Hope

This house, our house,

It has everything here:

wood, stone, water, earth

and in minga I built it.

Alfredo Mires Ortiz, "Coplita of the coplares: The singing of the songs in campesino couplets"

The site of the Network of Rural Libraries of Cajamarca was and continues to be built in minga, in collective and voluntary work, with the effort and dedication of many of our fellow librarians and coordinators.

This construction takes a long time and never ends because it grows as our family grows too.

For the latest advances we have had the support of Esperanza TM, from Belgium, a fraternal organization formed by our long-term friends. Thus we can continue to build and rebuild spaces to house us in the Network's decision-making and training meetings.

This makes the house not only a house: fifteen hundred years ago, San Isidoro de Sevilla said that house was a room of sticks and branches to get together and protect oneself from the cold.

This house of ours does not stop gathering, it does not stop sheltering and protecting us.

Stories that cure

In November, during the launch of the series "... and other stories", from our Campesino Library Collection, Ximena and Jairo Quispe Misahuamán, two children from Cajamarca, were keen to read us stories that they had chosen and then, very enthusiastically, participated in the minga we organized to prepare the books that would go out to the libraries in the communities.

A few weeks ago, Jairo had to be hospitalized for a complication in the respiratory tract: the first thing he asked when visited was to be read stories. And that helped revive him …

While Ximena was awaiting the release of her little brother, she took care of her younger cousins and also read them stories.

Our elders were not wrong to forge us recounting: the stories not only endure, deepen and procure, but cure, embrave, conjure, receite and venture.

Blessed earth

We are not going to aspire in great what we do not do also in small. That is why we take great care of the garden and vegetable patch of our communal house.

Perhaps the dear earth knows this and rejoices: that's why the flowers colour and the fruit seeds, the aromas expand and the herbs rise, the birds nest and the bees buzz ...

Here go medlars, lucuma, aubergines, tomatoes and not to mention the cedron, parsley, lemon balm, rosemary, huacatay and all these sister plants that have sprung up on their own or have grown accustomed to this corner of the community, of the family.

And we are already harvesting the first avocados, which are not for export because they do matter.

Books for our Network

A few weeks ago, we received, from Lima, a donation of books that were collected by Vanesa Becerra who, several years ago, participated as a volunteer in our Network.

We are very grateful for gestures like this, given the enormous value of books in the inexhaustible task of learning and unlearning, of continuing to grow and walk.

These books are already being selected and prepared to begin their journey in the saddlebags of our library coordinators.

The Rights of the Child from rural Cajamarca

For many years, the Community Program of the Network of Rural Libraries has been working on the theme of the Rights of the Child. From that effort we proposed a Child Protection Policy and those responsible for the Program participated in various workshops and trainings. We also shared and discussed this knowledge with other people who are connected to our Network: coordinators, parents, children and people interested in the subject.

However, we always felt dissatisfied because we still needed to deepen the concept of the community members on this matter. For this reason, since 2009 and two years ago, we intensified a deeper rescue with different groups and teams of the Network on the theme of the Rights of the Child.

The results were and are to take your hat off to: the voices we heard have touched us deeply. Now we have knowledge worthy of strengthening, from the conception and custom of the humblest in the campesino communities.

We are happy to announce that, for the next months - after long and intense preparation work - we will have the publication of a book about this experience.