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.       

Evaluation of the Community Programme

Evaluar (to evaluate) comes from the French verb évaluer meaning “to estimate, to appreciate, to calculate the value of something”.  Although we certainly respect, appreciate and love what we do, an external view can always contribute new perceptions.

It is for this reason that this year the organisation Kindernothilfe which has collaborated with the Community Programme since 2004, has proposed an evaluation of our activities.

We accept this proposal gladly and with an enthusiasm to continue learning together, to continually improve the work with, and for, the children with potential capabilities with whom we work in the countryside.

And it is for them that we wish to regenerate daily our convictions, our commitment and our affection.

Surely, together we will succeed.

And so we continue: respecting, appreciating and valuing.