Last Two Days in the Mekong Delta

After spending a week in Hoa An, my class traveled to Long Xuyen located in the An Giang Province. Upon arrival, we had a discussion with the Pacific Link Organization about human trafficking. The office we went to was run by an all women staff. The organization was set up eight years ago to help educate young girls and women about trafficking and to provide safe shelters for victims of human trafficking. 

 Most of the trafficking takes place along the Vietnam-Cambodia border and Vietnam's border with China.  We were told the story of one girl who was thirteen when she, her two sisters, and her mother were taken into China.  She was sold to a Chinese man to become his wife. (The one child policy in China has created an uneven gender distribution in the Chinese population since a majority of families prefer to have sons to carry on their lineage and name.  Now, there are not enough women for them to all have wives.  One way some men try to get wives is through human trafficking).  After two months she was able to escape with one of her sisters and came back to Vietnam.  Eventually, her mother and her other sister also escaped and made it to Vietnam.  The girl went to a safe house set up by Pacific Link and was able to begin attending school again. Pacific Link tries to provide students with scholarships so they are able to graduate from high school. The safe houses also offer vocational training and job placement programs including mat weaving, childcare, and culinary/ hospitality training.  

Before attending the lecture, my knowledge of human trafficking mostly came from watching the movie Taken. In Vietnam, the people who are at risk of becoming victims of human trafficking are not normally tourists, but rather the young girls and women in rural regions of Vietnam that are poor and uneducated. Some are tricked into thinking they are going to have a high paying job in China, then end up being sold to become someone's wife.  The organization is empowering women and trying to give them more opportunities to continue their education, but changing the mindset and economic status of the people who engage in human trafficking is a whole different issue. To learn more about the organization you can go to www.pacificlinks.org.

After the discussion with Pacific Links we had the afternoon and night free.  We explored the small city and decided to have dinner at a little restaurant that was on a street recommended by our hotel. It didn't look like much from the outside, just one room with tables and chairs with a meat stand positioned outside the open storefront, but my meal was one of the best that I've had in Vietnam.  I ordered noodles with BBQ meat, not really knowing what to expect.  A few minutes later a woman brought me a bowl filled with crispy pork skin, pork belly, fresh herbs, cucumbers, carrots, roasted peanuts, rice noodles, and a bowl of fish sauce that I generously poured over everything.  The ingredients were simple, but combinations like the sweet fish sauce with the crispy, salty pork were delicious.

One of the best meals so far...

The meat stand outside of the restaurant.

 On Thursday, September 27 we took a long bus ride to visit the Tra Su Bird Sanctuary and the Hang Pagoda near the town of Chau Doc.  To reach the bird sanctuary, we piled into two long motor boats and were driven through a mangrove forest.  Then we switched into smaller row boats to reach the center of the forest where hundreds of birds have their nests.  During the Vietnam War all of the trees had been bombed so it was pretty amazing to see that the forest had been replanted and had regrown in about 35 years.

Boating in the mangrove forest.

On the top of a watch tower looking across the mangrove forest.

 We had lunch at the bird sanctuary then got on the bus again to go to the Hang Pagoda.  The pagoda was built into a mountain and the view from the top was beautiful.  We could look across the town and see the border with Cambodia, mountains covered with clouds in the distance, and rice paddies far below.  There are monks and nuns who live at the pagoda and sometimes villagers come to learn about meditation.  We talked to one monk who said he had become a monk eight years ago, when he was 28 years old.  He said the monks and nuns meditate up to 10 hours each day!

Hang Pagoda

The tree line in the distance is the border between Vietnam and Cambodia.

One of the many Buddhist shrines inside of the pagoda.  People leave fruit as an offering and burn incense.

The view from the Hang Pagoda.

Hang Pagoda

After our excursion to the Mekong Delta, we returned to Ho Chi Minh City on Friday afternoon.  We have today (Saturday) free and it's the first day we've had on our own since the program began one month ago.  Tomorrow, Sunday, September 30 we will each move in with our host families who live in various districts in Ho Chi Minh City.  We had the opportunity to meet them in early September so we kind of know where we will be living and the family we are staying with.  During that visit, I met my host mom and host brother who is in eleventh grade in high school.  I will also have a host dad and a host sister (she just recently graduated from university), but I haven't met them yet. At the first meeting, I also met my host mother's sister and her extended family.  My host mom is a nurse, but she also makes mooncakes to sell to friends and family during the lunar festivals.  This Sunday is the Mid-Autumn festival so most families will have large family gatherings with lots of food and of course, tons of mooncakes.  People who live close to water also release lanterns with burning candles.  My host family lives in District 1 so I will be close to the Economic University where we will have Vietnamese class and lectures during these next three weeks. I'm really excited to live with a family, but it will be strange not seeing my classmates all the time. 

