Do as the People Do

  As the great Son Chau states almost constantly, today we as a class gained some real insight on what it is like to be part of the people of Vietnam…if only for two hours.  This past Sunday UCHANU 2010 went out to harvest a rice field.  We woke up with the sun and slogged barefoot through the mud in order to harvest the staple food for a good portion of the world, if not Vietnam. 

The field we were harvesting was already partially harvested because of the recent rain and wind, which had blown over many of the rice stalks; so, probably to avoid waste, the family whose field we were mangling had already begun the process for us.  The field was owned by the Party Secretary of the village we were visited whose name was Anh Coui, a very kind man who tried to help us as much as he could during the harvesting process short of cutting the rice and carrying it for us himself.  His daughter was also out in the field helping us collect and cut the rice as well.  She put us all to shame with the uniformity and skills of her cuts, and then with the speed that she could slog through the mud with 10 pounds of rice stalks in her embrace.

Hypothetically, the process was very simple: cut the stalks, pile them up, carry the stalks to the thresher, then thresh.  From there one would then dry the rice and then toss it to rid it of its husks, but we were not involved in that part of the process.  A problem I encountered was trying to cut the rice high enough that those collecting wouldn’t have to carry so much excess, useless weight.  I felt that if I went too high I couldn’t grab as much and would lose rice.  However, I really enjoyed carrying the rice out of the fields and to the grand pile of stalks waiting for the thresher.  Feeling the weight of all my friends’ hard work on my shoulders was wonderful, and I am so proud of how much we managed to get out of that field.  It was rumored that that field generates about 12 bags of rice when harvested by Anh Coui’s family, aka the professionals, but we still managed to get 7 bags filled in only two hours of work.  Not too shabby!

Also, as I lifted piles of rice over my head through the fields I felt a real connection with this type of work.  Though I have nothing really connecting myself to rice fields now (besides the fact that I eat a lot of rice), this is what my family used to do back in the Philippines and what some of my family who still live there currently do.  Now many of the sons and daughters have moved away, my grandfather and grandmother included, but that is what my family did for generations and actually what my grandpa wanted to discontinue my mother and aunts and uncle from doing, but here I am feeling connected back with my roots.