Family enclave! Tiny community preserves Vietnamese traditions in Moroccan village since the 50s

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In a village called Al-Shinwa (‘China,’ in Arabic), in the Kenitra province, seven families consisting of husbands of Moroccan origin, wives from Vietnam and their children, live spread over forty hectares of agricultural land, as seen on Friday.

In 1950, France, which occupied Morocco at the time, recruited a large number of Moroccan soldiers to fight in the Indo-Chinese war, particularly the 1954 Battle of Dan Bian Fu in Vietnam. After the war, some of those soldiers found themselves stuck in Vietnam, married Vietnamese women, had children and lived there for more than 22 years.

In 1972, about 70 fighters together with their Vietnamese families returned to Morocco and were given land in western Morocco to live.

“In the years 1951/52 I left the French army, I saw a lot of denial and things I did not like, I refused and said to myself it is better to fight in the ranks of the Vietnamese, so I fled and went among the Vietnamese who embraced me with open arms. Ho Chi Minh instructed his people to treat the deserting people well,” said Mohammed Allam, an eighty-eight-year-old who turned against the French army during the war.

After the soldiers received the news that the King of Morocco, Mohammed V, was deposed, he and others defected from the French army to fight in the ranks of Ho Chi Minh. Muhammad Allam, like the rest of the soldiers, stayed for twenty-two years in Vietnam before the King of Morocco, until Hassan II, ordered in 1972 that the soldiers return to their homeland with their Vietnamese families to settle in agricultural lands distributed to them.

“A beautiful person is a person with a beautiful heart. I didn’t know him, he came to our house and I accepted to marry him. At first I was afraid of the idea of leaving Vietnam and going with him to his country, but Morocco received us well and provided us with everything, and I lived a decent life like all married women, and it was a right choice. We came here in 1972 and at that time I had six children and I gave birth to three others here in Morocco,” his wife Nhung Nguyen Thi said.

The couple has nine children which Thi raised both according to Vietnamese and Moroccan traditions. Due to their old age and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, their kids are trying to visit them at different times while taking precautionary measures.

SOT, Mohammed Allam, Former Moroccan soldier in the French army (Arabic): “In the years 1951/52 I left the French army, I saw a lot of denial and things I did not like, I refused and said to myself it is better to fight in the ranks of the Vietnamese, so I fled and went among the Vietnamese who embraced me with open arms. Ho Chi Minh instructed his people to treat the fleeing people well.”

SOT, Mohammed Allam, Former Moroccan soldier in the French army (Arabic): “Do you know what the French used to tell us? They said: All of you will be in a well, and your king, Mohammed V, will be in a well alone, which is the story of his exile, which was carried out by France, at that time the soldiers fled and headed towards the Vietnamese.”

SOT, Nhung Nguyen Thi, Muhammad Allam’s wife (Arabic): “A beautiful person is a person with a beautiful heart. I didn’t know him, he came to our house and I accepted to marry him. At first I was afraid of the idea of leaving Vietnam and going with him to his country, but Morocco received us well and provided us with everything, and I lived a decent life like all married women, and it was a right choice. We came here in 1972 and at that time I had six children and I gave birth to three others here in Morocco.”

SOT, Mohammed Allam, Former Moroccan soldier in the French army (Arabic): “One of the managers responsible for us asked me, saying: Muhammad. I replied: Yes. He said to me: Did you bring your wife from the village or from the city? I replied: From the village. Then he said: Well, good because the villagers do well, not like the city women.”

C/U Thi

SOT, Mohammed Allam, Former Moroccan soldier in the French army (Arabic): “They gave her to me and I married her without complications, and they told me to live with each other until she buries you or you her. And of course, I was not alone, but with many Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian brothers.”
#AlShinwa #Morocco #Kenitra

Video ID: 20210724-034

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