Lai Chau (VNS/VNA) - Two daysof travel in a truck on a very bumpy road rattled every bone in the body.

This was followed by six days of walking onrough terrain to get to the remote commune where residents were very poor,unexposed to the world outside, and spoke no Vietnamese.

Living and teaching here would not be easy,but the young man, just 22, was not fazed. He had known it would be verydifficult and was determined to do the best he can.

A personal meeting with Uncle Ho before heset off had motivated him further.

Welcoming the batch of volunteer teachers,the late President Ho Chi Minh, lauded their spirit, but also said: “Anyone, ifyou are in poor health, have rheumatism or heart problems, should not go.”

But the warnings about difficulties,particularly poverty, diseases and poor infrastructure, did not deter theyoung, idealistic teachers.

“I was not afraid of the difficulties. Theymade me understand more about life in the mountainous remote areas andsympathise with the locals, and motivated me to do something to help them,” NguyenVan Bon told the Nhan dan (People) newspaper.

In his eighties now, Bon said the older hegets, the clearer his memories are of Mu Ca, the remote commune in northern mountainousLai Chau province that he first set foot on almost 60 years ago.

Bon was 20 when he graduated from theCentral Teacher Training School and found work in the northern province of ThaiBinh in 1957.

Two years later, when the State called forvolunteers to teach in remote, disadvantaged areas in northwestern provinces, Bonapplied to work in Lai Chau.

He was among more than 500 teachers fromlowland northern provinces who went to the mountainous northeastern provincesto fight illiteracy.

“18 young teachers and I were assigned to MuongTe district (where Mu Ca is locted),” he said, adding that each of them wasgiven a blanket, a jacket and a few quinine tablets against malaria.

It took two days to travel from Son Laprovince to Lai Chau Town (now known as Muong Lay Town) by truck. The road wasso bad that they felt there were being thrown up all the time. From Lai Chau Town,they walked three days to reach Muong Te district. From downtown Muong Te, theywalked another three days to arrive at Mu Ca commune.

The commune was home then to about 500people of the Ha Nhi ethic group. None of them could speak any Vietnamese.

A person from Thai ethnic group who couldspeak both Ha Nhi and Vietnamese was hired to work as an interpreter for Bon.

Bon himself learnt Ha Nhi language for ayear.

From scratch

When Bon discussed with local authoritiesand people about teaching local children to read and write in Vietnamese, theyagreed that the school children would bring rice and clothes to stay at the school.

For days, Bon collected timber and bambooto build a small shack with desks and chairs for about 40 children aged sevento 12.

Local people called it Bon’s school – thefirst public work in the commune at that time.

On September, 10, 1959, Bon opened thefirst class in which he taught children how to address their teacher, how tointroduce themselves and a poem about doing physical exercises to get rid offatigue.

“Keep sitting –back fatigue

Keep writing – hand fatigue

Do exercises like this…

No fatigue.”

Following these lessons, with a box ofchalks and a board, Bon taught alphabets. The children repeated what theteacher said. The sounds from the class rang out over the mountainous village.

Bon recalled that his students did not haveany pencil. They were given chalks and practiced writing on their wrists toshow the teacher. Later banana leaves were used as “notebooks” or “boards” andwooden sticks as “pens”.

After school, Bon showed the students howto play football with a grapefruit. They also collected mushrooms, bambooshoots and went fishing.  

After a semester, almost all school-agedchildren in Mu Ca commune were still at attending classes, while just four orfive children attended other similar schools in Muong Te district.

Besides classes for children, Bon alsoopened classes for local adults. There was an early morning class for peoplewho would go to their terrace fields later and another class in the evening forelderly women and housewives.

Bon said that he wrote letters and words onthe back of buffaloes so that learners could review lessons while they wereworking in their fields.

In 1963, Mu Ca was the first commune in thenorthern mountainous region to eradicate illiteracy. A year later, Bon left MuCa, returned to his native Hai Phong city and kept teaching until retirement.

He continues to live there with his son.

50 years later

In 2009, local authorities in the provincesof Dien Bien, Lai Chau and Son La looked for the pioneer volunteer teachers andinvited them back to their schools.

Bon found that the place had changed beyondrecognition in the 50 years that he’d been away, but his formers students,grandparents now, still had fresh memories of the first teachers and firstclasses held in the commune.

It was an emotional reunion where theformer students expressed their gratitude and respect in tears, recallingthings that they’d learnt from their first ever teacher who’s teaching went farbeyond normal subjects. (Bon returned to Mu Ca in 2013 to meet his formerstudents.)

Po Phi Nhu, 69 remembered that teacher Bonhad taught local residents to grow cassava, cultivate rice, and also helped diga canal to take water from the hills to the school.

Nh, who used to be the deputy head of MuongTe district’s Education Department, said few residents at that time believedthis could be done.

Since then, locals have called the canal“Teacher Spring” and the hill nearby the school “Mr Bon Mountain” in honour oftheir teacher.

She also recalled that local residents –all belonging to the Ha Nhi ethnic group – were amazed when, for the firsttime, they heard a human voice from a thing that Bon called a radio.

Bon remembered that the radio was boughtwith money they earned after selling their rice and cassava.

‘Writing on air’

Another former student, Go Su, also 69,said that Bon had made pillars for them to do morning exercises.

She said that when they did not havepencils, they “wrote on air” and then, banana leaves or the dirt floor.

In the five years he spent in Mu Ca commune,Bon brought many big changes to the area.

Several of his former students have becomeGovernment officials and one even became a National Assembly Deputy.

He won many medals from the Government forhis work, and was the first teacher on whom Uncle Ho conferred the “LabourHero” title in 1962. -VNA