Rice

This past Sunday we traveled to the outskirts of Hanoi to harvest rice in the fields of a very pleasant and welcoming farmer. Waking up at 6 am and driving 1 hour was not exactly an ideal way to start the day, however, the excitement was quite obvious among my fellow peers. I could infer from the look on their faces and the conversation that this was an opportunity to have an “authentic” rural Vietnamese experience. Working as day laborers they were expected to harvest the entire field just as many wage laborers in this farming village often did. After speaking with some of the locals they told the story of a village with a very bleak future, one in which has become very reliant on wage laborers. The appeal of community and tradition can no longer sustain in this new age of globalization and therefore, many of the younger people are either leaving the village or going out and working in the cities. All that is left are the elders who eventually become too old to tend the fields and thus require assistance. As a result, many of the wage laborers are hired to do this particular work and for a few hours my fellow peers were able to walk in their shoes. I, myself, would not get the opportunity to harvest the rice, but I helped prepare and cook the lunch for all the “day laborers,” nearly 45 people in total. My experience was interesting nevertheless and I was able to learn a great deal working alongside the women cooking, such as cooking is a very long and strenuous process. Further, as I venture out into the village, playing with the kids and talking with the locals, I also gained some insight into what has created the current environment of the village.

According to the locals that we spoke with, land distribution during the war was based on the number of people in a household and thus, the more children you had, the more land you would receive from the government. This fact was quite notable because it possibly explained why in older generations, such as my grandmother, families tended to be larger and have more children. It wasn’t that they were bored and had “nothing to do” as I once suggested to my grandmother, but it was in fact beneficial to do so. In reality, having a large family was ideal because not only did you receive more land, but you would have the resources to ensure the land was utilized efficiently. However, the government began introducing birth control programs during the 1980s and the maximum number of children in one household was typically two. The land was no longer distributed by the number of people in the household and the household kept the same land and subsequently, having many children without the resources to provide for them became very unwise. In the locals opinion, this was the turning point or the downturn of the village. The families could no longer support themselves and thus the dynamics of the village also began to change. This in turn led to changes in the farming techniques and agriculture. In addition, to the reliance on wage laborers, there was also a great increase in fertilizers, pesticides, and other artificial agricultural tools. The locals also revealed to us that they received their new harvesting machine this year and in my opinion, this will decrease the need for laborers. It is very evident from the shift in farming procedures and tools that the forces at work, for a lack of a better word, globalization is influencing every aspect of Vietnam. I feel as though eventually, the village itself will become obsolete because the demands of the government and outside entities towards development will force the people to change their lifestyles. We are already observing it slowly beginning to happen and with its location only 1 hour away from the city, the future of this village as a farm land will be no more.

Typically, tending to the field and harvesting is a communal effort by both genders, however, a household duty such as cooking is done exclusively by the women. I thought it would be interesting to disrupt this dynamic and do a job typically assigned to women. I, myself, generally love to cook and am quite capable of handling my own. However, in this situation, the cooking process was very different what I imagined. First off, cooking for so a large number of people made it difficult to gage how much food to cook and so we overestimated the amount of food needed. Secondly, the Hanu students seemed to naturally take charge and from what I can derive, they seemed very comfortable and familiar with the task at hand. I did feel out of place at hands because of my gender, but I think the UC people felt that way in general.