A new chapter in life

Born and raised in a lakeside countryside in Yen Binh district, Yen Bai province, L (born in 1980) had peaceful and happy family life with her husband and two children – a boy and a girl.

Unfortunately, the marriage went wrong and she took her daughter back to her parents’ house. Their life was supposed to quietly go on after the ups and downs of the first broken marriage. No one would think L almost traded the rest of her life for a moment of weakness.

It was in the July of 2010, when N, a new boyfriend L got to know through phone came to visit her. N asked her parents for permission to take L to his home, they nodded with delight. L also got a relative named M to accompany.

But after L and her niece got in the car, N did not drive them to his hometown but to Lang Son and sold them to a Vietnamese woman doing business in China. L was sold again to a Chinese man to be his wife, while her niece was sold to a brothel.

Shocked and frightened, L could do nothing but swallow her own tears. After living with the Chinese man for a while, she got pregnant and gave birth to a girl in August of 2011. But even the new child couldn’t lessen her sorrow and her concerns toward her parents and daughter back home.

In November of 2011, she wiped away her tears to leave the new born behind with her Chinese husband and fled. Following the instruction of a Vietnamese countryman, she managed to get to the border in Lang Son and found her way home.

After more than a year in foreign land, L was back filled with regret and nervous breakdown. Relatives and neighbors gave her the look of despise and reject, believing she was the one who trafficked her niece, who fled home a month earlier.

She didn’t want to meet anybody at that time. She was scared of going out. Gossips from people made her uneasy. Every night, the memory of the little girl she left in China kept wrenching her heart.

L spends her free time everyday to do basketry and embroider work of traditional brocade to earn extra income

To help her prove herself clean, officers from Women Association in the commune guided her to report to the police and write denunciations against the man who trafficked her and her niece to China.

After seeking, in December of 2012, N was arrested and the case was put to trial.

The truth revealed made L relieved and secured. There remained less and less scorn and hostility from the neighbors.

With the encouragement of her family, along with the support of Women Association, L started joining the activities of the association, to meet and talk and share with others about her life. She gradually gained back her open heart and faith in life.

In September of 2012, with the introduction of Yen Bai provincial Women Association, L was supported by the ETIP project of World Vision Vietnam with a sum of 13 million dongs to set up a clothes stall.

Beside the time in the market, L also spends her free time everyday to do basketry and embroider work of traditional brocade to earn extra income. Her family economy has been improved. She also managed to build a new house.

More joy came her way when she met a man who loved her and got married in late 2013. A bright girl was born to bond her marriage.

L now has a new happy chapter of her life and the smile is back on her face. “It was the Women Association and World Vision Vietnam that helped me a lot, otherwise I can not have a life like this”, reiterated L.

Luc Thi Hop, Head of X communal Women Association, Yen Binh district, Yen Bai province