A week in review: biogas, midterm and camping

Top: A look at our campsite from the top of the watchtower.
Middle: A view of Tram Chim National Park (also taken from the watchtower).
Bottom: The lotus pond we collected samples from in Tram Chim.

Ok so prepare yourself for a long one, this has been quite the week...

Excursion 2: My Khanh Village

Last Saturday-Monday marked our second excursion for the program, this one just a series of day trips to the My Khanh Village just outside Can Tho. For this study we met up with the culture and development SIT program who is also Vietnam this semester. Saturday was spent gathering an understanding of the Village. We talked with some local leaders and during the afternoon had the opportunity to walk through the village and interview families on topics concerning everything from education and transportation to the history of the Village and farming practices. Sunday was another day of group work and I spent the day doing a transect of a farm in My Khanh. For a transect we had to start at the River and from there recorded each aspect of the farm (fish pond, fruit orchard, etc.), looking at the soil, water, plants, opportunities and difficulties in each aspect. Doing a transect was an easy way of seeing why farmers organize their grounds the way they do and how they’re implementing the VACB model. The VACB (acronym in Vietnamese) model is a system of farming where the garden (v), fish pong (a), animals (i.e. pig pen or chicken coop) and recently the biogas (b) are all interconnected to make for a more efficient farm. I'm still kind of unsure of how the biogas system is different from the VACB model, but I guess the difference is that the VACAB model can still be used without the biogas aspect.

Monday was probably the best day because we got to build a biogas. With the other SIT group we were able to build two biogas systems. These biogas systems are so important for farmers as they reduce their waste output and save money and resources previously used to generate energy for the household. The way the biogas works is that waste from the pig pen goes through a tube into a huge plastic bag in the trench, which is then broken down into organic fertilizer and methane. There is another tube connected to the bag that deposits the fertilizer in the nearby fish pond, while the methane is used as an energy source for the home. There is a safekey for the system and the plastic bag is triple lined to assure that the methane doesn't leak. There's also a version of the biogas that uses a sanitary toilet in addition to to a pig/cow/animal pen. Only four pigs are needed to create enough waste to supple the energy for cooking and after that the family can possibly begin using the system for other energy as well. Before making our own biogas we visited other homes and saw how the lives of these farmers were improved by what is such a simple system.

Our first step in building the biogas was to finish digging out the trench for the plastic bag to sit in. The use of plastic bags instead of a concrete tank are a subject of debate. While concrete lasts longer and for the environment, the plastic system is much less expensive and requires a much easier installation. We spent that morning knee-high in mud, digging out the rest of the trench for the biogas system, followed by an afternoon of assembling the plastic bags and safekey. It was a long and muddy day, but being able to leave My Khanh after three days, having actually made an impact was really great to have.

Midterm time and a visit to a pagoda

Unfortunately the middle of our week marked the halfway point in our Vietnamese lessons, which meant midterm time! With the help of my homestay I feel like I’ve slowly been improving, however this didn’t make studying any easier. Oh well our class survived and all looked as equally lost during the listening portion of the test! Besides helping with my language skills the homestay has been amazing. Dinnertime here is always interesting as I’ve been challenged to really expand my palate. With vegetarianism gone I’ve added frog and snail to my list adventures. While Thu’s husband keeps talking about feeding me their cat or dogs, I’m really hoping he’s teasing, I’m not quite ready for that! However they have introduced me to a bunch of other foods that are quickly becoming my favorite. One of the best is a roll of sticky rice sweetened with coconut and sugar and eaten for breakfast. Thu’s mother recently came home from visiting her son and his family in Australia, so I’ve been promised to get some cooking lessons in exchange for trying my hand at making an American meal for them.

On Tuesday we also had the chance to visit another orphanage; this one was run by a pagoda. Unlike the other orphanage we visited this one had children as young as two months all the way to age 10. The older children were at school, but after a lunch there we were able to play with the babies there. This situation was a little more difficult to handle than our other visit as we learned that many of these babies had been abandoned by their parents because they were born with birth defects or sick.

Excursion 3: Tram Chim National Park

Besides our trip to Cambodia later in the semester, this excursion to Tram Chim was probably the most anticipated. Located in the the Lower Mekong Basin, the Park is part of the Plain of Reeds, an important wetland in Vietnam commonly referred to as the rice bowl for its national status as a rice growing region. The Park has a really interesting history. Prior to the Vietnam War (or American War as it is referred to here) the wetland area of Tram Chim had a natural fluctuation and draining of water from the wetlands during the wet and dry seasons respectively. However during the War, U.S. forces wanted to clear the vegetation of the area so as to destroy hiding places for revolutionary forces. Consequently, much of the current Park was ravaged by napalm and Agent Orange and the natural flow of the floodplain was completely destroyed. Following the war, the region was transformed into agriculture. In 1998 the Park’s national status was made official and an artificial system of canals was built to control the water levels in the Park. Now, there is no agriculture on Park land, just in the surrounding buffer zone and towns.

Arriving on Thursday, we spent the afternoon getting introduced to the Park through lectures as well as a boat ride. I was happily surprised with the similarities I found between Tram Chim’s wetlands the Broad Creek area I kayaked on this summer with OHH. While these wetlands were freshwater and had a wet and dry season instead of tides, I saw a ton of great white egrets, cormorants, swamp hens (similar to marsh hens--especially their sound) and purple herons, which are a species almost identical looking to the blue heron. Tram Chim is actually best known for their saving of the endangered Eastern Sarus Crane who unfortunately spend the wet season in Cambodia. Hopefully though we’ll be able to see them during our trip there later this semester.

Friday gave us our first chance at data collection. We took a boat out to examine plots of wild rice, Eleocharis grasses (diet of the cranes) and lotus. Collecting plot samples required some real hands on activity and we all had the chance to jump into water often shoulder height to pull roots and collect soil. Being in the Park, the cleanliness of the water wasn’t an issue, but we discovered how much sediment was in the water when we came back covered in dirt haha. While in the past the samples taken by SIT were discarded after analyzed, our academic director is hoping to make this sample consistent enough so that the Park can use the data to monitor affects of water level change on water and vegetation quality. Reliant upon the artificial system of canals, water level is critical to conserving the wetlands and assuring the survival of certain species such as crane.

After working all day in the field we spent the night “camping” out in the Park. There is a large raised concrete platform built next to a ranger station in a lotus field in the Park. Joining the other SIT group, we had dinner out on the platform, drank some rice wine and participated in a cultural exchange that included an almost campfire and some bad renditions of “Build Me Up Buttercup” and “I Want It That Way”. Despite some heavy downpours the night was a lot of fun and an awesome way to see both a sunrise and sunset in the park.

Our excursions aren’t over just yet. On Wednesday we’re going six hours north to Can Gio where we’ll have a lesson on mangrove ecology. Following that we’ll have two weeks of classes before going off to Cambodia, Hanoi and the Red River Delta. Photos from this week are posted and there's also another album from earlier this month in HCM and Can Tho. That’s way too much typing for one post, next time I'll try and be shorter!