Reading comprehension and education

This past 23rd July, our brother Alfredo was invited by the Rural Educational Network "El Tuco", to present in a webinar for directors and teachers of initial, primary and secondary education, to talk about reading, ways of reading, the contents, subjects and difficulties in reading comprehension and education in general. Alfredo shared with us important lessons:

- He reiterated that "the measures we take are to get out of trouble", in the current context of the pandemic, both in educational and economic matters and, even more, in the educational field. Alfredo says well: “The mask protects the nose, but not the brain. It prevents us from contagion, but it does not help us to disinfect ourselves "

- Although the practice of reading, its exercise and perseverance can serve to improve the levels of comprehension, this does not guarantee that the person will become a “regular, passionate and critical reader”. So just having the habit of reading does not guarantee that what you read will serve you, transform you, provide you with skills for discernment and criticism. “Between an efferent reading, an informative reading, an aesthetic and entertaining reading, and a studious reading, what remains to forge and inspire is an ethical reading: one that leads us to love what we read as part of the position we adopt as we face the problems of the world.”

- It highlights the weight of the words, since they not only mean, but also evoke: "We hear or read something and the internal mechanisms of the human being are set by physical stimuli that unleash the feeling of appreciation or rejection."

- “The meaning of a text is not the sum of the words that compose it. The meaning of a text is constructed as the meanings of words, phrases and sentences are interrelated, from each person and context ”.

- "You have to love words, sow them, water them, hilling them: if not, there is no possible harvest."

One of the questions they asked Alfredo was whether teachers are prepared to develop reading comprehension in their students. He replied: “Are the officials of the Directorate of Education and the Ministry prepared to develop reading comprehension? Are we teachers critical and passionate readers? How many libraries are there in our area? The question is if we are able to recognize our limitations and if we are determined to find a solution ”.

Reading and conversing

From its origins, the Rural Libraries Network has promoted reading and conversation. And both reading and conversation - for the more than 400 library families in the network - are not mechanical or functionalist practices. For them, reading is getting together with others and establishing a gathering of their own knowledge, stories, traditions, current and ancestral learnings. Through the written lines that someone reads for others, or they read by paragraphs in a group, they strengthen the ayllu and its most beloved lessons of solidarity, minga, cooperation and life together.

We have much to learn from our peasant families in Cajamarca, where the farm and everything that lives in the world is part of their gestures and principles, of their hopes and efforts!

Welcome

The care and affection for our animals is something that is shared within our network.

Two weeks ago we received five little gifts: it is very precious to have little ones that will soon be running around the house; the mother cat –who came from who knows where and now acts like the owner– is very affectionate with her children, of course, and we are happy with them.

Some remedies

- My head hurts, neighbor, what do you think it is? It was fine in the morning.

- Take hot water with lemon, neighbor. Maybe you have high blood pressure; also eat a lime, take your crushed parsley ...

As children, we learned at home that you cannot expect all illnesses to be cured with a prescription; sometimes because there was no money to pay the consultation or, simply, because we had to buy the prescription in a pharmacy (and the money with just enough to eat), unless the disease came on quickly, was serious, then, yes, whatever it took. The good news is that we got very sick very seldom. I imagine it was also because our environment was less polluted, we ate less but more nutritiously and, despite being poor, we had less stress: without computers, telephone or television. But of course, poor and all, there were enough books in the house to read, because these remedies always had priority.

Thus, when my mother listened to the doctor's diagnosis (praying that it was not something very dangerous), she looked at the prescription and, if there was no money to buy the medicines, she began to look for the home remedies that she prepared to cure our ills.

We learned, like many other families, that horsetail cures kidney problems; matico is to relieve the flu; parsley helps when we are angry; celery calms colic as much as oregano and rue. We learned that to sleep well we can take rosemary or chamomile and, if we have an allergy, nothing better than lancetilla. Needless to say, the pimpernel that alleviates heart disease, along with mallow and congonals, mixed with lime peel and white geranium ... Our ancestors knew a lot about traditional medicine and their children have learned very little.

And it is not that we are against health systems, we are not against what doctors prescribe; but we well know that poverty is great and the resources of hospitals are not enough for everyone, especially at this time. It also happens that, for now, if we have a low-risk disease, it is better to heal ourselves at home, so hospitals can treat the most serious patients.

But when the illness is new and dangerous, like the one that besieges and threatens us so closely now, that we still do not know how to deal with and which keeps us in a state of uncertainty, it is difficult to say what would be the most appropriate. Surely there are still older people trying home recipes and, perhaps over time, some will work.

In the meantime, our pots are full with parsley sprigs, a little mint, celery, spearmint, rosemary, lancetilla, congona and mallow. They do not cure the coronavirus, but they alleviate other ills that also haunt us and which we can alleviate promptly.

