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Dam Still Stands

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By BILL ROSE

Special to the Tribune

Published: June 29, 2008

TAMPA - TAMPA - In 1997, I traveled from Ho Chi Minh City to the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The all-night trip was bumpy on a rickety bus filled with cigarette smoke. But I didn't have to worry about snipers and land mines this time.

It was nearly 30 years since I had served as a volunteer with the Vietnam Christian Service during the Vietnam War. The Vietnam Christian Service, a church-sponsored relief agency, was similar to the Peace Corps. Its mission was to help impoverished people such as the Montagnards, an ethnic tribe in the Vietnam Central Highlands.

My return to Vietnam was prompted by reports I had heard about the irrigation dam next to the village of Kon Hojao. The village was a sleepy cluster of thatched huts near the borders of Laos and Cambodia and what was called the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I'd been told the dam was still standing. Could it be true?

During the war, I had lived near Kon Hojao as a Christian Service volunteer. Kon Hojao was inhabited by the Montagnards, Vietnam's "hill people." The war had turned many of the Montagnards into refugees.

The French left this area in the 1950s. It had once flourished, but by the time I arrived in 1967, the rice paddies had disappeared. The jungle had encroached and they were overgrown with an ugly mess of weeds and brambles. Villagers still grew rice for their sustenance, but it was the upland variety planted on hillsides and watered by rainfall.

That would change, though, almost by accident. One day, my Land Rover broke down on the road outside Kon Hojao. A couple of good-hearted GIs from a nearby engineering unit stopped to help. One was a farmer from Arkansas. With a practiced eye, he noticed an almost invisible network of canals in the underbrush. His hunch was confirmed by one of the village elders, who described an elaborate irrigation system designed by a French district administrator.

The GI from the engineering unit believed the system could be rehabilitated. He spoke with his commander and a few days later a bulldozer was sent to build an earthen dam. The fields flooded and suddenly we had an irrigation system. It was an impressive sight.

Now what? The Christian Service sent a new volunteer, a young Mennonite agriculturist named Ron Ackerman. He set out to learn about irrigated rice and a project began. The engineering unit made a fish pond with the bulldozer. The patch of land outside Kon Hojao became abundant with banana plants, a pond full of carp and tilapia, and shimmering rice fields.

But when the rainy season began, it washed out the dam. The bulldozer was no longer available - the engineering unit had moved on. That wouldn't stop us, though. With the help of an eager crew of volunteers from the village, we rebuilt the dam by hand. We used logs, sandbags and scraps of metal plate salvaged from an abandoned military airstrip. It held - just barely.

Our project attracted the attention of U.S. Agency for International Development technicians stationed in the province capitol. They constructed a permanent dam to introduce improved strains of rice into the Vietnamese countryside. Part of the agency's mission was to "win the hearts and minds of the people."

The irrigated fields near Kon Hojao became a showcase for the introduction of Philippine "miracle rice." The rice fields flourished, as did the fish and bananas. Kon Hojao became a model of grassroots development.

Then in 1972, the war took a turn for the worse. As the North Vietnamese ramped up a major offensive, Ron and I were ordered to relocate 30 miles to Kontum City. The North Vietnamese overran the district of Dak To. There was no word from Kon Hojao.

Now all these years later, I was going back. My all-night sojourn on the bus took me to Kontum, where I would need permission from local police to travel into the countryside. Ethnic tensions persist in the Central Highlands: The tribal groups tend to resist the ongoing influx of Vietnamese settlers and government authorities keep an eye on foreigners who mingle among the Montagnards.

Accompanied by a Vietnamese guide, I took another bus to the Dak To district. Along the way, the view of the postwar development was astonishing. The stretch of thick forest with only two or three settlements by the roadside had been transformed. There was an uninterrupted stretch of villages and commercial centers, along with a few modern two-story villas and plantations of coffee, rubber, eucalyptus and sandlewood.

Many of the new inhabitants were farmers relocated to the region from the poorer provinces in northern Vietnam as part of the "New Economy" program. They seemed to be flourishing but also crowding out the Montagnard farmers.

When we reached the town of Tanh Canh, where I had lived during part of my term with the Christian Service, I saw more changes. There was bustling commerce, electricity, telephones and a large war monument in a central plaza. The two-room hut in the main intersection that served as Christian Service lodging and headquarters was destroyed during the 1972 offensive. The lot was still vacant.

My guide and I set out on foot for Kon Hojao village, about a mile away. He was leery about intruding on a Montagnard village without official permission. I was nervous, too, but for a different reason. After all these years, all the violence, and all the rainy seasons, could it be true the dam was still standing?

We rounded a bend in the road and even before I could see the dam, I knew the reports were correct. In the distance were acres and acres of brilliant green rice plants, shimmering in the morning sun. I felt like shouting!

We crossed the ancient suspended footbridge over the Dak Poko River. The Kon Hojao village chief, clad in a military shirt with bright red epaulets and watching a battery-powered television, greeted us warmly. He remembered Ron and me from the old days. As a young boy, he was one of the volunteers who helped rebuild the dam by hand after the Army's earthen dam washed out.

He told us the surrounding land had been redistributed. Most of the rice fields beside his village had been turned over to Vietnamese farmers.

Nonetheless, the Kon Hojao dam was a beautiful sight. The simple structure bears no plaques or inscriptions. Yet the dam and surrounding rice fields are a peace memorial and testament to hope. They have outlasted political and military strife and extreme weather.

Lord willing, the villagers of Kon Hojao will be able to maintain their way of living for generations to come.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Bill Rose, 75, grew up in suburban Philadelphia. After returning from Vietnam, he was a social worker in Pennsylvania. He later moved to Tampa where he worked for the U.S. Postal Service before retiring in 1995. Rose and his wife have two children.

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