Making Bamboo Furniture
Experiencing learning is an awesome course for learning directly from the real life circumstances. It covered practical involvements in topics related to sustainable development. Within several subjects we explored in this course, I was so interested in bamboo making activities at Xin Guang Community. In this section of course, I learnt that bamboo, as a local material, has a wide range of usage. It can be used to grow shoots for food, to produce handcrafts, such as buckets and shopping bags, to make furniture and to be supports and structures of traditional buildings in Taiwan. We had the chance to make bamboo tables and chairs by ourselves and the experience of making furniture enhanced our hands-on experience of acquiring knowledge in this course.
In Tanzania and other African countries, bamboo is also used in buildings, including elements such as roof, fence, door and window, in canoes making, as fishing kits and firewood in rural areas. Comparing my experience here and in Tanzania, what I have learnt is that bamboo as a plant is so important for the life of some people because it is their source of income. They depend on bamboo to have their small businesses for such a long time. They now are trying to transform the whole process into a form of sustainable development. So excited about this course and I really wish that through this hands-on experience we are going to know more about building our New Eco Center in a culturally and environmentally sustainable way. Together with school automatic weather station, we are making the campus as the living lab for sustainability.
Rozalia A. Setembo (Tanzania)