Composting and Building a Biodigester

My class has been traveling around the Mekong Delta since Monday, September 17.  We spent two nights in Can Tho City before traveling to Hoa An Village in the Hau Giang Province.  In Hoa An we stayed at Can Tho University's school of Rural Development and Agriculture.  We attended lectures by professors from Can Tho University, interviewed local villagers, helped a farmer make compost, helped harvest rice, built a biodigester, attended Vietnamese language class, learned about organic farming, and started to discuss topics for our Independent Study Projects (ISP).

We took a motor boat to the farmer's house where we helped compost and learned about organic farming.

We are aerating the compost pile so the farmer can use organic fertilizer instead of buying chemical fertilizer.

We shoveled the compost into a mound that was six layers tall. Each layer was 10 cm and after each layer was added we sprayed on water that had been mixed with a powdered fungus to speed up the composting process. Then the compost was covered with a tarp, and after three months the farmer can use the organic fertilizer on his field. His field was almost 100% clay so he definitely needed to use some type of fertilizer to be able to grow crops like long beans and morning glory. Professors at Can Tho University try to educate people about the benefits of organic farming. Since most people live next to a body of water, all of their farming and household waste products usually leak into a nearby river.  By making their own fertilizer, the farmers can diminish the amount of pollution in their water system. However, it is time consuming and labor intensive so many farmers still use chemicals. 

Harvesting rice by hand.

I've been asked if Vietnam has a monoculture of rice, but that is not true at all.  The Rice Institute we visited last week said they create about ten new varieties each year.  Also, each farmer uses different varieties of rice depending on their location.  If they are in an area that floods three feet a year, they have to have rice that will grow quickly to rise above the flooding waters.  Most rice that is sold from Vietnam is a combination of ten or more varieties, which makes it very hard for Vietnam to get a high price for it. After farmers harvest the rice and sell it, the rice still needs to be processed to remove the outer husk. In the processing plants a lot of the rice gets mixed up together then packaged. Currently, the government is trying to implement programs to have larger farms only produce one variety of rice so that they can package one variety of rice at a time.

Making a biodigester for a family.

The biodigester is made out of three long bags of polyester.  The bags are placed inside of each other then each end was wrapped around a clay tube.  In the photo we are wrapping strips of rubber motorcycle tires to secure the polyester bag around the tube. All of the supplies cost $200.

After the rubber strips were wrapped around the end of the clay tube, we twisted metal wire around the rubber then covered the rubber in packaging tape.  

When it rains it pours...

 It rains almost every day now because it is the rainy season.  We had to take a break and wait for it to stop pouring before we could continue.The professors and farmers kept reiterating how climate change was effecting Vietnam. They use to be able to predict that it would rain every afternoon, but now it rains randomly.  They are also concerned that if sea levels rise and typhoons get more violent, then they will have a harder time growing crops.

We also put a shorter two-layered polyester bag that will hold the methane gas above the first roof of the pig pens.

Biodigester is in position.

The biodigester is in a hole and now it just has to have tubes attached. One needs to allow the pig waste to go in where it will decompose for 28 days before creating enough methane gas for cooking use. The second tube needs to allow the methane gas to flow into the bag above the pig pen.  And the third tube needs to let the decomposed waste be released into a pond to feed the fish.

The meal we had at the farmer's house after helping with the biodigester: grilled fish, long beans, papaya soup, rice, fried tofu, rambutans, and bananas.

VACB Model

Later during the morning of the 18th, after visiting the rice noodle business, the boat drove us further down the river for another fifteen minutes or so to a pig farmer’s house.  The farm was run according to a VACB model, which is short for Garden – Pond – Livestock – Biodigester System.  This model basically provides a waste management protocol for farmers living in the Mekong Delta.  

