Kato Takako

�gI never thought that there were people living so poorly. It never came to my mind to go to Nge Anh to see how people live there!�h That was the reaction of a young Vietnamese girl interpreter who accompanied us to the rural areas surrounded by rice fields. The place was only 6 hours far from Hanoi.

The province of Nge Anh is one of the poorest in Vietnam. The farmers there earn only 20 US dollars. It is difficult to understand how can they survive with just 2 dollars a month. Strong typhoons often destroy the harvest of rice, their staple crop. Children suffer from undernourishment and go around the fields gathering small crabs that constitute a precious source of proteins in their food diet.

I met an old woman bringing the grass leftover in the rice fields after harvest and followed her to the village. She spontaneously invited us to her home. The house where she lives was big but it was practically empty. Her husband and father-in-law were also living there. They had 9 children but all of them had gone to the town looking for work. They had an old fan that did not work and she opened the window to let the air come in. The old man turned on the black and white TV set.

They were showing a Chinese drama you could hardly see. The driver told me in English with a low voice, �gin Hanoi you can only find such a TV set in the garbage�h. I asked him about how much income they would have and after asking the family he answered me with a shocking look, �git is just 700 thousand don ? less than 6,000 yen?for the whole year. It is the monthly salary of my wife!�h

Both, the driver and the Vietnamese interpreter were deeply impressed by the poverty of the villagers. They had heard about the hard life of people in Nghe Anh but it was the first time for them to experience it. People living so near Hanoi are totally forgotten as if they were in the other side of the border. The big economic gap has unconsciously raised a deep psychological wall in between them as well. We passed a night in the village and went next day to Vinh, a town a few kilometers away. The streets were paved and the central market overflowed with a rich variety of food and commodities. There were many hotels and one could see many shops selling new motorbikes and good cars were running through the streets. I continued thinking of the poor life style of the villagers just 40 km far from there.