Female rickshaw drivers at Hanoi market A woman is pulling her rickshaw loaded with agricultural products at Long Bien Market in Hanoi. Tuoi Tre Lacking land to farm at home, unemployed women must leave their hometowns to move to Hanoi to earn their living by pulling cargo on carts, making only US$10-14 each night During the nightshift from 22:00 pm until early morning, Long Bien, an agriculture market in Hanoi, transforms into a place of business for wholesalers and shopkeepers. The sellers of the day become buyers when night falls. These rickshaw pullers, mostly women, carry goods from the assembling point where trucks unload in the market to each shopkeeper’s warehouse to prepare for the next day. Every midnight, convoys of light trucks and motor tricycles gather at the market to unload agricultural products. The noises of vehicles and the shouts of traders and porters make the market a noisy, lively place, contrasting to the silent darkness of the surrounding area. After the cargo is unloaded from the trucks, the rickshaw pullers struggle to manually load boxes and packages of cargo on their pullers, which are simply a thick metal sheet fixed on two small wheels at one end and two long handles at the other. Each night, around 300 rickshaw pullers are in operation at Long Bien Market. Each cart is pushed by two women, one in the front to hold the handles and pull, and the other at the back to push when the cart is overloaded. Hard labor Ms. Nguyen Thi Hoa, a rickshaw puller from the northern province of Nam Dinh whose face is gaunt from lack of sleep, said she can load 500kg of raw mango on her cart and pull it to the shopkeepers’ warehouses in the market. For over ten years, the 48-year-old woman has been present at Long Bien from 22:00 pm until early morning to work, without a day off regardless of weather conditions. She said she spent VND3 million ($144) to buy the cart ten years ago. “This job is very hard. You must load the cart with a lot of goods to earn enough money. The first days I worked were terrible, as I was so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open. But now I’m used to it,” Hoa said. “I am paid 2,000 – 3,000 dong for each package of mangos. So I have to load ten packages to have 30,000 dong ($1.5) on my cart each time. I make an average of 200,000 – 300,000 ($10-14) a night,” she added. Hoa revealed that she is pennywise and is able to spend only VND2 million a month and save the remaining VND4-7 million to send back home to her children in Nam Dinh. For children’s future After receiving a phone call from her children to ask for money for school fees, she said she manages to work even when sick. “My husband died and what I need now is for my children to learn well. If they can do that I am willing to work here until I am white haired. “I am working as hard as a buffalo or a horse so that my children can be well educated and never have to work a hard job like this,” Hoa said. The other puller, Le Thi Mien of the northern province of Hung Yen, told Tuoi Tre that the female workers become angry at each other and argue sometimes because the job is so straining. However, arguments are quickly forgotten, and the women go back to friendly chatting soon after the fights. “This job is unstable. We have a lot of cargo such as fruit and flowers to pull on the first and the fifteenth day of the lunar calendar,” said Mien, who has worked at the market for eight years. “Years ago, I was working here while eight months pregnant. I’m not sure if such hard labor was the cause, but my child was born prematurely. Now he is sick often,” Mien added. Women such as Ms. Hoa and Ms. Mien are considered lucky as they have their own carts, while others without any vehicle must work as assistants who push the rickshaws, earning one third of the cart owner’s profits. Tuoi Tre