It’s been a while since my last post, in my defence it has been crazily busy here in Soc Trang. Last week we held the National Workshop on Co-management Concept and Practice in Vietnam. It meant an awful lot of work for Dan and me, plus over a weeks’ worth of early morning starts (who knew there was a 6am? Crazy!).
I won’t bore you with all the details of the workshop (though, again, if you are interested, feel free to check out the webpage -
http://czm-soctrang.org.vn/en/home.aspx - I had to organise all those presentations!). I will, however, tell you about the site visit to Au Tho B village on the coast of Soc Trang province. Au Tho B is where the pilot project for co-management of mangroves is taking place; the villagers are all mostly poor farmers of Khmer background. The members of the co-management group have agreed to protect the mangroves and restrict some of their natural resource gathering in the mangrove forests in exchange for sole legal access to the mangrove forest area. The site visit was a highlight for many of the workshop participants (we had to take 2 full bus loads down there – quite a challenge considering the state of some of the roads here) but it was even more exciting for the children of Au Tho B! We provided afternoon tea for the workshop participants and the villagers, the kids loved it! They were all running around with big handfuls of cans of coke, bottles of water and packets of biscuits and cakes. I pitied their parents – those kids would have been on such a sugar high for the rest of the day!
After the workshop was (finally!) over, we headed to HCMC to attend the wedding of a workmate, Mr Dung (pronounced Yoong). It was nice to head to a big city again and have Western food, television and hot showers. The wedding was lovely, it was in the gardens of a big hotel and we were (I think strategically) placed as far away as possible from the stage and the karaoke. This time the bride changed into a light pink, sparkly dress.
So now Dan and I are back in ST, desperately trying to catch up on all of the sleep we have missed over the past few weeks. Unfortunately the neighbours’ dogs are still barking and music and announcements are still coming over the loudspeaker or from the nearby pagoda at 5am. But we have mounted our defences, the weekend before last we went and bought a speaker system from a local electronics store. Now we too can play our music really loudly, almost loud enough to drown out our neighbours’ incredibly loud Vietnamese music. Let the music wars
begin!
Workshop participants at the mangrove forest area with onion fields in front
Dan at the mangrove forest area
Workshop information bag hanging from the rafters of a house in Au Tho B village
The kids at Au Tho B village...with packets of cakes and bikkies!