Behind his house, the farmer had three concrete pig pens.  One held a huge pregnant pig and another pen had about eight three month old pigs.  Each pen had a small hole, about three inches in diameter, in the corner so the manure could be washed out.  The waste is then collected in the biodigester where it is broken down and composted.  The biodigester looked like a big white plastic tube that’s about two feet wide and more than ten feet long.  His biodigester was installed nearly 16 years ago and he hasn’t had to replace anything, besides the outer plastic covering.

Feeding the pigs.

Biodigester at the first farm.

 As the waste breaks down, some of the organic matter is fed into a pond for the farmer’s  fish to eat.  The rest of the solid compost is used as fertilizer.  The family also collects the methane gas that the biodigester produces and uses that gas for cooking.  Families that don’t have methane gas to cook have to buy or collect wood every day.  It saves the women a lot of time and they don’t have to breathe burning wood every day.  They use huge bags to hold the methane gas and have tubes to carry the gas into the kitchen.  I was wondering why they didn’t explode and the farmer explained that the bags have a system which measures and regulates the amount of gas.  If there gets to be too much methane, the bag will gradually disperse some, preventing an explosion.  Another advantage of having a biodigester is that the pig pens don’t smell since the waste is removed frequently throughout the day.  I was surprised that the biodigester itself didn’t smell either.

The bags that collect the methane gas used for cooking.

The farmer's cooking stove using the methane from the biodigester.

The biodigester seemed like a great system for all small farms to have, but not every farmer supports the VACB model.  Before installation, each farmer needs to have the initial capital of $200.  That might not seem like a lot, but for a country where the average yearly income is $1,100, this payment is almost impossible.  Also, the price of pigs fluctuates a lot in the market so many farmer think it is too risky.  

The farmer we visited said he could sell his pigs once they reached 120 kilos, which would take about six months.  He estimated he would receive 36,000 dong per kilo (about $1.00 = 20,000 dong), so the farmer would earn about $216 per pig.  But out of the farmer’s total pig profits he earns only 15 – 20% because he has to subtract the price of pig feed.  Besides raising pigs, many farmers also have other means of income.  The farmer also raised fish and earned about 60% of his total profits, making around $2,000 per year.  He also had fruit trees and he received 100 % of the profit from the produce, receiving about $750 per year.  But keep in mind this farm was an upper income level farm and many farms in Vietnam do not share the same profits.

After lunch, the farmer took a classmate and me around to visit two other nearby farms while everyone else took a nap.  One had a biodigester installed five years ago by past SIT students.  They built it in a day and it is still working fine.  Then the farmer took us to a farm without a biodigester to see the difference.  The farm also had concrete pig pens, but no pond.  The backyard was extremely muddy and smelled of feces.  The women working explained that they try to wash the pig manure out into a nearby stream that connects to the river, but instead of reaching the river, the waste usually backs up onto the lawn.  

Backyard of the farm without the biodigester.

This way of farming is environmentally harmful and very unsanitary for the humans and animals and results in more diseases.  They were aware of the benefits of having a biodigester, but those farmers didn’t have enough money for the initial payment.  Without the biodigester and methane gas, they still had to collect and burn wood to fuel their cooking stove.  

 SIT has built over 15 biodigestors in that village and 3 in Hoa An.  Next week, my class will get to build one at a farm in Hoa An, so that should be fun!

Anna and I with the first farmer who showed us around.

Floating Market, Rice Noodle Production

During our first two days in the Mekong Delta we stayed in Cần Thơ, the capital of the region.  It was a bustling city, home to around 1.4 million people.   Before the French arrived,  people in Cần Thơ used boats to move around the city.  The French added a road system, which has since been expanded on, but still floods almost every day during the rainy season.  Even during days it does not rain, at high tide the river water seeps under the city and floods the roads and sidewalks.  

On September 18, my class woke up at 6:00 a.m. to go to a floating market.  We all piled into a long wooden motor boat with a canopy and drove off in the muddy canal water.  The market in Cần Thơ starts very early and closes before 8:30 a.m.  Multiple boats were brimming with pineapple, jicamas, potatoes, and squash.  Some boats had long poles in the front with a skewered fruit or vegetable advertising what they were selling.  The people on the boats were busy cutting fruits or throwing squash boat to boat, but I was not sure if the people they were passing the produce to were buying it or taking it somewhere else to sell.  There were at least three other boats filled with tourists floating around the same market.  These floating markets are all over Vietnam so I hope we will get to see another.

