Working Women

We learned many farmers have a side hustle to bring in some extra income while the rice grows. 

Here are some hard working ladies of the Mekong Delta. 

This woman makes rice papers (spring roll paper) by hand in her back yard. She makes up to 400 a day which earns her roughly $20, maybe $10 profit. 

This lady works in a coconut factory. She peels off coconut skin (after it's husked and cracked). She's paid for the weight of peeled coconuts, which is usually 200-300 kilo by the end of the day. That means she will earn about $7. 

Here we have an older woman working at a pottery "factory." It's all done by hand so maybe workshop is a better term. She  ladels liquid clay layer by layer onto a sand mold and hand-shapes it into a pot.  She makes 20-30 pots a day and earns about $1 for every 6 pots. 

This happy woman owns and operates a tofu paper business out of her home. Large vats of liquid tofu simmer behind us. She sells them to a middle man that will use them for other foods. She can make 40 kilos a day and earns $2 per kilo. That's $80 net before costs and wages. 

This young woman is in a brick factory where clay is formed into bricks then fired in giant kilns. She's unloading bricks after a full month of baking. I have no idea what her earning potential is, but bless her for her hard work. 

The farmer pictured below (a man) is standing in his marigold flower field. It's nearly Vietnamese New Year so he will be selling his entire marigold crop to a wholesaler in 2 weeks when the plants will be fully bloomed. Each plant earns him $3 and I think he had about 800. That's roughly $2400 for half a year's work. The other half of the year he grows watermelon.