UCHANU: Rice Harvesting!

This past Sunday my UCHANU pals and I had the opportunity to harvest rice in a village near Hanoi. We woke up early, filed into two buses, and made our way over to the village, where we found that we were actually going to be harvesting in a super muddy field rather than a dry one. After toiling for about two hours, we finished up helping a farmer put our rice into a thresher, washed off in a lake, and walked over to the house for lunch. After lunch, we talked to locals in an effort to learn about changes and jobs in the village. We found that the job categorizations on our sheet (who is poor, medium, and rich) were not considered very accurate by the people we talked to. For example, there were comments that construction workers were not necessarily poor, and that bankers were the rich people. This probably reflects the variation that exists among different villages, as well as our small interview sample size.
Ultimately, I learned a lot from this experience. I feel like it really takes getting down and dirty with tough physical jobs to truly appreciate the work that so many people in Vietnam do. This experience humbled me and reminded me of all the skills I have not developed. I hope that I will have the opportunity to talk to more farmers and learn about the work that they do. Ideally, it would be awesome to try out the skills required for a few jobs while I’m here. For example, learning how to do what rat catchers, phỏ sellers, traditional cake makers, etc. do. Dirty jobs Vietnam! I plan to make a concerted effort to talk to people with different jobs (ideally with the help of someone more proficient in Vietnamese) and see if they might be willing to teach me some new skills.