Hanoi: Chao Chi Phoung
Who: Ms. Phuong and her three children
What: Red cabbage business
Where: Dong Anh (client of Binh Minh)
I may have misheard her as she spoke very softly to me. I believe her name is Phoung but I will confirm that when I see her next. I was attending the Binh Minh loan repayment group meeting in Dong Anh when I met Phoung. Perhaps it was because I was a foreigner or because she was happy with her loan, but she sat next to me and squeezed my hand very hard. My Vietnamese is so limited that the most emotional gestures I can make are with my eyes, mouth and hands. I squeezed her hand as she proudly showed me the accounting book. She had a perfect repayment record and was on her 5th loan. I asked my translator, Ms. Hein, to ask Ms. Phoung to tell me her story. Ms. Phoung works very hard. She works in the field in the morning, and in the market in the early afternoon and in the field later in the day. She says she must have two activities in order to pay the weekly repayment. She grows a type of red cabbage which she sells at the market. I couldn't tell what happened to her husband but she was solely supporting her three children as he was no longer around. The loans and the income, she said, have given her a strong voice in the community. Ms. Phoung feels respected and people respect her. Her life has been hard. She said her husband used to work the land, and she was forced to scrape scraps in the market with a broom, earning next to nothing. Her husband became ill, and she took over the land. She had no equipment and no money. At the same time, she heard about Binh Minh through the Women's Union. She likes working and supporting the other women. They share experiences about harvest and children. It is a support network and they take care of her. Ms. Phoung feels optimistic about the future. She is trying to save whenever she can so she can have money in case anything happens. Her daughter now also has a loan. I thanked her for her story. She kept holding my hand. What strikes me about Ms. Phoung and so many other Vietnamese women that I have met here is how hard they work. Sometimes they work from 5am until 11pm every day and they sometimes make VND15,000 - 30,000 a day(roughly US$ 1 - 2 dollars) a day. Something seems to be very wrong with the system....
What: Red cabbage business
Where: Dong Anh (client of Binh Minh)
I may have misheard her as she spoke very softly to me. I believe her name is Phoung but I will confirm that when I see her next. I was attending the Binh Minh loan repayment group meeting in Dong Anh when I met Phoung. Perhaps it was because I was a foreigner or because she was happy with her loan, but she sat next to me and squeezed my hand very hard. My Vietnamese is so limited that the most emotional gestures I can make are with my eyes, mouth and hands. I squeezed her hand as she proudly showed me the accounting book. She had a perfect repayment record and was on her 5th loan. I asked my translator, Ms. Hein, to ask Ms. Phoung to tell me her story. Ms. Phoung works very hard. She works in the field in the morning, and in the market in the early afternoon and in the field later in the day. She says she must have two activities in order to pay the weekly repayment. She grows a type of red cabbage which she sells at the market. I couldn't tell what happened to her husband but she was solely supporting her three children as he was no longer around. The loans and the income, she said, have given her a strong voice in the community. Ms. Phoung feels respected and people respect her. Her life has been hard. She said her husband used to work the land, and she was forced to scrape scraps in the market with a broom, earning next to nothing. Her husband became ill, and she took over the land. She had no equipment and no money. At the same time, she heard about Binh Minh through the Women's Union. She likes working and supporting the other women. They share experiences about harvest and children. It is a support network and they take care of her. Ms. Phoung feels optimistic about the future. She is trying to save whenever she can so she can have money in case anything happens. Her daughter now also has a loan. I thanked her for her story. She kept holding my hand. What strikes me about Ms. Phoung and so many other Vietnamese women that I have met here is how hard they work. Sometimes they work from 5am until 11pm every day and they sometimes make VND15,000 - 30,000 a day(roughly US$ 1 - 2 dollars) a day. Something seems to be very wrong with the system....
4 Comments:
Super Kath' ! Voilà un blog déjà bien allimenté !
I hope your brainstorm doesn't become a thunder storm.
Other than that, just wishing you good work and relations there to understand the people and their expectations.
Cheers from Poitiers, not the most exciting place on earth, but cool enough !
gb
et bin dites donc, ca commence fort hein chez kath....
un regime soutenu de cassoulet (toulouzaing) et de banku ghaneen pendant une semaine, et je me mets a ton niveau...
long live binh-minh's blog...
Rass
That's a great story...We feel like we were there also...
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