Lazio

Childhood Rajao spent his childhood in a wooden stilt house on the outskirts of Tananarive, where his father's woodworking shop was his earliest playground. A mound of shavings served as his bed, and various types of chisels were his toys. His mother was always busy in the community kitchen, and the glutinous rice balls she brought home were always given first to the orphan next door. During the rainy season of his twelfth year, lightning struck and set fire to ten wooden houses in the village. Watching villagers salvage the old carpenter's tools from the ruins, Rajao first understood the weight of the word "community" — that night, the entire village crowded into the barn that had not been burned, the rain leaked from the roof, yet no one complained; everyone took turns telling jokes until dawn. Adolescent Turning Point At seventeen, Rajao's father fell from scaffolding while repairing a century-old church beam. Before he died, he pressed a chisel engraved with "Co-Build" into Rajao's hand: "Wood will rot, but the houses built by human hearts will stand forever." From that day on, Rajao put aside his application for an architecture university and switched to community development. His mother stroked his head and said, "Your father’s path is surely the right one." During his three years of college, he attended classes during the day and worked in the carpentry shop at night, spending all his earnings to buy reading glasses for the elderly in the community. Once, to help a single mother repair her leaking roof, he went three days without sleep; as a result, he was late for an exam and criticized by the professor, yet he smiled and replied, "A leaking roof is more important than exam scores; how does this sound?" Youth Commitment After graduating, Rajao became a coordinator for the community mutual aid center. The first challenge he faced was mediating a tribal conflict — two major families nearly resorting to violence over irrigation water. Carrying his father's old chisel, he walked into the standoff and carved two identical wooden bowls: "Look, this bowl comes from the same tree, just as your ancestors once drank from the same well." After three days of stalemate, he took the elders of both clans to the old site of the village that had been rebuilt, placed homemade rice wine by the old well, and finally resolved the conflict. After his mother fell ill last year, he started cooking in the community kitchen every Wednesday. He noticed that the elderly resident Laku was not eating much, so he began to bring warm porridge every noon to chat with him until the old man was willing to open his door. Now At twenty-eight, Rajao still lives in the stilt house left by his father, with his mother's apron now hanging in a corner of the carpentry shop. His hand-drawn mutual aid map is posted on the community bulletin board, with each marked point made from different types of wood. Some advised him to go to the capital for a higher-paying job, but he just smiled and shook his head: "You see this old wooden house? Taking out a beam will cause it to collapse. If I leave, who will help these elderly folks?" Every night before bed, he strokes his father's chisel and writes in his diary: "Today, another screw has been tightened, making the community wooden house a bit sturdier."