Having won 10 gold medals at sports games for people with disabilities, Nhu Thi Khoa returned to everyday life, earning a living by selling bread and fruit to raise her 7-year-old daughter.
Khoa sits tucked away in a corner on an old wheelchair, surrounded by piles of mangoes, persimmons, oranges and pomelos… On the blue steering wheel of the wheelchair are three loaves of bread to greet customers. Her fruit stall stands at the busy junction of Tran Xuan Soan and Lo Duc streets (Hanoi), crowded with passers-by.
When a customer comes, she leans forward to pick up some persimmons and put them on the scales. From time to time she has to ask customers to pick up melons and pomelos that are out of her reach. The golden girl of Vietnamese sport, who once competed in the Philippines and Greece, now shrinks into a street corner with a box of bread and a fruit stall. For many years, this place has become her second home.
The livelihood of “golden girl” Nhu Thi Khoa after retiring from her sporting career. Photo: Hoang Phuong.
Taking advantage of a quiet moment, Khoa rearranges the bread in the box. She said that before she sold a hundred loaves a day, but now only a few dozen, because there is more competition. Relying on the box of bread alone is not enough to live on, so she has to buy fruit at the Long Bien wholesale market to sell as well, to barely make ends meet.
In 2005, saving up after more than a decade of selling bread and the bonuses from her competitions, Ms Khoa bought a plot of land and built a small house on Kim Nguu Street. Returning to a quiet life after the race track, she devoted all her remaining energy to her daughter, who bears her mother’s surname, Nhu Thi Yen Chi.
Not wanting to talk much about her private life, Ms Khoa is full of pride when she speaks of her child. Yen Chi is 7 years old this year, but has only just entered grade one. The thin little girl comes home from school and throws herself into her mother’s arms, asking to be held. To give her child a snack and a carton of milk before evening classes, she takes the chance to leaf through her daughter’s exercise books. The mother’s face relaxes and she smiles as she sees Chi’s writing improving day by day. Then she hugs her child, breathing in her scent, asking how many bowls of rice she ate at noon and whether she was good at school.
Busy selling all day and unable to pick up her child, she has to leave Yen Chi at half-board at Minh Khai Primary School, and in the afternoon asks someone to pick her up. On days when she cannot find anyone, she leaves her fruit stall with the women at the neighbouring drinks stalls and hurries off on her three-wheeled vehicle to fetch her child. Many days, when her mother arrives late, Yen Chi wanders about playing in the schoolyard and on the benches after school.
The female athlete with a disability checks her daughter’s homework. Photo: Hoang Phuong.
Yen Chi was born by caesarean section, weighing only 2 kg. Her maternal grandmother came down from Ung Hoa to look after her daughter and granddaughter for a whole year. When her daughter was sturdy, mother and daughter leaned on each other and on the fruit stall to live. Giving birth was hard, and raising Chi has been even harder; the slightest change in the weather and the little girl falls ill again and again. In return, her little daughter loves her mother very much and obeys her. Many times, when she is busy selling and her daughter clings to her too much, she says to her child: “If you are not good, I won’t love you”. Hearing her mother say that, the little girl quickly hugs her neck and sits still so her mother can sell. Many days, seeing her mother tired, her daughter tells her to go and rest, then does her homework herself, and when she has finished, climbs up to lie with her mother.
Stroking her little daughter’s fine hair, her voice was sorrowful: “Mother is busy selling all day, with little time to look after you, so you are so frail like this”. She said her daughter is all her wealth. Yen Chi is also the reason she decided to retire from her sporting career and return to her role as a mother, to look after her child better.
Early in the morning, after taking her daughter to school more than 2 km from home, she hurries back into the flow of people going back and forth on the road. Arriving at her familiar street corner, she arranges the bread and fruit on her old wheelchair with her own hands. Khoa bought that vehicle for 2 million VND more than a decade ago. She does not want to sell it, because she has been attached to it from before she began until she ended her whole sporting career. Now, she has had it fixed in place with concrete so it cannot be stolen. On top of the vehicle is a small tarpaulin to shelter the seller from sun and rain.
She does not know whether it is fate or because this street corner has many shady trees, but her stall has quite a lot of customers. Khoa said that many regular customers recognise her from having appeared in the press and exclaim as they ask her about it. She only smiles and answers briefly, then continues with her work. Many people who know her reputation use buying fruit as an excuse to see her face.
Many people buy goods because they admire her talent. Photo: Hoang Phuong.
A middle-aged woman who calls herself a former fan of Nhu Thi Khoa said that whenever she goes to the pagoda to pray and burn incense, she buys fruit from her stall. She affectionately calls Khoa “the little girl” and says: “She competed well and sells well too, and she is honest in her trading, weighing accurately. She also raises a small child, so everyone loves her”. Hearing the customer, Khoa only smiled and said nothing.
As time passes, still at that street corner, with the same person, many customers come to buy because they know her face and like her welcoming, obliging manner, not knowing she was once the “golden girl” of her day, honoured wherever she went.“It has been nearly ten years; the glory of those days is now in the past”, the seller’s eyes suddenly grew distant.
Her gold medals from the ParaGames, Ms Khoa still keeps carefully in a cupboard, while she has given away all her competition clothes. She remembers everything, from the moments of training with her teammates to the moment she wore her country’s colours and stood on the podium: “How could I forget what I went through”.
From time to time, she still visits the Sports Training Centre to meet friends she used to compete with. Coach Ngo Anh Tuan and her former teammates have many times suggested she return to training. She refuses, saying she is still passionate, but her daughter matters more. “Competing takes a lot of time and effort in training. My child is still small, with no one to look after her or take her to school. Between passion and family, I can only choose one”. And she chose her daughter.
After many years of trading, Khoa still wishes for a shop of her own, to make trading easier and to raise her daughter through school. “That road is still a long way off…”, she left the sentence unfinished.
Hoang Phuong – http://vnexpress.net