4:38 PM
Trung
Early every morning, Pham Thi Sao, 73, from Tien Giang’s My Tho City begins her work day selling lottery tickets in front of Chanh Toa Church on Hung Vuong Street.
As soon as she shows up, hundreds of sparrows on the church roof swoop down and start hopping around her.
Waiting for all of her “children” to appear, Sao takes rice from a nylon bag and scatters it on the ground.
Ten minutes later, after they are fully fed, the birds still crowd around the old woman, as if they don’t want to part.
“They don’t come just to be fed,” she said. “They come even when I don’t have anything to give them.”
Sao started feeding the birds 20 years ago when she encountered some hungry ones hunting for food on the street. She shared her rice with them and the birds ate as if they hadn’t been fed for ages.
Since then, old Sao always sets aside part of her modest earnings from selling lottery tickets to buy food for the sparrows.
“They follow me even when I move to a different location to sell the tickets,” she said.
Every morning as old Sao is feeding her sparrows, in Ben Tre City, another old woman is doing the same thing.
Truong Mui Muoi, who also makes a living by selling lottery tickets, has been feeding wild sparrows for 5 years.
Like Sao, Muoi was also touched by the way the hungry sparrows ate the first time she fed them, with peanuts. “I’ve bought rice for them everyday every since,” she said.
Though they are poor, earning a mere VND50-70,000 (US$2- 3) a day from selling lottery tickets, the women said they would continue to feed the sparrows.
“As long as I can still sell lottery tickets, I will feed them,” said old Sao.
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