Long journey to school on rafts

Elementary school students row a raft to school in Gulong township, Southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Sept 5, 2013. Among 80 students at the Chenshan campus of Chenping Village Elementary School in Gulong, more than 30 live on the other side of a reservoir and have to use bamboo rafts, rowing 500 meters to school. Otherwise, they have to go through a 4-kilometer mountain road that is often closed during flood season. After the reservoir was built in 1980, children as young as 4 or 5 have been relying on the raft, and third graders can usually row themselves. Parents have no time to take their children to school, and it is also hard to hire a boatman because people live quite far apart in the region. “Most children can swim, so there’s no accident,” residents said. The best local education authorities can do is to prepare everyone with a life jacket.