Poverty lingers in village left behind by Vietnam boom
NA LIA — Vietnam's cities are being transformed by rapid economic growth which has brought fashion boutiques, fast food and traffic jams, but most people in this remote northern village wouldn't know.
A rice farming hamlet of about 400 Tay ethnic minority people without telephones, television or even electricity, Na Lia is part of another Vietnam, the rural hinterland that is struggling to catch up with the boom.
Few people in Na Lia -- an hour's drive from the nearest highway in a valley in Lan Son province -- have seen Hanoi, where people bring laptops to wi-fi cafes and play the stock market.
One of the few villagers who has made the trip is Vi Van Phong, 31, who travelled to the capital for the first time this year, to visit the museum of Vietnam's first president Ho Chi Minh.
Back in the one-room house he shares with his mother, he says what most impressed him about Hanoi was electricity, but otherwise he didn't really like the big city.
Hanoi's once-sleepy streets are now choked with scooters and, increasingly, the luxury cars of the new rich, including several Humvees.
Phong, who like some 80 percent of the people of Na Lia does not own a moped, made the six-hour trip by motorcycle-taxi and bus for 12 dollars return, a small fortune for him.
Communist Vietnam is now on track to raise average per capita GDP to 1,000 dollars a year by 2010, moving the country of 84 million to middle-income status. Phong says he survives on less than 100 dollars a year.
For the most part, Na Lia is a small, cashless economy, where people live off what they can grow but lack surplus produce or the means to transport any excess to the nearest market town.
Rice grows in small paddies but the hills are denuded from erosion caused by slash-and-burn farming and felling of trees by villagers to sell for timber.
Like other villagers here, Phong says he runs out of rice for several months each year so must switch to corn and cassava. He eats meat or fish once or twice a month -- a far cry from Hanoi, where sushi bars have mushroomed, fast-food chain KFC opened its first outlets this year, and health authorities warn of rising obesity rates.
"There's a vast disparity between Vietnam's rural and urban areas," said Hassan Ahmad, whose Singapore-based group Lien Aid has launched an anti-poverty project here, funded by the city-state's Ian Ferguson Foundation.
"You see Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City -- bright lights, big cities -- but people here haven't tasted the economic growth yet," he told AFP.
"I wouldn't say it's the dark side of Vietnam, but here people say they suffer food shortages for three months a year."
Vietnam's government and its foreign donors are aware of the growing urban-rural divide, a problem common to much of Asia.
Asian Development Bank president Haruhiko Kuroda, at a Hanoi conference this year, warned that in Asia, "although absolute poverty is being significantly reduced, the gap between the poor and the rich is rising".
The World Bank and United Nations have often lauded Vietnam as a model partner which has lifted 30 million people out of abject poverty since the launch of doi moi (renewal) market reforms some 20 years ago.
Thanks to a decade of annual economic growth above seven percent, the ratio of the desperately poor has fallen below 20 percent, from nearly 60 percent in 1993, while national per capita GDP has risen to more than 700 dollars.
But the World Bank has also stressed that "the poverty rate among ethnic minorities and communities in mountainous areas is much higher compared to the national average," standing at 60 percent in 2004 for these groups.
Making a difference isn't always easy, but neither is it impossible, said Ahmad, speaking at the opening of a new primary school and library here, built as part of his group's first rural development project in Vietnam.
Not so long ago just getting water was a daily struggle in Na Lia, where people had to fill water buckets from nearby creeks.
Lien Aid has installed sand-filtered water tanks in all 71 households, fed via pipes from the nearby stream, where an eco-turbine generates power to light the new school, which replaces a dark timber shack.
Vietnamese agriculture experts have introduced soy beans and a high-yield rice, doubling output. They plan to soon buy a single bull to genetically improve the local livestock.
High-protein grass has been planted for the cows to feed on in enclosures -- increasing cattle yield, converting manure into organic fertiliser, and preventing the animals from destroying other plants.
At a nursery, seedlings have been planted for fast-growing acacia trees that will stabilise the hillsides and can later be sold as timber, said one of the group's agriculture experts, Cao Viet Hung.
The group plans to expand into orange, longan and lychee trees, to green the hills, improve the villagers' diets and earn cash.
"What we have done here is not genius, and it's not expensive," said Ahmad, whose project cost 150,000 dollars and half a year to set up, using know-how from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.
"People from other villages have come to take a look," he said. "We believe this project can be replicated. The real needs in Vietnam are in places like this, beyond the mountains and at the ends of inaccessible roads."
Agence France Presse - November 8, 2007.
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