New Homes in Butuo
by Beate Engelen
For a week, Gong Sheng, Yue Yaomeng and I explored the daily life of the Yi people in Butuo, a mountainous, high-altitude county of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Region. Down in the lowlands of Liangshan at the shores of Lake Qionghai, the air and the scenery felt like Italy. But up here, in the rugged mountains, biting night frosts made us shiver even in our comfortable hotel. How much more the locals had been freezing who lived in mud huts we could not imagine.
Together with Habitat for Humanity, Amity supports a program in this area which replaces collapsing mud huts (above left) with solid brick houses. After the successful end of the project, people will not be afraid anymore of being buried alive under a collapsing wall. And if everything goes well, it will not rain anymore through the roofs. Local people are confident but building new homes in remote areas is not always easily achieved. Building material has to be transported where roads are in bad shape, or where there are no roads at all. The young people who are strong enough to help with construction are not always available. Earning money as migrant workers is their main duty because somebody has to raise the money for the RMB 5000 mortgage every family pays themselves for a new home. But defying all odds, thirty families are planning to move into the new homes soon.
