In the early 1997, a man came to On Oc village with an offer that was almost too good to refuse. Only three years have passed, but the villagers know that if they had taken this man’s offer, life wouldn’t be the same.  

The man was a retired driver from a Son La tourist company. He told the villagers he would build a road for them if each family provided him with one cubic metre of samu wood. It seemed like a very simple deal. And the villagers desperately needed a road. On Oc was very poor, and very remote.  

The villagers agreed to plan. A road would be built to Moc Chau district, on the highway leading to Hanoi. Only the village elder, Vu Lao Lenh, was wary. He had attended a 1993 Nao Song where deforestation was discussed at length (see box, opposite). He knew the value of the samu forest surrounding his village.   Lenh called the commune and the district, and they agreed to support the road project. But Son La province officials refused, saying the forest was protected and could not be cut. At the same time, Lenh also contacted the TEW office in Hanoi.  

The need to act fast   What Lenh and the On Oc villagers could not know was that the man who came to their village was working for Dat Viet Ltd., a company with a long history of illegal forest exploitation. If the road had been built, the forest would have been entirely destroyed. (Dat Viet has since been closed down by the government).  

TEW had worked in On Oc since 1995, and felt they had to act to protect the community. On Oc is in Muong Lum commune, Yen Chau district. When TEW heard about the offer from Dat Viet, immediate calls were made to the district, and the Ministry of Forestry in Hanoi. The ministry had not heard of Dat Viet, but they were certain that samu was a protected species that could not be cut. TEW asked Yen Chau district to send some officials to the village, to plead with the villagers not to cut the forest.   “Tell them a road we can buy, a forest we cannot buy,” recalls TEW director Tran Thi Lanh. TEW called the Dutch embassy to see if they could provide the funds to build a road. The embassy said they did not build roads - ironically because roads mean outsiders can come in and cut trees. The embassy said they only have small grants for natural resource management projects.  

TEW also called ICCO representative Kees de Ruiter, who had just started working with TEW. Kees said ICCO might be able to fund a project under $15,000, although it was not normal ICCO policy to build roads. A few days later, Lanh went to On Oc to discuss the situation with the villagers.  

“The villagers seemed to be waiting for me, and everyone was very emotional,” Lanh says.   “I knew I had to be very careful with what I said, because although the villagers trusted me, I had no money or power. I could not make any big promises.”  

The community told Lanh that market changes made a road necessary, as they needed to sell corn. Lanh had heard this before, as the villagers had been asking for a road for many years. In 1992, after opium was banned, the province had promised to build a road. They gave the villagers some explosives to destroy rocks, but with no other assistance the villagers could not complete the work.  

Then, in 1996, the province brought in machines and allocated 150 million dong (about US$14,000 at that time) to build a 7 km road. Vu Lao Lenh says the province workers got 150 metres, then ran out of money.  

Lanh decided to discuss the social aspects of the road, as well as economic concerns: “I asked the villagers to divide into three groups, so I could talk to each separately. I talked first to the elders; then the village-level government staff; then the Women’s Union and all the women.”   As it turned out, all the groups were easy to understand, and they said all the same things: they knew they needed the forest, but they also needed a road. All the groups had the same understanding about the value of the forest. So Lanh brought the villagers together to analyse their needs.  

The villagers said they needed a road so they could sell corn (now a cash crop after opium was banned). Lanh disagreed. She said the first need was for a safe road so women would not have to climb up and down seven hills in order to get to the commune for salt and oil. The path through the hills was very dangerous in the rainy season.  

Second, Lanh said that a road would allow children to get to the secondary school outside the village, which is also located at the commune centre. Finally, Lanh agreed that a road would make it easier to sell corn.  

People agreed immediately that they needed a road to the centre of the commune, not the other direction to Moc Chau. So the community decided then and there to say no to the road to Moc Chau. Once they discussed their daily needs, all the villagers agreed on the road to the commune. Lanh said she would try to find money, and she gave Lenh her passport as a guarantee.  

Some time after she left, the man from Dat Viet company returned to the village. Some villagers still wanted to agree to his plan, but Lenh refused: “I believe in Lanh,” he told the villagers, “she will get us a road for sure.”  

A lesson in road-building  

After six months, the Dutch embassy did not approve a grant, so Lanh invited Kees de Ruiter and Jan van Bentum from ICCO to go to On Oc. They had to walk the 7 km from the commune to the village. Lenh, the village elder, talked about the history of the relationship between On Oc and TEW. After meeting the villagers, Jan and Kees decided to fund the road. TEW wrote a proposal and the ICCO head office approved it in two weeks.  

