There are
teachers from lowland who go to remote mountainous areas of Thanh Son, Trung
Thanh and Trung Son of Quan Hoa district in Thanh Hoa province, to bring
literacy to local residents.

The teachers who dare not return to
home villages to enjoy Tet

Tet will
come in nearly two months, and it is now the right time for people to plan
their trips to home villages to enjoy Tet with families and relatives. For all
Vietnamese people, Tet is a reunion party. However, the teachers in the
mountainous areas of Thanh Hoa province do not plan to go home this year,
because they dare not spend money on long and time consuming trips.

Urbanites
these days complain that everything is getting more and more expensive.
However, the price increases have affected the poor teachers in the remote
areas more acutely. The rice price has climbed to 16,000 dong per kilo, while
the pork has surged to 80,000 dong. Vegetable has become luxurious goods.

Food and
household articles are carried to the areas from Co Luong-Mail Luong commune in
Hoa Binh province. The prices keep increasing day after day and they are always
more expensive than in the lowland, because of the transportation costs.

The Trung Son
Primary School is a very
old house with three rooms, including one room reserved as the accommodation
for Ngo Quoc Hoa and his wife. Hoa has been living here since 2003.

The teacher
related that now he and his wife earn 3.7 million dong a month. Hoa has luckily
become a regular member of the personnel and can get salary from the state
budget. However, his wife, Ha Thi Diep, a nursery school teacher, is still
working under fixed-term contract,
receiving 535,000 dong a month. Hoa said that the total monthly income
of his family is just enough to buy 50
kilogrammes of pork

Even when
Hoa and his wife try to tighten their belt, they still do not have money to buy
milk for the one-year child. Therefore, Hoa decided not to go home this Tet. “I still do not know how I can
arrange money to celebrate Tet,” he said.

The loneliness, coldness and
difficulties

Due to the
serious shortage of regular teachers, the Quan Hoa district’s Education
Sub-department itself has to hire teachers under the fixed term contracts to ensure
that there are enough teachers. The teachers do not get salaries from the state
budget, but get pay from the local budgets or from the schools. Their salaries
are very modest, just 550,000-900,000 dong a month (about $50)

The cottage
in the middle of Bo mountain village is divided into two parts, one serves as
the classroom for children, while the other is reserved for Ha Thi Ti, a
teacher.

The
teachers, who are working under fixed term contracts here, with their modest
pays, call meat and fish “luxurious products” which they only eat one or two
times a month. Sometimes, they return to home villages in the lowland and come
back to the mountainous areas with cooking given by their families. However, if it
rains at weekend, they are not able to return home, which also means that they
will not have good food for the following week.

There is no
electricity in Trung Thanh, Trung Son and Thanh Son communes. For water and
electricity, teachers have to spend money to purchase petrol and oil to run
power generator.

Pham Thi
Sen, a teacher, related that when she first came here, she cried her heart out
every night, because she felt lonely, cold as she imagined the tough life
ahead.

Teachers
here are paid once in every three months. With the modest pays, they have to
tighten their belt. However, even when they have money, they still cannot buy
good food if it rains. The only thing they have in such circumstances is just
loafs of bread.

However,
despite the difficulties, they continue living and working hard, in order to
sow the seeds of knowledge in the mountainous areas.

Nguyen
Huong