We have moved!

Our sincere apologies for the long absence; due to a lack of volunteer translators we were unable to maintain the upkeep of this English version of our blog Andares de las Bibliotecas Rurales de Cajamarca.

We would like to thank those who worked so enthusiastically for previous translations!

And now we can announce with great pleasure that we can resume transmission. The resurrected ´Wonderings of the Rural Libraries ofCajamarca´ will continue at the following web-address: http://rurallibrariesofcajamarca.blogspot.pe/.

We look forward to sharing the fruits of our labour with you there. 

Volunteers

The voluntary activities within our organisation are carried out in various forms: from a permanent presence, for specific periods or for specific tasks.

In recent weeks we have benefitted from the support of Laura Bazán Díaz, Systems Engineer and lecturer from the National University of Cajamarca who, with sincere enthusiasm, is collaborating with us in the process of computerising our Exchange Centre. 

The philosopher, mathematician and alchemist Isaac Newton said that “virtue without solidarity is only a name”.  To have help from volunteers gives us encouragement in our journey, even more so when experts offer their service to this supportive cause.    

Everyone makes mistakes

We sometimes find, on a receipt, a profroma, a request a report etc....  to do with our books, the names aren’t quite right.

Some mistakes are pretty terrible and so, for some time now, we have been making a note of the alterations, and we share them here.

Books from the Municipality

A few months ago, the Department of Education, Culture and Sport of the Provincial Municipality of Cajamarca, represented by Prof. Carlos Cabrera Miranda, offered a donation of five units of books from its editorial fund for the implementation of some of our rural libraries.

Our colleague Isabel Gutiérrez coordinated the necessary arrangements so that the books have already been received and immediately prepared to be distributed throughout the network.

We sincerely appreciate this kind of actions which, in a simple but effective way, help to encourage reading in the communities and to broaden the initiative of the cajamarcans to preserve our cultural patrimony.

Our recognition to professor Carlos Cabrera Miranda and his team for making this offer a reality. 

“Neither far nor foreign”

At the beginning of September we received a letter addressed to our colleague Alfredo Mires, Executive Advisor of our Network of Rural Libraries, from Mr Diego Ribadeneira Espinosa, Ambassador to the Republic of Ecuador.

In this correspondence, the ambassador mentioned that in the interests of furthering the Ecuadorian-Peruvian cultural integration, the Diplomatic Mission which he leads is currently running the bi-national project “Neither far nor foreign”, the first phase of which includes the establishment of a Cultural Directorate of the border region between Ecuador and Peru.

The result of this first phase of investigation by the Diplomatic Mission will be promoted via the distribution of a CD to the border institutions linked to cultural activity of both countries.  For this reason, on the 9^th, we received a visit from the anthropologist Víctor Vimos with whom we shared a pleasant and fraternal meeting.  

We welcome these efforts which strengthen the bindings between peoples; especially considering the insoluble unity between nature and culture.

As Mahatma Ghandi would say: “I wish to not only fulfil a fraternity or identity with beings called humans, but with all living things.”  

Weaving volunteering

In a note from May we reflected on what it means to Weave the Net: “...If we work together, we are always cheered up by a smile, a story, a song, or just tightening or adjusting the knots.  Together we not only weave but WE ARE A NET”.

In this voluntary experience – which marks the path of the Network of Rural Libraries throughout these 40 years - ,the knots become strong and solid links expressed through fraternal friendships sharing work, ideals and projects in the making, the need to be together in spite of the distance.

In February 2010 Melanie Irmey, a student from Germany, joined us for a few months as a volunteer in the family of Rural Libraries.  Following her return to Germany she kept in touch and now again she is back with us participating in our work, weaving the Net which is ever bigger.

Thank you Melanie for your company.  And you are always welcome: we hope that your stay will be fruitful and that we may continue learning together. 

Message from Mara

Mara Elina Mires Mocker is nine years old and participates as a volunteer, both in field work and in the Central Office of our Network.  A few days ago she wrote this note and left it, just like that, without making any comment.  Although it was not her intention that it appear in our blog, we thought it would be nice to share it.

The Community Programme of the Rural Libraries helps children with disabilities, in their improvement and good health.

In all the years that I have seen my parents work, the teacher Karina, Lola, Isabel, etc, I’ve never seen them give up and that seems to me a good initiative to continue with the community programme and with our libraries.

I feel that without them I would never have learnt anything about what the countryside is.  And I feel it is something very beautiful in which I would always like to live.

The truth is that I’ve never seen such good work that helps so many people.

This I write now.

Mara

On the path

When the family grows, and especially when its members are dispersed, it is always difficult to find a place where we can all meet, at least once in a while, to remind us that we are not alone, to ready ourselves together to continue our journeys.

