Sometimes it seems like you can move almost anything on a motorbike, even a new water tank!
It was about three weeks after flash flooding and landslides in the area that our team arrived in Lai Chau. I was part of the CWS Emergency Response team who was visiting this remote part of northern Vietnam to see how CWS could support the relief effort.
Our team wasn’t new to emergency response – we have years of experience doing this type of work. What we saw in Lai Chau, though, surprised and moved us. The flash floods had swept away almost all that the families here had. The damage and destruction spared no one: people from the Thai, H’Mong, Dao and La Hu ethnic groups were all affected. These families, who had already been poor and marginalized, were even more impoverished.
Of course CWS joined the others – the national Red Cross, government and quasi-government organizations and generous individuals – in responding.
After a rapid needs assessment by CWS and Red Cross staff, we prioritized distributing family hygiene kits plus 132-gallon water tanks and cement so people could start rebuilding their homes and their lives. Our team reached out to about 800 people in 170 families, starting with the basics: soap, shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, washcloths, face towels and feminine hygiene products for women. The water tanks are large enough to collect rainwater and serve as a source of clean water, and the cement allowed people to make concrete to repair or pour new foundations for their houses.
CWS Vietnam team member Trung with provides a hygiene kit to a man named Mr. Thanh. They are standing in the ruins of Mr. Thanh’s house.
While in the area, I met Ban Phuc Chieu, a Dao woman in a village in Phuc Than commune. She couldn’t stop crying as she talked. She told me, “The floods swept away everything! The chicken and the duck, my cooking pots and utensils, our water tank. Nothing is left. We were poor already, and we are poor again with no money to replace anything. Today I am very thankful to receive this help from CWS, but I am still a bit sad that I do not have a pot for cooking.”
I thought about all of the pots I had back in my home in Hanoi. I have several, some of which I don’t even use very often. And here was Chieu, wishing for just one pot. I knew it wasn’t my job to do this, but I had to help her. I gave her some money to buy a pot.
She cried even harder and just kept thanking me over and again. The money I gave her would be enough to buy a meal or two in the city, but in this area – where CWS also works on long-term development projects with support from the ELCA and CROP Hunger Walks – Chieu and her neighbors couldn’t earn this much in a few weeks.
I just had to help. It’s what you do for your neighbors.
Mai Thi Quynh Giao is CWS Vietnam’s Emergency Focal Point.