After the market, the boat took us to a woman’s home where she manages a rice noodle business.  Behind her house were two sheds where all the machines and stoves were kept.  In the first room, the rice was soaked in water and mashed through a press to make a very smooth milky white mixture.  This mixture was carried into the next building, which felt like a sauna.  In the hot room, there were two women who each managed two stove tops.  Each stove top was a big circular disk (about a foot and a half in diameter), which was heated by burning the golden rice husks, which cover the rice when it’s growing.  This way they do not have to buy wood and they use every part of the rice so there is minimal waste.  The women poured the white rice mixture onto one of the circular heated disks and quickly spread it out evenly, which the back of their ladle (the back of the ladle was flat).   They covered the rice circle with a lid and moved a few inches to reach the other circular stove.  They would remove the lid from that stove top and a finished rice paper circle would be underneath.  A man at each station had a type of woven bamboo bat, which he used to pick up the rice paper.  The rice paper was placed onto a large woven mat.  Once four were on a mat, another mat was added on top.  After four of these mats were stacked, another worker would carry them outside to lay in the sun.

Adding rice husks to the fire underneath the stove to keep it hot.

Pouring the rice mixture on the stove.

Spreading the rice mixture on the stove.

Picking up the rice paper off the stove with a woven bat.

Laying the steaming hot rice paper on the mat to dry.

Carrying the sheets of rice paper outside.

The rice paper is laid outside to dry for a few hours.

 After the paper dries, it is stacked and shredded by a machine into thin noodles.

 

 This rice noodle business employs seven workers.  The workers are provided with housing right behind the building with the stoves. They work about eight hours per day, seven days a week.  Each day, they produce about 700 kilos of rice noodles, which sell for 20,000 dong per kilo or $1 per kilo.

The Rice Institute at the Mekong Delta

On Monday, Sep. 17 my class made the trip south to the Mekong Delta region.  Upon arrival we went to the Rice Institute where they create new varieties of rice.  Established in 1977, the Rice Institute is now the largest provider of rice seed to the Mekong Delta.  The OM variety of rice, breed by the institute, is also grown in Cambodia, South Asia, and Africa.

Rice growing in a greenhouse at the Rice Institute.

 The rice at the institute is grown in small pots first, then transplanted into the rice paddies when it is a few inches high.  The rice grows above water and the actual rice grain that we eat is concealed by a golden husk. The husk is removed by a machine after the rice is picked and dried.

My class walking along a bridge through the flooded rice paddies.

The scientists have genetically engineered the rice so that new types can be grown in a shorter amount of time, thus allowing the farmer to yield more crops throughout the year. Typically, farmers in Vietnam have two crops per year now; one in the spring and the second in the summer and fall.  A few farmers manage to have three crops per year.  Scientists recommend that farmers work together if their rice paddies are near each other.  With multiple people working the field, they can each pitch in to borrow or buy a tractor instead of doing all the work by hand and will likely produce a higher crop yield. 

The rice, still with the husks on, is left in the sun to dry out completely before it is bagged up and sent to farmers as seed.

Vietnam is second in rice export, behind Thailand so check and see what country your rice is from. 

A Peak at Vietnamese Cuisine

Purple Mangosteens being bought from a man on a motorbike.

The inside of a mangosteen has around six-seven white gooey sections that are extremely sweet.

Bánh xèo is a Vietnamese "crepe" or "pancake".  The crispy shell is mainly made from rice flour, coconut milk, and tumeric and tastes a bit like french toast.

This Bánh xèo is filled with pork, shrimp, and bean sprouts.  It is served with a side of herbs, like mint, and lettuce leaves.  To eat it, you rip off a small section, add herbs, wrap it in a lettuce leaf, and dip it in fish sauce. Fish sauce is served with almost every meal.  It's made from pressed and fermented sardines, which doesn't sound to appealing, but trust me it's delicious.  I've been told, in the south it's sweeter and in the north it's more spicy.

Since it is almost the autumn lunar festival, moon cakes are sold at stores that line the streets.  They have savory and sweet kinds.

This is the top of a moon cake.  They all have really intricate designs on the top. 

The moon cake sweet bean filling is surrounded by a thin layer of dough.  There are also two salty egg yolks inside.  To make the yolks firm, they place eggs in heavily salted water for two weeks to a month.  The egg yolks become firm, but still retain their orange color.

A delicious custard apple smoothie.

  

Giant prawns that are served in a hollowed out coconut.