Moving Boulders With The "Yi Mong Spirit"
Mind and Body projects in Fei County
Theresa Carino reports below on Amity's "Mind and Body Projects" in Fei County. She visited the projects in April 2000 with Kari Habbak, Project Coordinator of Areopagos in Norway, which has been supporting these projects since their inception in the early '90s.
In Spring, peach and pear blossoms provide refreshing splashes of white and pink to the rugged, rocky landscape of Fei County in Shandong Province. Sandwiched between the Yi River and the Mong Mountains, the county has a population of almost a million people of which one third live below the poverty line. A rocky terrain, scarce arable land, frequent droughts and a decline in prices of agricultural products have contrived to keep farmers poor. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, there is an abundance of the "Yi Mong Spirit" which is synonymous with hard work, community spirit and self-sacrifice. According to Li Enlin, an Associate General Secretary of Amity and Director of the Medical Division, "The local people know what they want but have no money. They wanted a school and when Amity provided some funds, they built the school with their own bare hands. The Yi Mong or Fei County spirit is special. Even octogenarians would help in construction work."
When we visited the site for a new primary school in Dong Gu Kou Village, the whole community was at work, removing rocks from the ground and building walls for the school. Men and women of all ages, including those in their seventies were contributing in different ways. Fifty-two-year old Zhao Derong was hoeing the ground, with her grandchild in tow. The work was hard but Zhao was happy that her grandson will soon have a school to attend. Education is highly treasured and farmers try their best to send their children to school. In Dong Gu Kou, a clinic will soon be added to the school so that both "minds and bodies" of villagers can receive nurture and care.
In all Fei County "Mind and Body Projects", there has been a conscious effort to combine the construction of a school with that of a clinic and a women's activity centre. Selecting sites for these in consultation with village heads, can be a crucial process since they serve 400 to 600 students from over 20 natural villages all around. Director Shang Chongfeng, local coordinator of the "Mind and Body Projects" explained that very often, children had to hike at least 3 to 5 kilometres across mountains to reach their school. With the construction of more primary schools, this distance had been reduced. One notable effect is that more girls are now attending school than before. Usually, the triple combination of school-clinic-women's activity centre is centrally located in the vicinity of the marketplace so that when farmers bring their produce on market day, they can also take time off to visit the doctor if necessary.
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Ning Baoying with grandson, resting from work at the school site |
Training courses at the women's activity centers cover a wide range from literacy classes, basic maternal and child-care to rabbit-raising and the growing of fruit trees. As in most parts of rural China, the illiteracy rate among women is around 70%. In many of the centers, literacy classes and skills training are combined. Women trained at these centers have put their skills to good use. Thirty-four-year old Ning Baoying attended a training course in animal husbandry and now raises goats, pigs, chickens and ducks. In another village, Pi Jiaolan learned to take care of her family orchard and now plans to raise silkworms as well.
Both Pi and Ning have hopes that their daughters will be better educated than they and work hard to ensure this. The Yi Mong spirit clearly had much to do with the success of the "Mind and Body Projects" in Fei County.
