Early morning in the Muong Lat border area, when white clouds still covered the villages, Lieutenant Colonel Phung Van Dam, Deputy Head of the General Staff-Planning Department, Economic-Defense Group 5, together with Lo Viet Gioi, Head of the Information and Communications Team and Nguyen Thi Huyen Trang, a team member, took us to On village, Tam Chung commune - one of the most remote and difficult villages in this border area.

The convoy’s pickup truck sometimes “hangs” on steep slopes, sometimes “sinks deep” into the valley. When the truck reached the top of a high mountain, Gioi pointed to the hill with green corrugated iron roofs halfway up the mountain, then said: “That is On village, where the Mong people live in Tam Chung. The first days when the group came to help the people here were a big challenge for us. But after traveling, we got used to it, now we remember every turn and every slope leading to the village.”

Young intellectual volunteers of Economic - Defense Group 5 guide people in literacy class.

The car stopped at the end of the village, we visited the model of raising indigenous black pigs of Mr. Giàng A Su’s family, born in 1998. That day, Mr. Su had just come back from cutting wild banana trees, while his wife was cooking bran. Mr. Su put the banana trees into the slicer and said: “Since the day the soldiers of the Economic-Defense Group 5 and the Youth Union, especially Ms. Trang, helped and guided our family on how to raise them, my husband and I have been raising this breed of indigenous pigs effectively. We recently sold a litter of piglets, and have paid off the 30 million VND in bank debt. With the next batch of pigs, my husband and I will have savings to send our children to school.”

Nguyen Thi Huyen Trang (born in 1995), from Tho Xuan district ( Thanh Hoa ), graduated from Hong Duc University, majoring in veterinary animal husbandry. Although she has only been with the people in the border area for more than a year, Trang has set foot in almost every village in Muong Lat. “Every time the unit does mass mobilization work or supports livestock for the people, I stay in the village, stay with the team, and with the team officers and staff, instruct them on how to care for, build barns, and prevent diseases for buffaloes, cows, and pigs in the villages. Once a week, we both propagate and instruct and check to see if the people are taking care of the livestock properly. Only when the livestock develop stably will we move to another location,” Huyen Trang shared.

Cadres, employees, and young intellectual volunteers of Economic - Defense Group 5 help people harvest rice.

From 2010 to present, Economic-Defense Group 5 has received 179 Youth Union members under Project 174 of the Ministry of National Defense on “Strengthening Youth Union members to work in Economic-Defense zones”. The Youth Union members here are assigned to production teams or to follow the Group’s projects to stay in the villages with the army to propagate and mobilize people to well implement the Party’s policies and the State’s laws; help people do business, build roads, build houses, eliminate illiteracy, and take care of community health.

Only by coming, going, and getting used to the slopes and the rain in the forest can one understand the difficulties and hardships that the cadres and employees of the Economic-Defense Group 5 and the Youth Unions have to go through. Therefore, not everyone chooses this difficult border area to start their career like the young intellectuals here.

Bui Thanh Tuan graduated from Hong Duc University, Faculty of Primary Education. While many of his classmates chose to go to schools in the lowlands to teach, Tuan volunteered to go to Muong Lat to work. For more than a year, Tuan has been attached to literacy classes at Production Team No. 2 in Quang Chieu Commune, about 20km from the district center, and during the rainy season, he has to cross streams and wade through forests. Here, Tuan not only works as a "teacher" but, together with the staff and employees of Production Team No. 2, becomes a propagandist and a close friend of the people. "Many nights after teaching, it rained and the road collapsed, so we couldn't go back to the Team. We had to sleep at the cultural house and wait until the rain stopped tomorrow morning to go back," Tuan said in a gentle voice. Thanks to literacy classes and people like Tuan, the people in the border villages of Muong Lat know how to read and write, and don't have to point their fingers when going to the commune to do paperwork.

I asked the members of the Youth Union of the 5th Economic-Defense Group: What keeps you staying in a place where “there are only deep mountains and forests” as friends? Most of you answered: Humanity! “The Mong, Thai, and Kho Mu people here are poor but honest and loyal. You love the villagers like family and the villagers love you like their own children,” Lo Viet Gioi confided.

As for Bui Thanh Tuan, it was the impression of his younger siblings, older sisters, and mother waiting for him in evening literacy classes; it was the joy and happy smiles when people could write their full names. “There are simple things like that, but money can’t buy them. The feeling of being needed and loved is the motivation for me to keep going,” Tuan shared.

In the afternoon on the border, the silhouettes of the Youth Union members still silently spread to the border villages where the production teams of the Economic-Defense Group 5 are stationed. They are not noisy, not ostentatious, but they are writing a beautiful story about youth in the border areas of the Fatherland. There, the ideal is not only in the curriculum but also imprinted on the dirty hands, on the feet crossing the forest and streams, on the fitful sleep in the wooden huts. Colonel Le Vinh, Head of the Economic-Defense Group 5 affirmed: “We always consider the Youth Union members as the core in the sustainable development of the border areas. They bring knowledge, youthfulness and a spirit of tireless dedication, to join hands with the cadres and employees of the Group to build the Muong Lat border area to become more and more prosperous”.

Article and photos: KHANH TRINH - MAI ANH

    Source: https://www.qdnd.vn/phong-su-dieu-tra/phong-su/nhung-ban-tay-lam-dat-o-muong-lat-830915