Learning to live with the floods
The rain poured down as the UNICEF vehicles entered the market town of Thanh Binh district in the heart of the Mekong Delta in South Vietnam. A team from UNICEF Finland, including their Goodwill Ambassador, Jorma Uotinen, the flamboyant choreographer and festival director, was visiting Vietnam for the first time. It was August and the rainy season and the time of seasonal flooding is fast approaching. The brown, swirling waters of the Mekong have to be crossed by ferry. Ours is loaded with locals and their motor bikes off to markets with produce. The Mekong Delta is rich and fertile and known as Vietnam’s “bread basket”. More than half of it is under cultivation, producing enough rice to feed the whole country. Coconut, sugar cane, fruit and fish are also plentiful. The Mekong river, itself, is one of the world’s great rivers, rising in the Tibetan plateau and flowing 4, 500 kilometres through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and finally Vietnam before emptying in the South China Sea. As the ferry docks at Tay island, in the middle of the Mekong, the flimsy rattan houses, perched high on bamboo stilts to avoid the rising flood waters dot the muddy river bank. In recent years, flooding has claimed hundreds of lives and forced thousands of residents to evacuate from their land, often for lengthy periods of time until the floodwaters recede. In the severe floods of 2000, 2001 and 2002, 1,683 people were killed of which 72 % were children under the age of 16. With such a high mortality rate for children, UNICEF has instigated an on-going emergency flood prevention strategy in the Mekong Delta provinces and the team from Finland was keen to see some of the projects. After a short drive from the ferry we reached Tan Hue Commune and a small wooden house. At its entrance were dozens of pairs of tiny shoes. “One plus one is two; two plus two is four.....”chorused, in Vietnamese, the voices of around twenty young children. This is one of eleven day care centres in the commune. Everyday from 7.00 in the morning until 4.30 in the afternoon, up to 25 children aged between two and five years come to the centre for child care. Two local women provide care, teach games and songs and simple arithmetic and cook a midday meal. In flood times, these centres are crucial. One of the main reasons for the high rate of drowning amongst children, is that they are left unsupervised at home while their parents go away in search of food and income. UNICEF has been providing support for these emergency day care centres for the past three years. Kits on flood prevention and awareness, toys and games and training for the teachers are also provided. The centres have proved so popular that many have continued to operate outside of the flood season. Their presence is acknowledged as one of the key reasons for the reduction in the number of children drowning from 300 in 2001 to 148 in 2002. The children were somewhat bemused by Jorma performing some traditional Finnish songs but their shyness was soon overcome and Vietnamese and Finnish songs were exchanged. Special messages were filmed for a UNICEF fund-raising concert to be held in Kupio in Northern Finland at the end of the year. A few hundred metres from the day care centre, ten women gathered in an open hall facing the street. Seated on brightly coloured straw mats, Hien, a feisty woman in her mid-30’s, was discussing book-keeping and the repayment of loans. She’s chair of an innovative micro-credit loan scheme, which helps women to recover from the impact of floods as well as encouraging them to keep their children at school. So far, in the delta provinces of An Giang and Dong Thap, more than 800 women have been helped by this scheme. Hien and her colleagues are very poor. Most eke out a living fish farming, raising pigs and cattle, growing rice, sewing clothes, repairing bicycles or selling vegetables at the local market. In the past, the annual floods have forced many of them to borrow money at hugely inflated rates just to make ends meet. More often than not, their children dropped out of school. In Hien’s group ten children had dropped out. Under the micro-credit scheme, the women are allowed to borrow one million dong (approxUS$60) from the bank. The condition of the loan is that their children return and remain in school. So far, the results are excellent. Up to 95% of children have remained in school. Furthermore, the self-esteem and confidence of the women has greatly increased: “I have one child attending the care centre and I’m using the money for fish farming to earn more income,” says Hong, seated next to Hien. Meetings are held monthly and not only canvas financial matters but also information on flood prevention, how to farm better, how best to keep children in school and child trafficking. Ang Giang borders Cambodia and trafficking is a growing problem. The women are encouraged to save money monthly but if someone has trouble repaying the loan, in true collective style, others help out. Hien’s group has completely