bamboo shoots, look for taro, pick chestnuts... The oldest son follows his friends to Quang Nam to work as a gold miner.

The bamboo shoot season brings joy to the Dan Lai community in Khe Nong village, one of the most difficult areas in the mountainous district of Con Cuong. But perhaps the greatest joy for the people is that their place of residence is about to be recognized as a new village. Thus, they will be granted land for production and have public works. Hopefully, this community will soon have the chance to escape poverty in a sustainable way.

Thunder sounded again, dark clouds swirled over the distant mountaintops, signaling another rain was about to fall on the forests. Rain, rain for the young shoots and joy to bloom in the poor and remote village. Khe Nong village was waiting for the rain.

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