A long day
A normal school day requires a lot of effort if you live in Ban Hoy Sou
As Vanh wakes up each morning just after 4am, her classmates in Ban Nong Boua are still asleep. She must fight against the urge to go back to sleep and ignore the darkness outside. It is this determination that guides the 14 year old, her younger brother and sister who are ethnic Khmu and 13 other children from Ban Hoy Sou as they make the long journey to school in Ban Nong Boua, La District Oudomxay Province.
The children must leave the village at 5am on foot in order to reach school by 7.30am. By 10am Vanh and her siblings are hungry for their mid morning snack, a corn-soya blend (CSB) fortified with vitamins and minerals provided to all the children by the World Food Programme to prevent hunger. Eating CSB helps the children avoid hunger, giving them a better chance to concentrate on their studies during the long day.
Classes at the school finish at 3pm. As most of the children wander back to their homes nearby to help look after their siblings and prepare for dinner, the children of Ban Hoy Sou embark on their hour and a half walk back to their village arriving against the sinking sun with darkness again beginning to fall.
Vanh (right) and fellow students set off on their
long journey home, carrying take-home rations of rice.
Back at home, Vanh helps to fetch water, to cook the evening meal and feeds the chickens and pigs before going to bed exhausted. This March weekend her brothers and sisters that are old enough to help, will go with their parents to the blackened uplands and prepare to plant rice.
Vanh is in class 5 and hopes that her parents will allow her to go to the secondary school in La District town when she finishes here. Despite the effort that children like Vanh must go through in order to receive an education, most are eager to continue their studies for as long as possible. In some villages, opportunities for continued education often stop after primary school, when parents decide that children are better utilized helping to farm or raise younger brothers and sisters.
WFP’s School Feeding Project encourages parents to send their children to school by providing the families with rice and canned fish and locally procured iodised salt (supported by UNICEF) in addition to the mid morning snack for students. Children such as the those from Ban Hou Soy who need to walk far to school or who must stay overnight in the school village because of the remoteness of their home village are given extra rice and fish to encourage their efforts to gain an education.
For Vanh to study in La town, she must stay in a near-by village and spend the week away from her family. For her parents this is a big sacrifice, but it is the only opportunity for Vanh to fulfill her dreams of becoming a school teacher. Only two girls and one boy from her village have gone on to study at the secondary school recently. With any luck Vanh will join them next year.
