In the middle of the night of August 1, 2025, when the whole Hung Pu Xi village was still sleeping in the pouring rain, Mr. Mua A Thi woke up because his instincts were not healthy. As the village chief, he understood that the area near the stream would be the first place to face the danger if there were flash floods. In the darkness, his urgent call rang over the phone: "Enscape now!". And in just 30 minutes, nearly 100 people were instructed by him to move to safety. When it was morning, they stood from the top of the hill and witnessed the houses swept away by floodwaters as if they had never existed.
In another village, in Lao Cai, nearly a year ago, there was also a quiet man with eyes that always looked further than now. That is Mr. Ma Seo Chu. When the heavy rains in early September 2024 hit Kho Vang village, the feelings of people who have lived all their lives in the mountains and forests made him unable to sit still. Discovering a 30cm long crack in the ground at risk of causing a landslide, Mr. Chu - in a situation of power outage and lost signal - did not wait for instructions. He and the veteran party members held an urgent meeting, made their own decisions, and organized a rapid evacuation. Within 8 hours, 115 people were safe. That evening, rocks and soil flooded down, burying a corner of the village.
In those two stories, there is one thing in common: Determination. Not everyone dares to make big decisions, related to the lives of hundreds of people, they understand: A real leader is someone who knows how to put the people's lives above all administrative principles.
We can call it courage. But deeper, it is a heart that knows how to love and sympathize. Neither Mo A Thi nor Ma Seo Chu chose to be "heroes", they only saw what they had to do as leaders of a community.
In the corners of the forest and the mountains, the two villagers and villagers still demonstrate a true leadership mindset: Dude to take responsibility, dare to act, know how to mobilize forces, divide people, divide work and - most importantly - take the safety of the people as the center.
The A Thi and Ma Seo seasons are just two of many ordinary people who have made unusual actions today that deserve to be called out - not because they need to be famous, but because they remind us that: Courage does not need to be ostentatious, but needs to act at the right time.
And above all, such stories show that abnormal always start from normal people. When putting the interests of the community above the ego, when the heart is big enough to embrace the safety of others, that is the time when people overcome themselves, overcome fear to know how to care for others before caring for themselves.