At that time, Lenh was in Hanoi for a national workshop of TEW key farmers. Lanh asked Lenh to sign a form, without telling him what it was. But he wasn’t surprised when told it was a contract for $10,000.  

Lanh had told the villagers they would have to build the road themselves, including finding the path for the road between the village and the commune. Soon after, two TEW experts went to On Oc to discuss plans for the road. They discovered that the road would also concern two other Hmong villages - Dao and Pa Khom. So they called together all the elders and government staff of the three villages, to set up regulations and draw a map. The On Oc villagers had already found a path and designed the section of the road leading to their village. The province then designed the section leading to Dao village, at a cost of 25 million dong.  

A project management board was set up by the district, with the district vice-chairman, the district Transportation department chairman, the district accountant, the commune Party secretary, and the village leaders from On Oc and Dao.  

Lenh and the two village leaders managed day-to-day work. All of the men from both villages provided labour, and women replaced men if they were away. Women also helped with digging. A group of six men were organised to deal with the explosives, and they had some help from the district Transport department with this task. Other than this, the villagers did all the work themselves. Lenh says the road took 24 days to finish and cost 154 million dong - almost the same as the province road which covered 150 m. The road to On Oc was 7.7 km, plus another section to Dao village. The district gave 90 million dong directly to the villagers, to cover their labour costs. The On Oc villagers received 19 million of this amount, with other portions set aside for Dao, Pa Khom and several ethnic Thai villages close to the commune centre.  

Every month, the villagers from On Oc spend three days maintaining their section of the road, with each family responsible for one area. The main road section used by villagers from On Oc, Dao and Pa Khom is managed by groups that include members from all villages. The road is repaired every rainy season by the villagers. They needed a machine to cut stone, so TEW gave them a 7 million dong fund for repairs. The fund is managed by Lenh.  

At first, no one had believed a road could be built so cheaply. If the province had built it, the cost would have been much higher. More importantly, the villagers did most of the work themselves. The path of the road was determined by the villagers, not engineers, and the villagers handled some of the money and supplied all the labour.    

Positive impact  

The 7,000 ha samu forest is still standing around the Hmong villages of Muong Lum commune. Pa Khom village built their own road afterwards, copying the approach of the villagers from On Oc. Because the forest is still standing, the customs and culture of the Hmong community are still intact. The role of the Nao Song is still important - whereas it would be meaningless if the forest was cut down by outsiders. So the road to Moc Chau would have destroyed more than forest. The road built by the villagers, however, protected their culture and customs. It also made them stronger by giving them confidence and skills to solve future problems by themselves.  

The road-building project in On Oc village was in many ways a model of community development work. It demonstrates what can be accomplished when there is close understanding between a community, a local NGO, and an international donor. Also, the district and commune authorities played positive roles.  

In the whole process, the role of the On Oc village elder was very important. TEW staff believe that only traditional leaders and traditional customs are strong enough to protect natural resources. If TEW did not act to help Mr Lenh protect his community traditions, the result would have been very different. The men from Dat Viet company would never have explained the true outcome of the road, whereas TEW helped the villagers understand their options, and the consequences of their actions.  

The donor, ICCO, also displayed a great deal of flexibility. ICCO does not normally fund infrastructure projects. But Kees de Ruiter says it was easy to understand why the villagers needed the road:   “You can’t protect a forest by building a wall around it; you can’t be too dogmatic,” he says. “The road was very cheap compared to similar projects, with a high degree of participation.”  

After the road was finished, the On Oc villagers began to grow a great deal more corn. Using a new type of seed, they grew the corn on flat land previously used for dry rice that had very low yields. The village elder maintains the no forest has been cut down to make way for corn fields. In fact, he says old corn fields on the hills were replaced with community forests - so the road has indirectly increased the area of forest around the village.  

Many families now have motorbikes and improved housing, and hunger has almost disappeared. But Lenh doesn’t like to talk about these improvements too much. When asked how the road has changed his community, he just laughs: “TEW should come and do an evaluation,” he says, “because if I talk about the changes I’ll sound too proud!”  

‘Nao Song’ is a very important traditional customs in spiritual life of H’mong people. Elders discuss together about traditional education, moral norms, good traditional customs, that should be transferred to young generation, such as behaviour towards forest and natural resources. This reminds every generations in the community the way to behave with each other, mutual help, development together. Unsuitable regulations, customary law should be reviewed, adjusted. The elders also discuss and decide on training and selection of new village elders, solution of education for children, maintainance of order and security in H’mong communities, rectifying error, implementation of state policies.