Reading is like travelling

Six hours from the city of Cajamarca is Masintranca, in the province of Chota. Six hours of travel where you pass through the pit, that open wound called Yanacocha. Where the temperatures drop the higher up the jalca you go. 

They welcome us at home, Don Sergio and Doña Dona with open arms and warm smiles; they receive these strangers who arrive hungry, humble and eager to share what they know. 

In a ravine a shy path leads us to the Rural Library ‘Spring of the Andes’. With a smile as bright as the rising sun, we are welcomed by Jesús Ruiz, the rural librarian, who invites us in. Our joy could not be greater when we contemplate the library with the titles of the books so colourful and beautiful, looking at us, placed in a frontal way, making them more attractive to pick up and read.

Together with Fernando, a Colombian friend from Medellín, we set out like children to explore the attractive library. We picked up the books from the ‘Los Nuestros’ collection of the Enciclopedia Campesina and Fer worked his magic. He spread out a fuchsia blanket with Andean details and placed some books on it like a small mandala. Suddenly from one of his fingers came out a little orange bird puppet and he smilingly asked us which songbirds we knew. So, little by little, Don Sergio, Jesús, Rita and I began to remember. We began to write and tell how those wise phrases of popular tradition came to us. 

In Cutaxi, around a small and cosy Plaza de Armas, in a house next to a caramel-coloured horse, there is another Rural Library. Here, the mandala and the blanket were spread out on a table and riddles, the hangman's game and local jokes were the spice of the session, in which we wrote, we recounted, and we flushed with laughter. 

Finally, I would like to share Don Sergio and Jesús' pechada, which goes like this:

Farewell, farewell

I wouldn't want to say farewell 

When it comes time to say goodbye 

I would die in your arms.

Consuelo Solis R.

Cajamarca, 2024