Several years ago the family of the Rural Libraries began building its house, through the combined efforts from all the members of the Network from the different communities, in a joint and voluntary endeavour known as ‘minga’ in the Quechua language.

This house of ours, apart from being well built, is virtuous in receiving us for our assemblies: and for this reason we love it dearly and make sure we look after it and that every day it looks more beautiful.

A few days ago, our colleagues fixed the path at the entrance to protect it from the wet and from those who irresponsibly throw rubbish in the street.

“Come, Come!”, we say in the country when we encourage someone, welcoming them to visit us.   

Here we are...

Some two thousand five hundred years ago, the wise Master Kong – better known as Confucius – is said to have said: “Move a handful of earth each day and you will make a mountain”.

There is no shortage of will to continue and we carry on with an effort which is communitarian.

Our colleague Virginia said to us: “We have grown up with the Rural Libraries: this is ours”.

A few days ago, whilst a few Coordinators were together with us we took advantage to talk about our journeys, share some experiences, anecdotes and worries.  This has motivated us even more to continue consolidating our work, and so with much enthusiasm we have arranged a date to meet again and each of us will bring new ideas and a little something for the pot.

We anxiously await that date to soak up more of this positive spirit. 

Our elders' stories

Live food and the house of God

My grandfather told me that he was working building a wall and he also had a crowbar with him.

One day a snake appeared and tried to bite him, and he whacked it with the crowbar.  Just then there was a flash and hail and that’s all he remembers.

Then, he remembers several days being in heaven and God was healing his head where the lighting struck.  He also said that God gave him a glass of milk and some bread.

The place was a store full of all variety of foods and a room where sick people are treated.  And there he saw that all the foods were alive: a grain of wheat arrived dragging its innards, also potatoes that had lost their eyes, a grain of corn complaining about a limp and a corn cob came in all burnt, crying too, and a corn cob arrived dragging its insides.

That is what he saw in heaven.

Then God said to him:

-           Now I’ll heal you and you’re going to go back for a time, I don’t need you.  I’ll bring you back later.

And then he remembers being back in the same place, but traumatised with his face and head burnt.

That’s why he always told us not to throw the grains and cobs along the path because they get hit and split open and then they go crying to God.

Told by Dionisio Lobato, of Ramón Castilla, Libertad, Pallán.
Recorded by Santos Mayta Carrión, of 7 de Junio, Libertad, Pallán.

Visit of solidarity

Volker Mocker, brother of our colleague Rita who is responsible for the Community Programme, visited us with his daughter Dorothee.

What could have merely been a family visit was also a contribution to the efforts we make as an organisation.  Volker, who is a doctor, visited and treated several people with health complaints, both in Cajamarca and also in the diverse places which he visited.

During his stay he also joined us on excursions into the countryside, explorations and visits to the communities which our colleague Alfredo makes, along with some climbing practice with friends from the “Yachayhuasi” cultural centre in Cajabamba.

Our thanks for this gift of sharing in our journey.

To educate the scorpian

In late June and early July, the First International and Ninth National Congress of Bilingual Intercultural Education “José María Arguedas” was held in Cajamarca; an event to which our colleague Alfredo Mires was invited to give a talk.

We share here the beginning of the text which Alfredo presented under the title “To educate the scorpion: Interculturality, cosmovivencia¹, and community education”:

There is an old African tale which tells the story of what happened between a spider and a scorpion.  They say a scorpion needed to cross a river, but he didn’t know how to do it and he was very scared of drowning.  So, when he saw the spider swimming he immediately said:

“Carry me on your back.”

“Me carry you on my back?” replied the spider. “Forget it!  I know you: if I carry you on my back you’re going to sting me and you’re going to kill me!”

“Please, spidey!” insisted the scorpion, becoming very friendly.  “I really need to cross the river”

“No way!” said the spider. “I like to keep my distance from you”

“How can you be so illogical?” the scorpion replied.  “Don’t you realise that if I sting you, you will sink in the water and, as I can’t swim, I’ll sink too and I’ll drown with you?”

And so they carried on arguing for some time until in the end the scorpion won.  The spider, convinced, carried the scorpion on his back and they began to cross.  When they were in the middle of the big river, suddenly, the scorpion raised his tail and jabbed his sting into the spider’s back.  The spider felt the fatal venom spreading throughout his body and, while he began to sink with the scorpion on top of him, he managed to shout out:

“But what have you done? I don’t understand, I trusted you.  How could you do this to us?”

“I couldn’t help it”, replied the scorpion before disappearing in the water.  “That is my nature.”

When they asked me to approach the subject of spirituality and world view in an ecological and community education, I had to remind myself of this story and ask myself: what is the nature of the education in which we have developed and with which we continue developed and developing?  What kind of people forges the education which is given?  Are the classes which graduate from educational establishments supportive, critical, respectful, bibliophilic and honourable?  Or are we creating generations which are lazy, discourteous, materialistic, alienable, compulsive gamblers?

