April 24th, 2010

Narrow dusty roads (paths) are lined with homemade fences. Labor and materials are free. When it rains, this sandy soil turns to super slippery goop.

In some places, cactus rows replace fences.

This old house is made of bamboo and twigs with a palm thatch roof. It is probably for animals or storage, but people still live in such houses. Salem's brothers built one on the property with all of the materials scavenged on the property. No nails involved.

There are haystacks everywhere. This is the preferred way to store rice straw for animal food. They are tall and thin and supported by a pole in the center.

This us the afternoon market (picture taken in the morning). Every neighborhood has a morning, or main, market which is larger. The afternoon market is useful as well as a social gathering place. Notice the low tech system for keeping utility wires off the road.

This is a Viet Cong war memorial cemetary. There are about 300 graves here, but this is only one of at least two in this small town. That's a lot of graves for a population of only a few thousand. Salem's maternal grandfather, who first fought against the French, then the Americans, then the South Vietnamese is memorialized in the other cemetary in town. He died on the last day of the war in 1975 after 20 years at war and his body was never found ( a real problem for a Vietnamese family that is unable to properly bury their relative). There are no publicly recognized graves for the dead of the South Vietnamese army. They are buried in private family plots without recognition of their military service. There was a National Cemetary near Saigon, but shortly after the war ended, the families were notified to come take away their dead, as the cemetary would no longer be maintained.

This wide agricultural belt contains the fields of many local residents. Salem's family has several widely separated fields of about 50 x 100 feet each. Notice that not all utility poles are forked sticks.

When I was out riding my motorcycle, Salem called and said they were going to work in the fields and I was encouraged to join in. Today they were planting peanuts and mom, Salem, two sisters, a brother, and a niece were involved. Mom is closest to the camera with the hoe. While she worked her way turning a 4-5" row, the niece followed and dropped raw shelled peanuts every 3-4 inches. On the next pass, mom would turn over another row, covering the seeds in the previous row as she uncovered the next one. I followed, breaking up clods and removing weeds, but was not really very helpful.