The strengthening of typhoons with climate change is disastrous to the communities living near the coast. In Pham Thi Tuyen’s commune Da Loc, 250 ha of land became useless and have thrown people into deep poverty.
The most damaged household in Da Loc commune belonged to Pham Thi Tuyen and her husband. At the time of the typhoon in 2005 her daughter Yin was 13 years and her newborn baby Nhat, only 1 month old.
“When the typhoon came, the People’s Committee instructed us by the loudspeaker in the village to move to a safer place. I already lost one son in another typhoon. He was 10 years old but because he couldn’t swim, he died in the flood,” Pham Thi Huyen tells. “My newborn child was just one month old at that time of the typhoon Damarey, so when we got the warning we immediately moved to my uncle’s house in Yen Dong village, some kilometres inland from the coast. We stayed there for 15 days”.
She had no hope when she got home, well there was no home.
“When I came back to my house it was completely destroyed”, says her daughter Yen who is now 17 years old and speaks good English. “We came back and only the pig shed walls were still standing. We repaired the roof and stayed there for one year.”
CARE supported the family with rice, clothes, medicine and some money as part of their relief project in 2005. Later CARE gave the family a water tank to store fresh rain water, because the well had been destroyed. They also supported the farmers of the village with seeds for the next season. However, the soil had become too saline for the crops to grow.
“The typhoon also destroyed the land and the crops,” she explains. In all, my family has 1900 m2 of land of which 900 m2 had been inundated with seawater and was useless the first three years after the typhoon because of high salinity. The plants would grow some centimetres high but then die when the roots reached the salt water in the soil. Finally, in 2009 the plants survived and we harvested 150 kg of rice and 80 kg peanuts. Before the typhoon we could harvest 250 kg and 160 kg of peanuts.”
Right after the typhoon, her husband went to work in construction for a year to earn some money to help his family, because all their belongings were washed away and they had only the money they could borrow from their neighbours. She stayed at home to raise some chicken and pigs and the free time she spend working for others on grass removal and soil preparation to get extra money for my family.
When Pham Thi Tuyen got the possibility to get training with CARE on how to raise pigs, she took it. She started off with two piglets in 2006, provided by the project and now the family has 12 pigs. CARE will give one more sow, because she has good skills for raising pigs.
My garden is now a pond
Nguyen Thi Nuong, 37, also lives in Dong Tan village with her two daughters. The house collapsed partially with two walls destroyed and no roof. CARE helped to provide rice and reconstructing the house after typhoon.
Her house and the garden next to the house are close to the sea, but the rice field is close to the river. Both were affected by seawater. She succeeded in flushing the salt out of the soil in her rice field with water from the canal that the village and CARE built, so it quickly became fertile again. The soil in the garden had been washed away by the typhoon, so instead she now has a pond with brackish water. She tried to fill the garden with new soil, but she doesn’t yet have enough money to buy soil. The garden now makes a nice pool for the ducks of the village, but no income for her.
“I now know how important it is that the mangrove forest is there to protect the dyke and the village. I participate in collecting seeds from the old mangrove and plant them in the new area. When mangrove trees are young we remove the barnacles and the rubbish that gets stuck in the branches so they can survive,” she explains.
The dyke broke and waves crushed my house
“I have participated in caring for the mangrove for three years,” says Mrs. Dang Thi Luyen who lives with her husband, son and daughter 100 meters from the new dyke in Dong Tan village. “There was no mangrove forest in front of the dyke in my village. The dyke broke and big waves crushed my house and the soil on my field was swept away. So of cause I care very much about the mangrove.”
Thanks to the warning on the village loudspeaker, the whole family moved to the village school, which is on higher ground. She stayed there with her family for two weeks. Some days after the typhoon they came back. The water had been up to 1.5 meter over the normal level. One of her small houses had partly survived, but she needed to remove 30 cm mud before she could move in with her family. They had no fresh water, so they had to go to a well several kilometres away to drink and wash. With the tank to collect rain water they got from CARE, life became easier.
Before the typhoon they cultivated two crops of rice per year from their paddy field and in their garden they had one crop of peanuts and one crop of rice. They have filled their fields with new soil that they have bought because the crops grew badly in their garden which was damaged by the seawater.
“Before the typhoon we cultivated rice and peanuts. But there was no soil left so I went to collect seafood from the fishermen and sell it to the restaurants in the beginning because we had no money,” says Dang Thi Luyen. “Now I’m part of the income generating group where I have learned to grow oyster. Together with 34 other households I have set up a plot on the river bank. Soon I can sell my own oyster to the restaurants to provide income for my family.”