repaid its one million dong loan and they have now borrowed another two million for the next two years. “We would like to borrow more and make this group bigger. Many other women in the village would like to join as well,” Hien told us as darkness began to fall. The next morning we visited the People’s Committee headquarters of Tan Chau District and met with vice chairman Mr Dung who is also responsible for flood monitoring. So far, the flood news was not too bad, “The water level was one metre lower than this time last year and if there were no major storms in China, Laos and Cambodia, the flood season may not be too severe,” Mr Dung reported. However, as we sipped our bitter Vietnamese tea, we could see the swollen, muddy waters of the Mekong across the road and it was clear there was no room for complacency. Mr Dung arranged for us to travel upstream to visit villages which are only accessible by water and are flooded every year. We wanted to visit one of UNICEF’s seven medical boats that have been provided to support flood-stricken District Health Centres since 2000. We all piled into a high powered speed boat, in marked contrast to the normal water traffic that plies the Mekong, and within half an hour, we had entered a narrow tributary. Tiny wooden shacks clung to the muddy river bank. Huge fishing nets were suspended over the river, ready to be plunged into the water to gather whatever fish was around. Soon, we could see the large white barge with the blue UNICEF sign. It was moored at Phu Loc commune and there were dozens of men, women and children of all ages queuing in the baking sun. It was the first time this mobile health clinic had visited the commune. An engine upgrade meant the boat could now navigate this part of the river. During the flood season, boats like this make weekly visits to the communes and more in times of emergency. In the non-flooding period, the boats deliver medical services to people living in poor and remote areas. The people of Phu Loc commune have not had access to good, quality health services so the arrival of the UNICEF boat is greeted with much expectation. On the bank, Muon was waiting patiently with her first child, Lam who was just eight months old. He looked plump and happy but Muon was worried about an eye infection and his diarrhea. “This is the first time that the doctor and the boat have come to the village and I’m a little worried about Lam. My husband is a fisherman and I grow rice but our village is flooded every year. During these times we use the evacuation sites which are on higher ground.” Downstream from Phu Loc commune was an evacuation site that Muon and her family could use. In the district of Tan Chau, there are 26 sites that can accommodate up to 3,000 households. Initially, these sites were used in times of emergency only. However with the regular flooding the government is urging people to remain in these sites and has begun calling them resettlement clusters. To encourage people to stay, the government provides a family with a basic floor and house frame. This costs 17 million dong ($1,000 approx) and can be paid back within 10 years. Whether this is the best possible long-term solution to disaster prone communities is still to be assessed and there is a concern that some people are being forced to remain in these sites. On the other hand, if these sites are carefully planned and serviced, they may be a viable alternative. In the short term there is an urgent need for basic water and sanitation services, with less than a third of communities having access to clean water Dem is a widow and has been at the Long An Commune evacuation site for nearly a year. Her house is still very basic. Re-cycled rattan lines part of the walls, the floor is dirt, though Dem has planted some trees and flowers which brighten the entrance. Dem tries to earn some money from trading waste. However her eldest daughter has just given birth to a baby girl and she is staying at home to look after her. She has tried to set up a small shop in her house selling biscuits and other bits and pieces but it was clear there was very little business. Her daughter works in a silk factory. Two of her children, Kim Loan and Thanh Phong, who are 13 and 15 years old have already left school and get irregular work as labourers. Seven year old Duy Phoung still goes to school. The entire family’s income is around 20,000 dong per day (approx $1.50). They cannot afford electricity and rely on kerosene but are getting water from a newly constructed water system. “I’m very happy to be here, as at least I now have a house but I must try my best to get some regular work to support my family. However, I do worry about paying back the money for the house”, Dem told us. It was the end of our visit. We clambered into our speed boat for one last journey on the Mekong before heading back to Ho Chi Minh City. Overhead, the skies darkened and threatened another thunderstorm as the people of the Mekong prepared for another flood season.
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