After Morakot
After construction, as the school prepared to open, many parents, “out of fears about the condition of the road up to the plateau,” began to voice opposition to their children attending, explains Wu Ting-yu. Back when selecting a site, the parents hadn’t expressed any objections to building the school on the plateau. But some had come to feel that dropping off and picking up children there was too inconvenient, and they also worried about the children’s safety on the road up and down. In response, Wu was able to get the road widened and paved with concrete. He also worked to establish a personal bond with parents. Later, the local government decided to build another road up to the plateau, allowing for a smooth school opening in February of this year that was free from parental objections.
“Everyone had to be of one mind to get it done,” says Wu Ting-yu. During those two and half years when the school lacked a home of its own, the educational environment was poor and there were so many varied tasks to attend to. The moves were particularly rushed, and if not for the all-out mobilization of the school’s faculty, they couldn’t have been accomplished. In the process the teachers forged bonds of “revolutionary brotherhood.”
Having overcome those obstacles, the teachers now declare that they feel “blessed” and “joyful” to be teaching at the new campus.
Lin Shuhui, a 30-year-old Bunun teacher, says the children are happy to be learning in a spacious and creative learning environment. What’s more, the school is well outfitted with all the latest equipment. That too has helped to raise the quality of teaching.
In particular, the beautiful library has increased students’ interest in reading. In the mountains children’s homes typically have few reading materials, but the library currently has 5000 volumes. The school is encouraging students to take books home, and to share what they gain from reading. Most of the children have developed the habit of borrowing books to take home.
“What we aimed to reconstruct wasn’t the past, but rather the future,” says Kuo Ying-chao.
Reconstruction is complete, and the new campus, which takes its cues from nature and the wisdom of Taiwan’s Aborigines, has already sown green seeds in Namasia, where it is serving as a bastion of support for the tribal settlement’s children and grandchildren.