3 - Family as the Social Unit

Summary

FAMILY LIFE

Much of the life of the residents of Binh Thuong B Hamlet revolves around the family. With the aim of illustrating how family members spend their everyday life together and interact with each other in daily activities, I follow a day in the life of my host family. Of course, every day is different, but the day introduced here is a typical one. In this family the father and mother are over seventy and the children are in their late twenties to early forties. The oldest grandchild is over twenty and the youngest are infants and babies. The head of the family is Uncle Bay, and he lives with his wife Aunt Tam and Youngest Brother, their youngest son who is single. The other six children live separately. Most of them are married except for Second Brother who is divorced, and four of them (Second Brother, Third Brother, Fourth Sister and Fifth Sister) live in the same hamlet.

Morning in the village starts early, when it is still dark outside and stars are sparkling in the sky around the disc of the moon. When cocks start crowing, shortly after four, Aunt Tam gets up before anyone else in the house is awake and makes a wood fire in the kitchen hearth. Some mornings when the electricity is off, as in other houses in the village that have no electricity, the mother lights a kerosene lamp, which gives the small house a dim yellow glow. While waiting for the wood to start crackling quietly and steadily, she pumps water from the well for the kettle which she then places over the fire, which is producing red flames by now. In most other houses where they cannot afford water pumps, they boil the water they fetched from the river days before so the mud would settle. When the water boils, Aunt Tam makes a pot of tea, the first of many in the upcoming day.

Around five, other members of the family, Uncle Bay, Youngest Brother, and a grandchild (son of Second Brother) who stays in the house every night, get up, and the day's activity begins. After washing their faces in the river, the family members clean the pig hut, and sweep the house and the front garden.