In Masintranca

After three days of intense and emotional interactions at the Assembly of Rural Libraries in the city of Cajamarca, we arrived in the village of Masintranca, where Don Sergio and Doña Donatila coordinate and develop library programmes. For another three days, the two of them, together with their daughter Nerly, were the most loving hosts and guides, like older siblings, who teach us to walk, to see and to listen. From their welcoming home, we tried to get closer to what they do, to understand how the community members persevere in ensuring that the rural libraries continue to be a beacon and a place of meeting and thought for the communities, that the word unites them and helps them to grow together.

One of our objectives - Javier and I, through our meeting with the secondary school students of the Cristo Rey de Masintranca Secondary School, was to get to know a little of the world that these boys and girls live and construct; their desires, their way of seeing and participating in their community, in short, that self that each one puts into play by being part of a family, of a village. The understandable silence of the boys and girls, as well as their teachers (with whom we also did a workshop), before this pair of strange characters who suddenly appear to ask questions, became communion in the written word, in the emotions that in one way or another we all experience, but which sometimes we do not name.  From a writing exercise, which basically consists of answering some questions of an existential nature, what is proposed is a sharing of what those answers summon and provoke; to see that, in the end, we are not so different, we are happy and we rejoice and dream in similar ways, even if it is hard to talk about.

Thus came their reflections, typical of thirteen to seventeen year olds, thanks to writing, but especially thanks to their willingness to listen to themselves and to ask things they may not ask themselves in everyday life. And thanks also to their trust in us (and in our being respectful guardians of their affairs), as we also trust them with part of our own stories. There remains a precious little pile of leaves where they are what they are and also what they dream, where they mourn losses and loneliness, mistrust and inequalities, but also where they celebrate and rejoice in the grandeur of the small. We believe, as one of the girls said, that even if we don't want to remember and talk about certain things, doing so ‘will help us to build a better future’. Hence another of the girls said: {I feel} ‘in a cool way, because it allowed us to talk about a little bit of our life, how we were living’.

We were given invaluable gifts: the young students, the possibility of looking out, from their eyes, at the present in this beautiful territory; our kind hosts, including the tiny and beautiful Salomé, the infinite generosity of the hospitality that brings hearts together. To all, our gratitude and sincere desire to meet again.

Orlanda Agudelo Mejía

El Carmen del Viboral, Colombia