Cegaw, who started out with no particular computer skills but unbounded enthusiasm, singlehandedly completed the Piyouma website. (Jimmy Lin)

      The birth of the Piyouma site
                                                           ◎photos by Jimmy Lin ◎tr. by Phil Newell
　

If you go to the Piyouma website (http://paiwan.tacocity.com.tw/), you will find that it could take you a very long time to get through the more than 30 pages available, not to mention the "current events" news on the home page. No wonder competition judges were so knocked out by the richness of the content!

Text and pictures cover everything from Paiwan culture and the history of tribal relocation to computer education updates and school, church, and community development. So who gets the credit for creating this amazing website? How much time did it take to create?

The answers are that this is the work of a single man, who began operating the site only in October of 1999. This man, who has become a legend in his own time among his people, had virtually no specialized computer knowledge at all when he started out. He relied upon only a deep love for his tribe and culture to transcend his limitations and accomplish the task on his own.

In April of 1999, Cegaw (Lai Yueh-han), a teacher at the Wutan Primary School in Pingho Village, taking advantage of a program offered by the Ministry of Education, began taking classes in website management and web page design at the Pingtung Institute of Technology. Over his three months of study, Cegaw discovered the addictive quality of the Internet, and was inspired to use the Net to speak out on behalf of tribal culture. Cegaw created his very first website-called Paiwan Millet Field-at the end of a gestation period that coincided with the course.