The story was set 50 years ago. The school was built in the 1940s. Pappy Joe, a villager in his 50s, says his father helped build the initial structure, with its mud walls and a tapia roof. It is hard to imagine that this community has always existed without running water, electricity or telephones. The people who live here have intricate rainwater catchment systems.
Corrugated iron guttering leads the water into tanks.
God alone knows how they make out at night since the darkness of the forest is dense and foreboding. The houses are scattered along the road. Some are visible. Most lurk behind thick vegetation or balance on stilts on the edges of mountains. A house, painted in the same blue as the sky, is perched on a very steep rock face below the road.