On a bright summer’s morning Vi Kieu Oanh and her husband rise earlier than usual.

Today they will

travel far into the high mountains to her hometown, a village inhabited by the Kho Mu hill tribe.

Oanh is a primary school teacher in Huoi Xen village in Nghe An province near the border between
Vietnam and Laos. Some of her pupils are Kho Mu and recently she’s noticed a swift decline in numbers.
Nutgraph
“Our pupils are dropping out so I have to go to their houses and persuade their parents to let them
Delayed
return to school,” says Oanh.
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Her school is perched on a mountainside. There are two poorly equipped classrooms made of wood and
roofed by forest leaves. The floor of the classrooms is just dirt. A broken drum hangs in the corridor.

From the mountains, the school looks like a tiny dot that could be swept away in a gale. The children
come to school barefoot. Some don’t have a shirt or T-shirt. After a downpour there are puddles on the
floor beneath the kids’ desks.

Their heads are down as they practice handwriting for the first time in their lives.

“Some kids really like coming to school, but others don’t care for it. I am never sure if they will be here
tomorrow,” says teacher Tran Thi Yen.

“I have to teach them how to read and write the Vietnamese alphabet, while they speak their own
mother tongue with each other,” she adds. “It’s tough going.”

This September only 15 pupils, from different villages in the area, turned up for class. “They come from
very poor families who herd buffaloes and grow maize in the fields,” says Yen. “They have no notebooks
or school equipment. I have to buy materials for pupils.”

Kham Muon, a 13-year-old-boy, says this is the first time he has had a chance to go to school. Before he
comes to school he has to go up the mountainside and fetch grass for his family’s buffalo and firewood
for his house. “Then at 6am, I start to walk to school. It takes an hour and a half to get here,” he says,
speaking in his mother tongue as Yen translates. “I go back home after midday. Then I have to do
housework and look after my younger brothers and sisters.”

“I will allow my daughter to study until she can read only,” says the mother of pupil Moong Ta, speaking
Vietnamese. “Why do you need to study around here? These kids grow up and get married. That’s all. I
am 60-years-old and I have never left these fields.”