PORT FOURCHON, La. Ngo Van Nguyen fled the communists of North Vietnam as a child. In the 1970s, he braved his way to the United States as a refugee, bringing along his wife and two young children. He then faced down initial suspicions from many Cajuns in bayou country while trying to establish his shrimping business. And starting with one small boat, Nguyen built his business over the years into a 30-boat fleet, complete with his own ice house and shrimp shed.
Nguyen is nothing if not determined.
So when Hurricane Katrina struck Bayou Lafourche, a waterway in southeastern Louisiana 2 1/2 miles off the Gulf of Mexico, Nguyen did not back down. Although many of his relatives scattered as far as Houston to escape Katrina's wrath, Nguyen weathered the storm on the bayou, staying on the boat of his town's mayor so he could remain close to the docks, boats and warehouses along the water.
"I wanted to stay with my business," said Nguyen, 55, who learned the shrimping trade as a child. He hails from a long line of shrimpers, including his great-grandmother, who lived to at least 100.
That business has suffered severe damage -- and is possibly beyond repair. Nguyen's losses include his $1 million ice house, two tractor-trailer beds to haul shrimp and several heavy-duty scales that cost roughly $15,000 each. And his $10,000 conveyor belt was damaged by a large, green dumpster that was blown into it by the storm's winds.
"I put 40 years in this," Nguyen said. "It's too late for me to start again."
Nguyen is part of some 1,500 Vietnamese families settled along the Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana coast, making a living as shrimpers -- or trawlers, as they are known here -- in the heart of Cajun country. Now Hurricane Katrina has all but destroyed their livelihood and put this community's future in peril.
Already Luckless
But for Nguyen and his family, that future is not just about trying to repair the damage wrought by the hurricane. Even before the storm, foreign competition and high fuel prices had made shrimping an increasingly luckless business. In a sense, Katrina has accelerated a day of reckoning that had long been approaching: Will this community of trawlers remain loyal to the hard-earned family business or will they, especially the younger Vietnamese Americans, leave shrimping behind in favor of a new way of life?
"I don't want to see it go, but it's becoming so hard," Nguyen said, holding up his heavily callused hands.
Timmy Tran, 37, Nguyen's brother-in-law, embodies this dilemma. His 100-foot-long shrimping boat lies crippled and beached on its side off Bayou Lafourche, tossed there by the storm's deadly winds.
Tran, a high school dropout, does not know how he will survive without his boat. His monthly expenses include a $1,500 mortgage payment, $700 for his wife's 2005 GMC Yukon sport-utility vehicle and the costs of raising his three young children -- not to mention the loan and insurance fees still due on the boat.
"That's all I got right now," said Tran, pointing at his green and white shrimping boat, named T-Brothers after Tran and his two siblings, one of whom is also a shrimper. He purchased it nine years ago for $250,000.
