LSVN Day 10: Ca Mau

Today was a long day because we did service for most of it. We split up into groups today and separated into different projects in different places. Nette, Hai, Diem and Derrick, Kim, Mary, Long, and Tuyen were in my group. We took a truck that led to a boat along the river. Then we took the boat down the river to a local village. Our job was to take apart a home so that a better one could be built. The area that we were in was very wet & muddy. The houses have water flodding all along the ground about up to your ankles. The story of the house hold is that a women and a man were living together and one day the man comes home drunk. He slips and falls into the river and swallows a lot of the dirty river water, gets sick and then dies. The women stayed by him the whole time and didn't know what to do about the house.

Anyway, when we got to the home, it wasn't much. The house was made of wooden sticks and straw and didn't have doors. Muddy water flows in and out of the house and floods the whole area daily. When we got there, the women was supposed to have already moved all of her belongings out of the house so that we could tear the house down. But she had nothing done and no where to move. The neighbors didn't want to have all her stuff in their homes, which were small already. The house's foundation was supposed to be done as well for us to take off the roof, but then again nothing was done. With nothing to do, we decided to get started on making the foundation of the new house for her.

We moved all of her things and began to dig up mud from the floor of her current house and pour it into the new one. We dug until we were about waist deep in water and mud. It was quite an experience. I can really appreciate carpets and indoor pluming and to be able to live where I live. Ca Mau's village side is very, very dirty. People don't throw away trash in designated areas because there isn't anyone to pick it up. Trash is everywhere. Off the sides of the roads, mud, and river.

The river symbolizes how the people live. It is their food supply, means of transportation, out house, place to bathe and wash clothes. The river is their life. And the trash reflects how they live. I got a first hand experience of how the people live. We were among the first foreigners they had ever seen. Unfortunately, we couldn't finish our project because we could only use the dirt and mud from the old house and we couldn't take all of it or else they wouldn't have a place to sleep. So the with huge pile of mud left over, Hai and I had little mud wrestling fight. I was so dirty that I had to wash off in the river. I wasn't allowed back on the boat until I cleaned off in the dirty river.

When I got back to the hotel, I was completely soaked. After I took an incredibly long, hot shower, I knocked out and took a nap before going to church again. We did some more reflection and then had dinner. That night I jammed with Hai for awhile.