My homeland is poor but famous for many specilities. Poor but peaceful. Poor but hospitable. I am often proud of such specific characteristics of my homeland. But one day, I suddenly wonder myself why my homeland can’t become rich in spite of its enomous potentialities.

A stall has just been opened in a farm on the way to Ghenh Rang Hill, Quy Nhon City. The cackle of hens behind trees and the bellow/hee-haw of cows  in the farm stir my heart when I am sitting in the thatched hut. From the stall, visitors can sip coffee while looking at the city within sight of their eyes. How pleasant I am to go the place by motorbkike not far from the city in some minutes!

My friends and I frequently go there for chatting and relaxing. I sometimes think about my father, a middle- aged peasant. What will he think when he is here?

When we are apart from our fatherland, its poverty seemingly becomes  vague and romantic because of homesickness. Such thatched huts are somewhat strange and attractive to city-dwellers but frightening to rural villagers in my homeland. The countrymen are afraid that their thatched houses can’t stand devastating tropical storms. Therefore, they try to save money building strong concrete houses. Young visitors of the stall probably have never experienced any hard day in poverty, even a very plain meal. Some persons leave their motherland for cities to have new lives and now want to live the poor and humble days for a while. It is so natural to find something romantic in such a tough and rival life.

Sitting here, I myself feel sorry for being ansorbed in my thoughts of the romance of the poverty. Nostalgia only is nonsense.  Everyone has to live up to reality but not memories. My compatriot friends and I sometimes gather and chat together. Seeing me talking as if in a monologue, they surprise a little before making out what I say.  “Umm, why our homeland is still poor?” asks Ms. Anh, my dear friend.

Many poems, literary works praise lovely and peaceful countryside landscapes, simple and warm villages. Why there aren’t many works arousing love toward high-ways, modern and comfortable buildings and  commercial centres? 

What will we do to develop  our regions in couple of years (not in 20, 30 years) so that  whenever we think about the countrysides, we will figure out images of fruitful orchards, yielded crops, naive smile of pupils on their way to schools, internet and wifi broadbands like the familiar characteristics of the countryside. In Lao Cai, wimax broadband is put into experiment now. Not wifi any more. Why not in my homeland?

In his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman says that people always desire both to use luxurious and comfortable cars and to enjoy peacefulness of lying under the verdant shade of olive trees. Only modern cars are not enough. Neither the olive trees. If we keep on thinking about the past olive tree of our ancestors, we will have nothing to affirm existance of new young generations. Am I right, my dear friends?

• Written by Phuong Viet
• Translated by Hao Nguyen