Saigon’s Poor Struggle To Survive

Years of Western World’s Economic Embargo Still Hurts People

Story and photos by: Thomas Hutchings


Saigon, Viet Nam – It’s the end of February and the heat hasn’t begun to gain momentum on this sultry morning. It’s only 9 o’clock, but everyone feels the air temperature rising. The poor cling to the edge of living like their shanties, which sit at odd angles atop rotting pilings set into the mud. The poor have already taken shelter in the shade of an old French building across the narrow street where their “houses,” made from anything they can find, begin to bask in an Indochina sun. The sun will start to blaze soon and it will be time to continue their work, which is trying to do anything to earn something. A good month may bring in about $12 from recycling glass, plastic and just about anything else that can be picked up and sold.

Lan (not her real name) is in her late thirties and is the mother of 4 children, ages 5 to 16. Her children are illiterate and help to earn money for the family by walking neighborhoods selling lottery tickets. For each ticket they sell, they will earn a profit of 200 dong, the equivalent to 1 ¼ cents in the US. The two youngest children stay with their mother at the edge of a tributary of the Saigon River separating Districts 5 and 6. As I talk with Lan, I look inside what can best be described as a hovel. Just inside the opening sits her devotional Buddhist shrine and the case of soy sauce that was donated by a friend accompanying me. A rat comes from behind the shrine, sniffs at the plastic wrap enshrouding the black liquid-filled bottles, and then disappears back into the shadows of the shack.

Lan doesn’t smile much. There’s not much to smile about and her front teeth are missing and her gums have nearly receded to the bone. Other teeth hang precariously nearby. She has several huge bags of recycled materials on the concrete apron at the now low-tide river. When it rains, they take shelter inside the shack and put tattered, blue, plastic tarps over the roof. When the river rises in the rainy season, they sleep on the concrete embankment because the shack becomes inundated with black, filthy water. They have no bathrooms. Lan and her neighbors do what they can.

Near the downtown area of Saigon, in District 1, Kim (also not her real name) shares a 5 foot wide by 10 foot long living quarters with 6 other people. Like Lan, her children are also illiterate and help earn money for the family. Several years ago, Kim tried to get some extra money for the family and sold heroin to the addicts who live nearby and some of the drug-seeking foreigner backpackers who haunt the nearby Pham Ngu Lao district. She was caught and sent to a vocational center near the Highlands for 3 years. While she was gone, her husband left and never returned, leaving the children to the care of social workers.

Education is not compulsory. Attempts are being made to make gains in literacy in Viet Nam, but the country is still feeling the effects of the nearly 17 year economic embargo by the United States and some of its western allies. Four billion dollars in war reparations promised by the Nixon administration was never sent. A country only seeking its own liberation and self-determination was punished by the West, which it now forgives.

Making inroads into the impoverished segments of society is difficult for the government. Poverty eradication programs have been at work, but funds are severely stretched to help those most at risk. Private persons and non-government organizations try, but it is like trying to catch the wind. The rate of poverty in the rural southeast of Vietnam stands at 45% according to the World Bank. They also discovered a high of 74% of people in the North Central Region are also impoverished.

To women like Lan and Kim, percentages don’t matter. It also doesn’t matter to their children who go out every morning to help earn what money they can in an economy that is shifting to a full market economy. Lan and Kim, and so many others, will sadly be left out of the booming markets.