The World’s Best Five Mile Hike
Posted on October 23rd, 2009.By Vicky Scott
This past summer I had the opportunity to hike in the Alps of Austria. They were breathtaking and I marveled at God’s handiwork. But, the five-mile hike I took this morning put the Alps to shame. Today I had the opportunity to hike in Po Cho, Vietnam. Po Cho is a hamlet comprised of 42 farming households and is located in the Lah Thi Ngah commune, in the Bac Ha District of the Lao Cai province. Lao Cai is in far North Vietnam and borders China. A little over six months ago, Northwood/GVI provided $125 loans to 39 of the 42 households in Po Cho. Today, four Northwood volunteers and two GVI staff members, accompanied by leaders of the Bac Ha Farmer’s Association, got to visit the homes of five of our loan recipients.
These homes, which we would call shacks, have dirt floors, no indoor water, open fires for cooking and walls that do not reach all the way to their corrugated tin roofs, but they house happy and beautiful families. As we hiked from home to home, I got to see pigs and goats bought with our loans, and their new babies that will be sold for income. I got to sit in the homes of these people and share their hospitality, highlighted by multiple toasts of moonshine. I got to give the beanie babies, donated by my friends at Northwood and at Fidelity, to absolutely adorable children; children who were 2 or 3 years old and ran after us as we left, waving and saying “bye-bye”.
I’d like to share the story of one of these families. Mr. Cu Seo is 68 and his wife is 60. They were given a $125 loan with a six month duration. They took half of this money to buy four baby pigs and used the other half to buy fertilizer so that they could raise corn to feed the pigs. (They know that if the baby pigs are weaned earlier and fed corn instead of being allowed to nurse, the mother pig will be able to have more babies much more quickly.) They sold three of the pigs when they reached 100 kilograms (approximately 220 pounds) and kept the fourth pig to produce more babies. They made corn mash to feed the pigs and bottled corn wine, a by-product of making the corn mash. They sold most of the corn wine for additional income. Mr. and Mrs. Cu Seo expressed their gratitude for our loan and, when asked how we could serve them better, told us that their dream was to have a $400 loan with a three year duration so that they could buy a water buffalo to help with their farming.
I left the mountain thinking that nothing could ever beat today’s experience. However, as we joined the leaders of the Farmer’s Association for lunch at the bottom of the mountain, they put forth an invitation that promises to outshine today’s visit. They invited us to return in the spring and spend the day working with the farmers in their fields. After a day in the fields, the people of the village want us to join them in the evening for a cultural festival where they will perform traditional songs and dances to entertain us. God’s handiwork in the Alps is awesome, but it pales in comparison to His creation of these beautiful people.
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