Day off today - at least part of it, so I went on a trip on the bike down the valley from the Dam, that feeds local the local agriculture and supplies the project with vast amounts of H20.
You need to get off the beaten track, through narrow gaps on the road, find a main canal and follow it indefinetely if you are keen. The canals are the life blood of the region, built by the people to distribute water to an infinite amount of small farms that have been supporting millions of people for a very long time.
This particular valley starts around 3-4 km from the project and keeps going, with canals diverting left right and centre and along them, all the many family-based agriculture units.
Two things you do not see much - 1) birds, either eaten out by the locals or victms of some weird environmental disaster and 2) bovines!! Actually , occassionally you see a few, as you will see in one of the photos, but that particular mob is the smae I saw grazing in many different places. So, extensive use of land has not been part of Vietnamese rural life I guess for a few hundreds of years but not to say that they do not growgrow lots of chooks (fairly staple) some beef (eaten in smaller amounts) and pork grown in the back garden.
But what you begin to realize is how the canals and the water it carries is so vital for the population. Destroy the water and it is all over and poverty will really strike. A lot of the canals begin from the Dam of the river Sao. This is the dam you see in the photos and I am told it is about 10 square kilometres and not very deep. Around it, there is plenty of agriculture units and from it the project draws its water supply for both cattle drinking and all the clean up in the dairies. So it becomes clear how well it must be managed. Water here is critical and unlike New Zeland it does have to feed millions of people and help Vietnam be one of the major rice exporters of the world!!! How do they do it?? I guess by smilling along and working hard on their land.
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| The Dam and mist |
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| locls fishing on the dam |
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| even with rain, somehow the dam level is quite low but more rain may come before the autamn and winter dry months.. |
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| A boy andhis bufalo climb up the dam embankment |
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| Crossbreds beefies!! I see them grazing all around so must be the region main mob. |
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| Goats are staple food |
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| a lonely fisherman |
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| Clearin in a gum bush |
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| I had a rest under this shelter |
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| Latex from the rubber tree |
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| Rubber tree plantation |
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| Valley views |
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| Cropping land. |
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| Mixed cropping. Sugar cane, cassava and other stuff |
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| Some of the canals |
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| Cassave crops |
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| Sugar Cane |
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| Farm and rice block |
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| Just a little beaty of a place. You do not want to come along and try to save the poor!!! |
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| The little girl on the right was so friendly and spoke remarkable good English. The photo below is the farm house they live and they are fishing on one of the small ponds in the property |
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| Sometimes you see the odd "Manor" |
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| Looks fine.. |
Where is all the poverty?? The region is supposed to be one of the poorest, agriculture-based regions in Vietnam. Well, I guess it depends how one defines poverty. They seem to grow lots of crops, look fit, smilling and healthy, have food to their needs... I'll keep looking because, being from Brasil, the day I see real poverty I'll recognize it.