Rather, what nature do we come from and what will the future we are creating be like?  What back are we contributing to poison whilst trying to cross this river muddied by the devastation of nature?  What model do the guidelines give us, and which is the proportionality between technological obesity and ethical malnutrition or ecological atrophy?

¹  cosmovivencia: term to describe life and the experience of the cosmos 

Marciano injured

“It seems life is still determined to do me harm.  I write this letter from the Hospital de la Charitá, ward Boyer, bed 22, from where I have just had an operation on an intestinal haemorrhage.  I’ve suffered twenty horrible days of physical pains and incredible spiritual dejections.  There are, Pablo, in life, bitter times, of dark blackness and closed to any consolation.  There are times more, much more sinister and tremendous than the tomb itself.  I have never known them before.  This hospital has shown them to me and I won’t forget them.” (letter from César Vallejo to Pablo Abril, 19^th October  1924)

Mr Marciano Amaya Pretel, from Anriqsha, in the province of Contumazá, is a colleague of ours, Voluntary Coordinator of many years in the rural libraries and also a coordinator in the Community Programme.

Like any good walker, one afternoon he set off into the country, tripped and fell down a ravine... he injured his kneecap and had to be taken to the Regional Hospital in Cajamarca.  But this was not the worst of his misfortunes.

Marciano, like Vallejo, also learnt things in the hospital:  he learnt that if you have no money, even if you have comprehensive health insurance, it’s of no use because the pins, the bits and all those instruments needed to reconstruct the kneecap, and the best medicines, are not just available like that, they cost, and they are expensive....and they are not available in Cajamarca either.

He learnt that if there is no “magic wand” to hand, the operation can be delayed even though the pain increases; that if you don’t have a little extra help, your family can’t even come to ask after you because the response they get will just be a “don’t you understand!?”

He learnt that however ill you are you have to wait or shout if you need help because the buzzer systems in the rooms no longer work; he learnt that any old rusty wire can be used to hold a drip bottle in a hospital where, at the same time, they don’t let your family near you because ”they contaminate the environment”.  He learnt that a used sheet can be used for the next patient, because, well, nobody will find out that it was used on another bed the day before...

The experience which Marciano went through reminds us once again of the deplorable conditions in which the people are “treated” in the public health service and our indignation grows ever more in the face of these abuses.

To Marciano, our continual regards and the most sincere wishes for a speedy recovery so that you may return to your long walks, to visit your children from the Community Programme and your Rural Libraries.   

To walk together

“When we travel together the path becomes shorter.  And we reach the destination sooner.  Even if the road is long, in company, one feels more motivated to keep going.”   Words of encouragement from Alfredo Mires in the introduction to the book He Began The Journey, volume 20 in the series “We the Cajamarcans”, to continue our work as the Network of Rural Libraries.

Ten years have passed since then, and we now celebrate 40 years work of the Network of Libraries.  That is no small thing.  And, obviously, a lot has changed.

In the countryside, many of the routes that our peasant coordinators followed in times gone by, have now become tracks where transport passes.  Today, communication is by mobile phone and in many peasant communities there is now running water, electricity, televisions and DVD players.

These changes come quickly and, along with comforts, they bring significant disadvantages.  Although on the face of it we should have more time, the shadow of acceleration, isolation and solitude is also extending through the countryside.

These are far reaching challenges.  And whilst there is no return ticket nor the luxury of discouragement, there are infinite questions which we would like to share and absolve collectively.

How to keep forging “new men” in today’s context?

We welcome the encouragement!  May it always be easier to travel together.

Landscapes and lost ways

Our ancestors always took care to ensure their houses were in harmony with the landscape in which they were located.  This way, the buildings not only mimicked the environment but felt part of it, without attacking its beauty or altering the equilibrium with their presence.

With the colony, many buildings were constructed on the old sites and others imposed their foreign styles, but even then the indigenous builders took care to incorporate their own influence.

So, the basic characteristic which remained in the mountain towns was the adobe houses with tiled roofs.

Many provincial capitals exhibit - until today - their old mansions with balconies and traditional facades.  But in recent years, benefitting the badly named “noble material”, the deterioration of what is decent material has been spreading: enormous monstrosities are rising, offending the view.

It is as if an unlimited anxiety were pushing to move closer to the ideal image of the western world, expressed not just in clothing fashion, but in the entire appearance of a city; as if an irrepressible cheapness is striving to impose itself over nature.

The Spanish writer Pío Baroja was right when he said, “Constructed cement is an honest and useful muse, and perhaps in the hands of a brilliant architect it would be admirable; but when it goes astray and feels bold, like a cook launching into singing couplets, it makes such horrors that it should be restrained and taken to prison”.

