Children swim in bags: a difficult journey to school for students in a Vietnamese village (6 photos)

Residents of the small Vietnamese village of Huoi Ha do everything to ensure that their children attend school. This includes transporting them in packages across rivers.





And this is not a joke or a strange attraction, but a reality that frightens. After all, every year the villagers face a flood, which turns the stream flowing near the village into a raging river. Of course, the children cannot cross it on their own.

So, in normal times, children use the crossing to get to the other side under the supervision of adults. Only in conditions of a strong current it becomes impossible to cross the stream - an improvised raft can simply be carried away by the current. And with him - and children.



And this weather lasts not just one day, but several weeks. Of course, all this time children do not go to school, which frightens parents. Therefore, they came up with a brilliant solution: to transport the children across the river on a raft.





Large and strong men tie the baby in a bag, and it just sits and waits for release. According to the schoolchildren themselves, they do not like this kind of pastime. And parents are afraid for their children: there may be garbage, stones, glass fragments in the water - literally anything. And the river is cold. Both the man and the child can be harmed.

But what is the alternative? To remain without school education and live all my life in a village, cut off from the world, like my parents? Not going to university, not finding a job and living in poverty, if not poverty? The prospects are very doubtful, and the children understand this very well. Their parents understand too.



What about local authorities? Don't they really know about this problem? They know. But they frankly don’t care - it’s not their children who swim in bags. They regularly promise to build a normal bridge that will allow villagers to attend school without risking their lives, but... but things are still there. Things have not yet gone beyond promises. And whether it will come at all is not clear.

People from the village write to them and try to get at least some help, but so far to no avail. However, foreign journalists have already covered this problem, so the village still has a chance for a bridge, because After discussion in the press, it becomes more difficult to ignore the problem.