A person with a disability not only built a prosperous life for himself but also helped many other people overcome poverty. That is Dinh Xuan Hung, 55, from Rooc hamlet, Xuan Hoa commune, Minh Hoa district (Quang Binh).
The story of how Mr Hung built irrigation works with one hand
Coming to Quy Dat town, Minh Hoa district, in the midday sun so fierce it stung our faces, we stopped to ask the way to Xuan Hoa commune. Crossing Ba Nuong dam and asking again for the way to Dinh Xuan Hung’s house, everyone knew it and gave directions enthusiastically. It seems that the people of Xuan Hoa know a great deal about him. Some even added “thanks to him, I now have fields to work; just drive to the end of the road and turn left, and that is Mr Hung’s house”…
Electricity from the small hydropower plant helps light up Mr Hung’s house.
Mr Hung left off tending his pigs to welcome us. Asked how, with only one arm, he could build irrigation works to bring water to Rooc, he said, “because of poverty, I had to find a way”, “without creativity and boldness, when would we ever be better off?”. Over a cup of thick green tea with a little honey from the back garden, we were drawn into a story hard to believe about a person with a disability like him.
At the age of nine, Mr Hung was hit by an American bomb and lost an arm. After he married, his wife gave birth to six children in quick succession, and life was extremely hard. Mr Hung left Minh Xuan village (Xuan Hoa) and took his wife and children to Rooc, with only two cows as their property, to make a new life. In 2001, he asked Ba Nuong cooperative for this barren land to plant crops, but the plants all died from drought. He did not lose heart but thought day and night about how to build irrigation works. Then he decided to sell the pair of cows, the family’s greatest asset, with eight mouths to feed, to build the irrigation works. His wife, worried about feeding the whole family, would not let him sell them. Day after day, the people of Rooc hamlet saw Mr Hung, one-armed and small and thin, walking with a tilt, climbing up and down the hillsides, thinking and calculating. One day, he showed his wife a piece of paper on which he had scribbled a model and some simple calculations, calling it a “feasibility report” on the irrigation works to bring water to Rooc, and begged her to let him sell the cows to buy materials. Taking pity on her husband, his wife relented… He discussed with his neighbours the idea of pooling money and labour to build a dam and dig a canal through the hills to bring water to the fields, but everyone was doubtful. Perhaps because they were poor and afraid that if it failed, they would lose the little money they had saved in this arid land, they did not agree. Mr Hung insisted, “I will put up the money; if it does not work, I will bear the loss”. In the end, only five households agreed.
Mr Hung took the pair of cows to sell for four million VND to buy materials. After measuring and calculating, he finally decided to build the dam from stone gabions and dig a ditch 1.5 km long, with four sections dug in loops across the hillsides, and plastic pipes where it crossed the stream. The money from selling the cows was far from enough. “I thought, I would deal with each problem as it came; if I did not have enough, I would borrow more from relatives… the pair of cows“- Mr Hung recalled. Rain or shine, with only one arm, he bent his back to the hoe and spade to dig the canal, used a wheelbarrow to build the culvert and welded the water pipes. Taking pity on him, his wife and older children also worked in the rain to build the irrigation works. Seeing this, the villagers joined in to bring the cool water to Rooc fields sooner. After six months of hard work, Mr Hung’s dam and irrigation canal took shape. A dam nearly three metres high blocked the stream, sending water into the canal cut along the hillside to the fields. Thanks to its sensible design, even at the driest time, water flowed to the fields by itself. The villagers set about turning dry fields into irrigated fields with two crops a year.
The man who makes the land bloom
Mr Hung joked: “With the water brought in, the irrigation works can be considered a success, but that means I still owe my wife the pair of cows; I must repay my wife to be happy!”. As good as his word, he reclaimed and improved the land to make more than a hectare of rice fields. After the first two irrigated rice crops, he harvested four tonnes of paddy. His wife smiled and said: “After the paddy was dried and winnowed, he called me over and said, that means I have repaid you for the pair of cows. I looked at him, happy, with tears in my eyes”. Commune officials and the people of Xuan Hoa did not believe Rooc could grow wet rice, so they came to see it with their own eyes. From the hillside looking down, the Rooc fields shone golden in the May sunshine. Everyone praised the talented farmer with a disability.
With water, Mr Hung dug a pond to raise fish and built shelters to raise hundreds of pigs. He turned the whole barren hillside into a garden growing green beans, cucumbers, bitter gourds… supplying clean produce to markets in Minh Hoa district. Going into the forest, he lured dozens of bee colonies back to nest in his garden, drawing on the scent of forest flowers to make drops of golden honey. Not stopping there, Mr Hung also invested in a rice mill, a small truck and many other means of production to serve people in the area. He said the family economy brings in about 200 million VND a year.
There was water for production but not enough for daily life. He went back into the forest to find a headwater stream. In 2010, he invested more than 10 million VND in pipes to bring clean water from deep in the mountain ravine for daily use. In the midday sun of June, I splashed my face in the clear water tank and felt wonderfully cool. There was water but no electricity, so he arranged two fish ponds at very different heights, bought a small hydropower generator and used water from the upper pond flowing down to generate electricity. As if to convince us, he reached out and switched it on, and the lights blazed in the modest wooden house in the midst of prosperous Rooc hamlet.
Together with his family, 20 households here benefit from the cool water that Mr Hung worked so hard to bring. When we arrived, Rooc was in the peanut harvest season. Beside the peanut field, we stopped to talk with Dinh Xuan Khue and his wife. He said cheerfully: “I have land to farm thanks to Mr Hung’s irrigation canal. He also helped my wife and me prepare land for production and taught us how to make a living, so our life is more stable. Many households have been able to raise cows, buy motorbikes and build houses from the rice and peanuts of the once-barren Rooc fields”. According to Dinh Xuan Thanh, Chair of the Xuan Hoa Commune People’s Committee, Mr Hung has done a great deal for Rooc; it was he who dammed the stream and brought water to create lush fields and gardens, helping many households escape poverty. He himself is a shining example of resilience, overcoming hardship to enrich himself and contribute a great deal to the community.
ARTICLE AND PHOTOS: NGUYEN HOANG PHUC
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