Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 29, No. 4. 1966.
Students aid peasants
Students aid peasants
Salient Asian Correspondent
A Group of Vietnamese university students spent their last annual vacation helping refugees to build a new village.
The Refugees, Montagard tribesmen, arrived in Tuyen Duc province in South Vietnam's Central Highlands last year. This is the third time in a decade that they have fled en masse from the Viet Cong, who, they complain, treated them like slaves.
The university students helped the refugees build a new village on government-donated land at Suai Thong, in the Eastern hills of Tuyen Duc province. Most of the students were unaccustomed to manual labour. But they lived and worked under the same rugged conditions as the refugees.
The students borrowed trucks and took the refugees off to cut bamboo. The refugees then showed the students how to weave bamboo and together they built new houses from bamboo screens.
The students also built a small dispensary which they slept in at night. To keep the dispensary open now that the students are back at university, the government is employing a full-time health worker.