Colombiando

In August, I had the opportunity to travel to Colombia and share the experience of the Rural Libraries Network of Cajamarca in Peru at various venues. In my suitcase, I carried stories, images, questions and many years of shared journeys with the peasant farmers of Cajamarca.

At the invitation of our friend Isabel Henao, who is in charge of the COMFAMA libraries, I took part in two workshops: one in Támesis, a beautiful, small town south-west of Medellín, and another at a ‘Juntanzas’ gathering – an initiative that brings together public, school, community and university libraries to work together to promote access to reading, writing and information.

In both settings, we discussed what a library means when it is born out of the community and grows alongside it. I spoke about the Network from the heart, about our way of understanding books, reading, culture and life, and also on behalf of the peasant farmers and of Juan Medcalf and Alfredo Mires, its founders.

I also visited the IE Concejo de Medellín school in La Floresta, where I met a young girl who reads and writes exceptionally well. The meeting was made possible by Gustavo Oquendo, a philosophy teacher, who had told her months earlier about our Network and one of our symbols: the Ñaupa.

A few days later, Ms Gloria Velásquez welcomed me to the Simona Duque Technical and Industrial Educational Institution in Marinilla, where I ran three workshops with students in their final years. As well as telling them about what we do in the Network, we used some participatory techniques from Popular Education to reflect together on who we are and what we do here in Cajamarca, in our libraries.

I had never seen students so interested and attentive. At the end of one of the workshops, a young man came up to me and asked, quite seriously:

‘And are you going to open a Rural Library in Marinilla as well?’

That question warmed my heart. Because perhaps that is also what an experience like ours is all about: sharing what we have learnt over so many years and discovering that, on the other side of a border, someone can listen, imagine and think that our experience could also be theirs.

I returned to Cajamarca feeling happy. But a part of us remained there. Just as it should be.

Rita Mocker
Red de Bibliotecas Rurales de Cajamarca