The fishing village on the Lam River is apprehensive during the rainy and stormy season.
Approximately 13 fishing families regularly moor their boats under the Yen Xuan iron bridge, forming a fishing village. Every rainy and stormy season, they worry about their boats sinking, and the men in the village have to stay up all night watching over them.
The desire to reach the shore
At noon on September 19th, as Typhoon No. 4 was approaching the central coast, even though the storm's center was predicted not to head towards Nghe An, Ms. Pham Thi Thuy (35 years old, Xuan Lam commune, Hung Nguyen district) still carefully packed her belongings and moved them to her small attic. Besides the refrigerator, most of her possessions were just clothes, blankets, and pillows…
"It's been raining heavily for the past two days, I'm scared. Last year, the Lam River rose and flooded half the house," said Ms. Thuy, pointing to the marks left on the wall after the floods receded in previous years.
Ms. Thuy is one of the residents offishing villageThey live huddled together right at the foot of the Yen Xuan railway bridge. In this hamlet, Thuy's family is considered the wealthiest, as they have a small house by the river to take shelter in during storms. Most other households, however, still live precariously in small, cramped boats.
“Many people think that because we live by the river and are good swimmers, we're not afraid of storms. But actually, we're very afraid. That's why my husband and I work hard and borrow money from the bank to buy land and build a house on the shore. Even though we still owe a lot to the bank, we hope our children won't have to follow in our footsteps and live a nomadic life on the water anymore,” said Ms. Thuy.
Ms. Thuy is from Ha Tinh province, and her family has been fishermen for generations, living on boats anchored on the other side of the Lam River. Her husband, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Toan (44 years old), is originally from Quang Binh province, but was born on a boat in this very fishing village. Like many others in the village, neither of them is literate. Despite being from a riverside community, Ms. Thuy has suffered the pain of losing loved ones to floods in recent years. This has motivated the couple to strive to move ashore so their children can go to school and change their lives after generations of being fishermen.
“Three years ago, my father, then only 52 years old, drowned right in the fishing village. He was a very good swimmer, but that day, while rowing his boat to a neighbor's house, he encountered strong winds that capsized. He had also been drinking, so he drowned. By the time people found him, it was too late. Not long after, my younger brother's 18-month-old nephew also drowned in this same stretch of river. That day, he fell from the boat without the adults noticing,” Ms. Thuy said sadly.
“We’re so fed up with this job, we want to move ashore and find work, but we’re illiterate. So, we can only place our hopes on our three children. Even if we have to borrow money from the bank, we have to send them to school. I’m better off than my husband because when I was young, I only got to go to school for three days, and before I even learned to read, I had to quit and go back to the boat to look after my younger siblings while my father fished. Not long ago, I applied for a job at a company, but when they interviewed me and asked me to read, I couldn’t, so they didn’t hire me,” Ms. Thuy said, adding that her and her husband’s current wish is to be recognized as a near-poor household to reduce some of the costs of their children’s schooling.
Every time a storm comes, Thuy and her children will take refuge inside the dike. Meanwhile, Toan still bravely clings to his small boat.
This boat is the livelihood of the entire family. If left unattended, it will sink in heavy rain. That's why, no matter how heavy the storm, all the men in the village will stay in the boat, staying awake all night to guard it. Because the boat is small, heavy rain will cause water to pour in, and if they don't constantly bail it out, it will sink. They know it's dangerous, but they accept the risk. If the boat sinks, it will be a huge hardship.
Mr. Nguyen Van Toan - a resident of the fishing village in Xuan Lam commune.
Concerns about the rainy and stormy season.
Next to Thuy's house is the small house of Mr. Nguyen Xuan Quang (66 years old), one of the oldest residents of the hamlet. It's called a house, but it's really just a cramped shack, patched together from sheets of corrugated iron and tarpaulin that Mr. Quang begged for and scavenged along the way. Every rainy season, the entire house is submerged in the river. His wife is ill and unable to walk, so each time this happens, Mr. Quang has to carry her onto a boat to escape the flood.
“We were very scared. One year, the water rose very quickly. Luckily, our neighbors helped, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to evacuate in time. During the heavy rain, my wife and I huddled in our rocking boat, unable to sleep. I know how to swim, so even if the boat sank, I still had a chance, but my wife was in danger because she couldn’t walk,” Mr. Quang said.
Inside the small shack, Mr. Quang uses everything that can hold water, such as basins and pots, to collect rainwater. The corrugated iron roof is tattered, and every time it rains, the house is flooded. "I'm scared, but there's no other way," Mr. Quang said.
Speaking about the fishing village, Mr. Quang recounted that it has always been known as the "Thai village." This is because most of the residents are originally from Quang Trach (Quang Binh province), and later migrated to Thailand to make a living. In 1954, following the call of the country, these families returned and chose the section of the Lam River passing through Hung Nguyen as their mooring place. Because they were so preoccupied with making a living from the water, most of the children in the village never had the opportunity to go to school. In recent years, some families have started sending their children to school, hoping to escape poverty.
During these stormy days, the small house of Mr. Nguyen Van Viet (44 years old) is crowded with people seeking shelter. Because in the fishing village, besides Mr. Quang and the couple Ms. Thuy and her husband, only Mr. Viet's family has a house built on the riverbank as a refuge. The house is only about 40 square meters.2The house, built rather shabbily, already houses 10 members of Viet's family. A few years ago, his eldest son got married, had children, and has since moved in to continue his parents' legacy. In addition, Viet and his wife have to care for two younger siblings who suffer from mental illness and are unable to care for themselves. The house, already cramped, has become even more suffocating with the arrival of more neighbors.
“People stay inside their houses for shelter, but their eyes are always on the boats anchored below. If a boat sinks, they can go down and rescue it in time. At night, we men still have to stay on the boats; only the women and children go ashore to avoid the storm,” Viet said, adding that in recent years, aquatic resources have become increasingly scarce, making life even more difficult for the fishermen. Many families want to send their children abroad for work, but it's difficult because most of them have very little education and no collateral to borrow from banks. Therefore, generation after generation, they have to cling to this fishing village.
Every rainy season, local authorities assign officials to monitor the situation in the fishing village; if the water level rises too high, they will forcibly evacuate residents to the dike immediately. In reality, many residents remain complacent and reluctant to lose their belongings, so they often stay on their boats to guard them.
Mr. Nguyen Canh Toan - Vice Chairman of the People's Committee of Xuan Lam Commune
While the local fishermen are yearning for a place to call their own, just a few hundred meters away, a resettlement area has been completed but remains largely unoccupied. Because construction has taken so long, the residents no longer have a real need for it. This is the resettlement area for people affected by landslides along the Lam River in Hamlet 9, Xuan Lam Commune. The project, approved by the Provincial People's Committee in 2011, includes 100 residential plots (each 315m²).2The project is located inside the Lam River dike to provide new housing for 100 households in flood-prone and landslide-prone areas outside the dike; the investment cost is over 24.2 billion VND from the state budget.
Despite being an emergency project, it took a full 10 years, until 2021, to complete and hand over the project to the local authorities. However, since then, the resettlement area has remained abandoned, with not a single household moving in. According to the households who registered to receive land, due to the long wait, most have spent money to raise their houses to cope with floods on their own. Therefore, not many people still have a need to move to the resettlement area.
