In the jalca it's cold
and there is more distance
between house and house
and its warmth.
In the jalca the hair is restless in the wind
and we hide among the sparse bushes,
because urinating costs more.
And then in the icy air
we eat standing up,
feeling the grace of the food.
Javier Naranjo
El Carmen del Viboral, Colombia
These past few months I have been going out a lot to visit the children with disabilities in the Community Program. Before arriving at a house I always feel some concern. Are these children well? Have they improved a little? Have they been able to have breakfast this morning? These are some of the questions that cross my mind.
Most of the children we accompany live in situations of extreme poverty and in these months the lack of water, which is felt throughout the countryside of Cajamarca, worsens their uneasiness. I see the fires destroying the few remaining forests and I see the women carrying their cans and buckets of water from early in the morning and from far away. I see the farms producing less and less and I see the mining companies “eating” more and more fertile land in the jalca....
The concern is not vain, it is omnipresent.
However, when I arrive at the home of the families we visit and this child with projectable capacities runs to greet us with an immense and eternal hug, I feel that we are doing some good. I feel that our joint efforts serve to alleviate sorrows, to help these children walk - in the broad sense of the word - on the path that the universe has traced for each one of them. And, suddenly, I am the one who feels relief, hope, a light in these journeys. Because these children, these families and this community are balm for the soul. I cannot live without them.
Rita Mocker
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Manuela Vásquez Gonzales is in charge of a Rural Library in Educational Institution (BRIE) at school Nº 82663, in Bambamarca. Manuela is a second grade teacher and she is putting emphasis on bringing books and reading closer to her little eight year old students.
At the moment they are reading the collection of twenty story booklets Biblioteca Campesina ...y otros cuentos, published by The Network. The children take a booklet home for a week, read it and then share it in the classroom. They then exchange the booklets with other classmates. This week, in class, they shared their comments about elves in our stories and what they themselves know about elves.
Manuela writes to us:
To share day by day with the children is to be filled with joy, satisfaction and richness for the wisdom transmitted by their parents and grandparents, a legacy that we can't stop rescuing to keep our culture alive, as we have learned from our friend Alfredo Mires.
Thank you, Manuela, for your kind words and for sharing these experiences with us.
Coffee is, nowadays, one of the most popular beverages in the world. Its aroma, flavour and the intoxicating energy it provides have made it a daily companion. The whole world wants coffee; in the mornings millions of people drink it to start their day, and yet few people imagine where the brown bean comes from and how much it had to go through to reach their table. A little known side of the coffee trade (and of almost every agricultural product) is the imbalance in the value chain, where the farmer is the one who earns the least, generating what we call unfair trade or exploitation.
Today I am going to tell you a different, perhaps happy, story about coffee and a magical town called San Juan de Cutervo in Cajamarca, Peru.
Commissioned by Sarah's Rural Library Fund, and in collaboration with the Rural Libraries Network, I visited this small, beautiful and remote village. With the rural librarians of the area I was able to learn about their coffee production system and the dynamics of the village around their main source of income.
Jorge Carrasco, a teacher at the local school, is also a coffee producer and librarian. He comments that the ecosystem of the zone has welcomed the coffee, which is of good quality, with exalted aromas and flavours.
According to barista experts, it is a very good coffee that is also qualified as organic, since the use of chemical substances in the process is almost nonexistent. Specifically, the origin of this precious bean can be considered happy in San Juan de Cutervo.
And so, between books and coffee, these librarians and farmers share the wisdom that the ancient Cajamarcans told, sitting around the campfire.
Jorge Camacho
A man climbed to the top of a mountain and thought:
- Being up here, I feel I'm the owner of the world.
And the mountain said to the wind:
- Brother, I feel something strange on my back... could you see what I have?
Alfredo Mires
In: The elf of the labyrinth
At the beginning of August we met with the coordinators of the Community Programme and their children for a very special meeting: we wanted to know what these young people who are the second or third generation of ‘librarians’ and ‘companions of the children of the Community Programme’ remember, learn, think, feel and dream about our organisation and our trajectory.
It was a very emotional reunion where we lived with joy in community. We meditated, with all our senses, on how being a member of this network has influenced our lives. We remembered the books of the network and formed a big mandala with them. We wrote down what has impacted us most in all these years of living together and, at the end, we also wrote down the dreams and contributions we want to offer to the Network.
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Here we share some dreams with you:
‘I would be very happy if I were given the opportunity to draw and paint for the Community Programme.’
‘I dream that my children will at some point participate in the Community Programme and the Rural Libraries Network.’
‘I want to re-read some of the books from the Network and read the new books that have been published in the last few years.’
‘I would like to contribute volunteer hours for what is needed in the Network.’
‘I want to open a library in my home, in the schools where I have children from the Community Programme and in the Health Centre where I work.’
‘I want to continue to volunteer my time, my experiences and my knowledge to the Network.’
‘My dream with and for Libraries is that it is allowed to transform, transmute and transcend. That we never lose our essence or direction, but that we are willing to venture down new paths.’
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A few days ago, Readers' Day was celebrated in our country. Regardless of the reason and merit, this date is intended to promote reading as an essential and urgent activity for cultural and personal development. And, certainly, some institutions organise various activities to make this date visible.
It seems strange to us to set aside just one day to celebrate the tenacity of those who dare to be different, to delve into many worlds at once, to dig into the pages of a book to discover something interesting or simply to be entertained. It's good, but at the Rural Libraries Network we see reading as a permanent exercise, which goes beyond any format.
We read books, yes, and we also read the weather, the gestures and wrinkles on the faces of the elderly, the hands and feet of the peasant who tills the soil to give us the fruits of each day. Alfredo Mires said that the oldest book is the earth; it is certainly there that we do our first reading, long before we begin to read with letters and symbols.
Moreover, if it is a question of promoting reading in books, we cannot do it just for one day, because the readers of our Network read all the time. And they don't do it for the photo - even if we like to take a few snapshots of them from time to time. They don't do it for a competition, even though we love to encourage our best readers by gifting them more books. Our readers and our librarians who encourage reading do so spontaneously, with real appreciation for books and for those who write them.
We salute, then, those who always read: without pressure, without the need for call outs, competitions or photographs.
