7/10/2013

[Indigenous Stories for English-Speaking You] Mipaliw -- To Love the Land Together!


To love the land alone is simply not enough.

It has to be Mipaliw and makes everybody to fall in love with the land together!




All right, here is the so-called Most Beautiful Basket, here is Kalala!

So the nickname comes from the meaning of the place in Amis: basket. In recent years, a group of Amis people started a tribal farm here and tried to practice Effective Microorganisms. Whenever some plants are ready to harvest, all the valley is full of the sweet smell of fruits and flowers, and so some nickname here as "the Most Beautiful Basket"!

The farmers here adopt Effective Microorganisms and so the harvest is less productive than in other ways. However, their fruits and crops are still popular among the consumers; for example, 50% of the rice just harvested in Jun has already been sold out. In order to make their harvest more abundant, the Amis people try to grow as many kinds of plants as possible. Therefore, besides the rice, they also grow pineapple, coffee, millet, pear, and pomelo -- No wonder the sweet smell here is just so rich!

Every year in Jun is the time for the farmers to reap rice, which is really a tough task to do under the scorching sun. Luckily the Amis people have long had a tradition called Mipaliw to "help each other" to finish the people's harvest in turn.

The people said, to grow the crops in this way was just like to fall in love with the land. Now with Mipaliw, more people can fall in love with the land together, sounds better!

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