'Wonder' machine weaves mats for villagers prosperity

26 Jul '05

4 min read

It's a rare celebration time at Thuan Dien village as villagers celebrate the success of their 'wonder' mat weaving machine.

A contraption that removes druggery and pain, and delivers economic freedom for the villagers of Ben Tre's Chau Thanh District; owe their happiness to a neighbour, Nguyen Van Long.

All it took was sheer ingenuity, hard work and singular devotion to create a machine that would make mats in shortest time frame and reduce manual labor.

But Long followed a like named path on his way to success before his machine churned out its first woven mat in mid April, this year.

His penniless days, labouring with another labourer to produce just four mats for export sold at about VND15,000, was what Long's family sustained on.

At times, mats were refused for export due to lack of high-quality demanded by foreign markets. Then, domestic market had to be explored for cheap.

Question that was dogged him for quite sometime was how to replace manual effort with machine.

Here came his former job as motorcycle repairer on hand, added by indefinite hours of observing workers on the looms, analysing the weaving process.

Money was problem but with his wife, Tran Thi Na around, they created a budget that would allow them to gradually save up money.

Sharing her husband's passion, Na readily agreed to be thrifty with the daily meals and cut down on personal expenses.

"I had to stop drinking coffee and smoking," Long says.

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