Khmer people in Kien Giang Province have capitalized on the wild grey sedge as material to produce handmade items for centuries.
Khmer people in Kien Giang Province have capitalized on the wild grey sedge as material to produce handmade items for centuries.
For hundreds of years, Khmer ethnic minority people living near the Cambodian border have harvested grey sedge to make handicrafts for daily use. It is a common sight to see locals harvesting the plants in Phu My Commune, Kien Giang's Giang Thanh District.
Before going to work in the fields, farmers wear knee-length socks to protect themselves from leeches.
The grey sedge is harvested by holding the top and pulling up instead of using a sickle to cut as elsewhere in the Mekong Delta.
The farmers also wear gloves to prevent scratching their hands when working with the plants. Thi Vay of Phu My Commune, who has been harvesting grey sedge for nearly 10 years, said people harvest the plant from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. every day after they finish working in rice plantation and animal husbandry.
The plant is sorted immediately after being plucked out of the earth. Vay only keeps the green, hard plants, while the yellow, withering ones are discarded.
Grey sedge is a genus of the sedge family. It has a hard stem with brown flowers on the top and is about 1.5 meters high. The plant grows wild in Vietnam’s wetlands. Phu My Commune hosts the prime ecosystem for grey sedge to grow in a large area of the Mekong Delta.
After harvesting the plant, it is gathered into two-kg bundles. Van usually comes back with 10 bundles after each picking.
The sedge in Phu My Commune grows mostly on their own in the wetlands. After people have harvested all the sedge near their homes, they move along further to other wetlands to harvest more. It only takes about four to five months for the sedge to populate the fields.
Bunches of the sedge are hung in front of people's homes in Tran The hamlet, Phu My Commune. When walking along the canal by the commune on sunny days, visitors can see people drying and weaving handicrafts on their porches.
Sa Rel, a Phu My resident, sorts the sedge in her yard to dry at midday. If the days are sunny, people only need to dry them for three days. The dried bundles are delivered to a factory nearby to be compressed. Before machinery was available, people used a large pestle to smash the grass.
The compressed plants are used as material for local people to create household items.
Ly Hoang Bao, who is in charge of handicraft arts at Phu My Species - Habitat Conservation Area, said people make about 200,000 pieces, earning several billion dong (VND1 billion = $43,400) each year.
Some handicrafts made from grey sedge are baskets, bags, and cushions. In addition to Phu My Commune, locals in the Mekong Delta’s My Hanh Bac Commune in Long An Province and central Vietnam’s Pho Trach Village in Thua Thien- Hue Province also harvest and produce handicrafts made from the plants.