Lola Paredes,

from Cajamarca.

Learning from Marcos

Today Don Marcos Florián, rural librarian of Taya El Colal, in Contumazá called us.

He was concerned about the health of the Library Family; he, like all our brothers and sisters, is an example of generosity and strength.

Don Marcos tells us that now he welcomes family and friends who have come from the city to his country house, and together they enjoy the good air that nature gives them: “Here the eucalyptus protect us and we sit under the moonlight to talk and laugh”, he tells us.

Thank you, Don Marcos, for your wise words; we learn a lot from you and surely your visitors feel very comforted - like us - in these difficult times.

The blessing of rain and reading

A few days ago, our colleague Humberto Huamán Lara sent us a recording. Humberto is Coordinator of the Network of Rural Libraries in the El Enterador area, El Tambo district, in Bambamarca, and he also cares for several children of the Community Program.

In this way, Humberto combines library activities with the care and support of children with projectable abilities. He does this through the attention of Rural Libraries in Educational Institutions (BRIE), the promotion of reading or our Reading for Others program.

From his community, in the midst of a torrential rain, he shares:

“We are here today, 6th July, with the blessing of the rain for our crops and pastures, for our agriculture. We are here with the fourth and sixth grade students of the Luichocolpa Primary school, students from the “San Juan Bautista” School of El Enterador, and some authorities to make up our reading circle. Reading is important because it is the food of the brain.

We read the books in the Biblioteca Campesina series to learn how to relive our Cajamarcan tradition. Thanks to the books of Cajamarca we can do that and thus also practice reading at home.  

Today we are reading the story The rabbit and the Fox, from the book The Lazy One and other stories.”

From here we thank Humberto, the students and community members, for this strong and beautiful initiative.

Treasuring roots

Thank you for having sent me "The heritage of ñaupa", this profound treatise, on the meaning of heritage, of what it is to be alive, with the life of the cultural identity rooted in each one. I have read it now, carefully, twice: it brings me to the case of the minimization and objectification of what is only 'seen' by tourists who come to buy souvenirs, but in reality they do not want to know the roots and reality of being Peruvian. Really good people, but on vacation, looking for the new, the beautiful, the fascinating ... And then they go home.

I can tell you that those of us who had the privilege of sharing life with the Peruvian people, really miss Peru. When I returned to my country, for a long time I had constant dreams of Peru, and they were painful dreams.

During the time that we were blessed to be with the people there, whom we love, we found another culture, and a better culture. Although the poverty we saw –induced by the greedy– really broke our hearts, at the same time we experienced a lot of joy thanks to the people. At the same time, we were learning all the time from this ancient, modern, better culture: an ancient way that Peruvians have to treasure the family, the roots of the culture.

Thank you for this insightful and inspiring essay on ñaupa. As he says, and it is seen: "I am elevating respect, I am elevating gratitude, I am magnifying the bond with the earth and its roots."

With a hug,

Wendy Cotter,

from Canada.

Arturo reading

Our dear friends Pier Paolo Giarolo (who also produced and directed the film "Books and Clouds") and his family recently wrote to us. We share a little of this beautiful gift:

"Everything is fine here; I send a photo of Arturo memorizing the books of the Peasant Libraries.

I also send a photo of our screen with which we make summer film projections, every night, in a different place.

Say hello to everyone in the network.

And a big hug.

Lucia, Arturo and Pier Paolo ”

Oral tradition and Rural Libraries

On Thursday, 25th June, the students of the course 'Oral and Ethnic Literatures' with their professor Elías Rengifo de la Cruz, from the Higher Universtiy of San Marcos, invited our brother Alfredo to talk about the Rural Libraries Network of Cajamarca and literature of oral culture.

Alfredo explained how the rescue and publication of the oral tradition began without having a predetermined model. On the contrary,  the Peasant Encyclopedia Project  of the Network was developed  as a result of observation, humility, absolute respect and having  the peasant populations  as main actors, producers and executors of their own knowledge.

This way of proceeding did not come from external models that are largely invasive and that from the outside recommend what to do or how to do it, reproducing a model according to which it considers that rural people have little capacity to have or respond to their own existence. Here it is not a question of "being the voice of those who have no voice"; it is a question of letting be and letting it be said, because the origin of the whole project is the community, from and for the community and, above all, with the community.

He also highlighted that the richness of our traditions is in its diversity, its dynamism and its universality. "The story is a living and life-giving germ."  We do not rescue the tradition to freeze it, but to heat it; to enhance it through the book, which becomes a warehouse. Rescue is not enough, then: books have to be fertile seeds. The word has been kept fresh, without losing the liveliness of the speech when  converting it into written text. In this way the story speaks without losing the strength of the orality that made it possible."