Mama Vuvi
She is Mama: matriarch of family, business, and the valley.
A googled-eyed plastic sandal strikes the dribbling soil once again. Xao leads our little expedition through the aisles of corn, each one offering a gentle yellow curtsey as she swings her outstretched arms over their buttery heads. They know her; she has walked this path many times before. Xao is the thirteen-year-old daughter of Mama Vuvi, a dedicated wife, mother, and entrepreneur local to the northwestern Vietnamese province of Lào Cai, home to the popular tourist spot of Sapa town. While Sapa could be likened to a mini-Vegas as the daylight dwindles, its popularity lies in the trekking paths nestled in within the great valley’s green walls.
Mama has set up her trekking business alone, in the hopes to spend fewer of her days toiling away for nine hours in the rice-paddy fields, and to take advantage of the eager stream of tourists hopping off the sleeper bus at Sapa each morning. When no one has contacted her through Facebook, Mama wends her way down to the village to pick up dazzled tourists on the town streets and herd them up to her homestay like the stray cats they are – that’s if she’s successful. Regrettably, the majority of visitors book themselves into the ship-like hotel structures plonked on the valley sides, snorting up the delicate nature around them – served up with a plate of overpriced hikes and drab western toast.
She had picked us up by a roadside café, where we ordered spicy ramen and milk tea with chunks of sweetened fruit. Introducing herself, we learnt that Mama only ever refers to herself in the third person. She is Mama, matriarch of family, business, and the valley.
A green string hammock like a fruit net cradles Mama’s sleeping husband. Before him, a muddy slope freckled with weeds, leaves and leggy chickens nipping at stray corn bits in the puddles peeks over the valley slope. It is a magnificent landscape: green, textured and foggy, ripe with the local harvest and gorging on sweet dapples of sunlight.
Mama leads us into her wooden home. She has a smile infected with a child’s playfulness yet her hair is damp with the sweats of labour and love. She is at once both delightful and imposing, cheeky and humbling. The ground floor is an open space, with a table and five blue plastic chairs. A kitchen and two bathrooms are on the left. Mama tells us over dinner of her ongoing project of developing this floor, but income is slow and sparse and must be invested wisely, over time. Four rooms for visitors line the floor above, each with a double bed and a mosquito net laced with purple frills and beads. It’s sweet – reminds me of a 70s wedding cake. We shower and my friend plays chess with Xao and her younger sister. Another guest and I string beans and mushrooms on the porch while Mama prepares food inside. The chickens continue to nibble.
With us are an Argentinian couple. We are taught how to make spring rolls, pregnant with fresh vegetables and lots of onion. We pack them tentatively under the firm eye of Xao, sitting in a circle around the table, exchanging stories about our cultures. For dinner, Mama also prepares bamboo, buffalo, steamed rice, boiled potatoes and fine mushrooms. Outside, the raindrops glitch off the corrugated metal roof.
After dinner, she fixes my hair in a traditional cap. While my thick frizz reaches an impressive length down my ribcage, it’s nothing compared to Mama’s hip-length locks which she keeps wound around her scalp with a comb. Mama is of the Hmong people, an ethnic minority group who largely reside in Sapa. Their history is one long and complex one. Hmong people have faced religious and cultural persecution, torture, and execution by the Vietnamese state.
Mama is a woman of force, as is her story. An entrepreneur at heart, she already has over one thousand Facebook followers and reams of raving reviews. But as Sapa’s valley walls continue to be scoffed up by the glut of hotels, her business deserves more exposure than ever: matriarch of family, business, the valley.
You captured mama Vuvi perfectly!