Pham Thanh Cong leans forward, his 55-year-old face a patchwork of scars and dents, and explains what's wrong with My Khe hamlet. Vietnamese families are built around a three-generation structure, Cong says. Parents work the fields while grandparents take care of children. In time, children will become caregivers and grandparents the cared-for. Eventually, the generations will shift and the cycle will repeat. Families have been this way since there were families in Vietnam.
But in My Khe, a generation is missing.
There isn't much that is exceptional about this hamlet. Farmers in conical hats bend low over rice paddies as children tend to the cows and water buffalo that graze on the fields' grassy borders. Families, sometimes as many as four people, balance on mopeds as they make their way along My Khe's single road. It's hard to imagine this place any other way.