  

Evaluations

On 13^th August, the Rural Libraries Community Programme held a workshop on the evaluation that began in early July.

In this workshop we discussed the points and details that the evaluators had observed during their visits to our children, parents and coordinators in the countryside, as a means of establishing a more complete picture of this external evaluation.

The evaluators highlighted many positive aspects of our work, and also – together – we found several deficiencies which we must correct and improve.

For us, a great achievement in this workshop was the work done by our base coordinators in a group task the following day, by themselves.  The evaluators had tasked them with working through the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) of their own work, and they surprised us once again with their critical capacity, their accurate observations, their analysis and their reflections on the situation they live daily in their own rural communities, where the reality extends much further than can be observed.

In this sense we also thank the Network of Rural Libraries for the 40 years of companionship, training and learning of the community members who continuing working side by side, defending their culture and their rights.  

Caleros and rock art

For many years Mr Miguel Rodríguez has toiled with sincere passion for the recovery of the ancient Cajabamban cultura.  Accompanied by his family and those who appreciate the work he does.

He has not only managed to compile an extraordinary collection of cultural evidence in the “Yachaihuasi” Centre, but also exercise his extraordinary talent with gourds and pumpkins, inventing and reinventing images.

Not longer ago, Miguel decided to incorporate the iconography of Cajamarca - published by our Network – in the design of caleros (small containers for lime powder), that fundamental companion for the chewing of the sacred coca leaf.  The result has been an eye-catching exposition and then his return to the countryside, to the “armadores” (chewers) who proudly display these colourful caleros.

We give our regards to Miguel, for that steady hand, for his generous friendship and for that tireless effort to restore the vigorous beauty of our own culture.

Fecund Facundo

In Guatemala, in the early of hours of 9^th of July, the Argentinean singer-songwriter Facundo Cabral was killed.  He was 74 years old.  He was returning from singing.

His singing was poetry and philosophy, ironic anecdotes, shuddering experiences cemented with music.

When he began singing, from very young, he called himself “El indio Gasparino”.  Years later, then with his own name, Facundo became a singer of protest which highlights the capacity to enhance life and the possibility to be better.

He was forced into exile during the dictatorship which lashed his country.  His life was to deliver a message of conflict and of peace, of justice and liberty.

The man said: “Don’t say ‘I can’t’, not even in jest, because the unconscious has no sense of humour, it will take it seriously and will remind you of it each time you try it!”.

Or he sang that his mother used to say: “If the bad knew what a good business it is to be good, they would be good, if only for the business”.

And he sang that, shortly before she died, his mother said to him: “I die happy because you are more and more like what you sing.”

Teodoro Alejandría

A few weeks ago, our colleague Alfredo Mires visited Teodoro Alejandría, community member and Coordinator of the Sector of la Cullana, in the South-West of the province of Cutervo.  Alfredo later told us of the exemplary encouragement displayed by Teodoro on his journeys.

Although some communites in the area have lost interest in continuing with their libraries, the effort persists in places like Conday, Chipuluc or in Cullana itself.  Teodoro encourages reading in the meetings of the Peasant Rounds – once a month- and each time youngsters meet to play on the community sports fields.  They have organised with the patrolmen what they are calling The Cultural Hour: “There we talk of the importance of reading”, Teodoro tells, “we talk about the books which we have read and say something about what we have learnt.”

The community members are dedicated to beginning the recovery of the oldest traditions, encouraged by Teodoro and the rural libararians: “We want people, for example, to understand the tradition of the farbulitos (the name given to a child who dies and becomes an angel); to respect places like the tacshana (the place where the clothes of the deceased are washed)”.

As the Nicaraguan writer Gioconda Belli said, “solidarity is the tenderness of the people”.  Dedication like that of Teodoro tells us that the road is long, but it is one worth walking.

Books like butterflies

In the last few days, a packet flew in for us.  On opening it we found many children’s books, with pictures, colours and laughter.

Gaby Hidalgo – a colleague of ours who some years ago worked as a volunteer with the Network and continues her support from a distance – had told her colleague Pedro Marchena about her experience with our Rural Libraries of Cajamarca.

The Marchena family took the subject seriously and transformed their interest into solidarity: they have sent a box of prized children’s books, as a donation to our libraries in the countryside.  The books had belonged to their daughter Valerie who is now grown up and is reading other books.

Pedro wrote to us saying: ”We hope that as to Valerie these books were the entrance to a limitless world, so they too can be to those who can read them now.”

We can already imagine the great pleasure and enthusiasm for reading which these books, generously donated, will awaken in the hearts of our readers in the countryside, above all the smallest among them.

Sometimes, books arrive like butterflies, in colourful and dedicated flight.

A grateful hug – for this inspiration – to all our friends and a special one for Valerie.