Off the beaten track - part 2

So, we get close to the school/commune and the school vice director gets on his cell to tell them we're coming. The school has electricity and a land line. It's actually two buildings - one primary, one secondary, both one room, each with two classes to a room. One group faces one wall, while the kids on the other side of the tiny room face the other wall.

One picture shows Anh (brown shirt on the right, with commune school vice director and senior teacher by the school time table and drum. The drum is used to signal different times in the school day. The pond is in front of the elementary school and that is the secondary school in the background.

Some of the pictures show the river that has washed away homes, fields, roads, livestock. In one (with the sweaty foreigner) you can see one of the temporary homes in the rice paddy, and the washed out road and some of the mud slides in the background.

The road ahead was washed out, so out come the boxes of supplies and off we go on foot to wade across the river. The entire school had come out to meet us on the other bank. Wow! Amazing reception. Many of the children had never seen a foreigner, or anybody my size. Wonderful people. We posed for a few pictures, addressed all the children crammed into one room, had tea, then had to take off as darkness was falling and the dark clouds were coming in. I was afraid the mud would get worse and we'd be stuck if the rains came. We'd passed many minor mud slides on the road, none yet cleared.

We were invited to stay the night in the commune, which is amazing when you consider they didn't know we were coming, and little to offer. Many were living in thatched lean-to's in the rice paddies (with their livestock) as their homes had been washed away. Men were in the river with water buffalo dredging for timber to salvage to rebuild their homes. Logs were be sawn by hand to make planks. Incredible people, incredible experience. Not one I'll soon forget.