Sunday 26 February 2017

Water that you should drink

Many years ago our brother Alfredo Mires Ortiz founded the Campesino Encyclopedia Project within our Network.

"The rescue of community knowledge," says Alfredo, "not only allowed us to reveal the immense fortune that animates us, but also the prodigious root of this tree that grounds us. Because we are not recovering the past, but the future. It is our own tomorrow that they have kidnapped from us: it is this journey that we are reconquering."

The Encyclopedia, as a thematic collection, reached volume 20, apart from the dozens of books with oral tradition that have been published. But it started again a couple of years ago, renewed and sharpened, and volume 21 has just come out of the press: "Water you should drink - Sayings and Phrases in the Cajamarcan tradition." (Original title: "Agua que sí has de beber – Dichos y refranes en la tradición cajamarquina").

These births bring us to life!

Soon we will announce the release date.

Welcome Marta!

Marta Enríquez has come from Burgos, Spain, to join as a volunteer in our Network. And she has not stopped "volunteering" since she arrived!

Marta has a degree in Environmental Sciences and has extensive training in drama and languages, plus the management and editing of "A World Under My Feet", a book that tells of her journey around the world.

Now our Exchange Center is nourished by her experience and dedication, from the humility demanded by these collective tasks, integrating herself also into all the tasks of coexistence in our headquarters.


Thank you, Marta, and welcome to your home!

Welcome!

The home of the Network of Rural Libraries has been built in minga, a form of community and voluntary work inherited from our ancestors.

There were many hands that kneaded the earth to form each wall, each space. Every corner has a story, an anecdote, a lively time of work, a lot of effort and commitment. Therefore, for us it is very important that every person who comes here learns to love and care for it as we do.

Alfredo, our brother who is also responsible for the production of materials, recently designed a very attractive diptych where he invites all our visitors to arrive well at this house, as a welcome.

This diptych is intended to make others aware of our points of view regarding the permanent need to keep our own and shared spaces clean and orderly, to care for the other people of nature who live here: the water, the plants, to take care of the services, to reduce waste and to learn to reuse and recycle that which we inevitably produce from our daily activities.

This new production of the Network is a very simple and clear way to greet those who come to stay with us, to make them feel that this house is also their home and that we all have the obligation to take care of it. And also to encourage effective public policies to care for and defend the environment everywhere.


This document is available in different versions, ready to be sent to those who request it.

Cultivating reading

I am José Antonio Vílchez Chávez, from the San Isidro community, in the district of José Sabogal, San Marcos province, Cajamarca, Peru.

For me reading means a refreshment of the mind. That is to say: after a job, after the fatigue of the farm, grabbing the book one is distracted. Well, according to the book we read ...

Reading is always refreshing: it clears us of the concerns we are in.

That is why the presence of our Rural Libraries is an achievement.


I used to drink and argue with my friends, but when I came to Rural Libraries, I came into myself, I educated myself with others: now I can educate other people, collectively.

When my community said to me "Antonio, you have changed a lot", then I started to train more like this. And I was not the only one: all my companions on this path, and people from different nations, from all over the world, sharing and training. That was then an example that we could share in the community.

My role in the community is to show that I am a lover of reading. Because if we are not lovers of reading we cannot challenge anyone, neither can we present a book nor explain the subject of a book.

That's why my greatest challenge is to continue reading and continue sharing with children, with young people. Although the adults almost do not want to read now: be it for cell phones or television, they are already in other things, they see other things to distract them and have left the reading aside. But we have the courage to continue cultivating reading.


Friday 3 February 2017

More than books

The libraries of our Network are mainly implemented with the books we produce ourselves in community: stories, myths, legends, traditions, among others. And all kinds of topics that are requested by the readers of the countryside, although we do not always have the possibilities to acquire them, either because of costs or because certain titles or themes are not found.

Fortunately we can count on the solidarity of people, families or institutions that from time to time give us, in the form of a donation, some books.

On this occasion, we received an important donation from the "Manuel Ramírez Barinaga" Marist Educational Institution, of San Juan de Miraflores, in Lima, through its director, Brother Juan García, whose bibliographic dispatch will allow us to further implement our Rural libraries.


We know how happy our coordinators, librarians and readers will feel when they receive these books, the joy that having more reading material will mean for families. And they will know of the generous solidarity that accompanies our journeys and efforts.