Fields are brown and rotting… they should be green and lush

I’m at a distribution of essential items in Phong Xuan commune in Phong Dien district, Vietnam. The fields around here are brown and rotting. Usually at this time of year they would be lush and green. Ready for the rice harvest.

We meet an old lady who has come to collect a household kit. She’s a grandmother and tells us a sad story. She shares a house with her daughter’s family. When the floods came, her daughter and her husband were swept away by the torrent. Both were drowned. She’s a very old lady and now she will have to have to look after her 3 grandchildren (a boy, 5 and two girls, 7 and 10) in a house that has been stripped by the flood.

“I will miss them and I am very, very sad but I still have my grandchildren and I love them very much. I want them to go back to school so they will be happy again, but I don’t have money to buy them new school books.”