Be positive

Several weeks ago, due to the luck of fate, I tested "positive" for Covid19. Because of the situation we live in, I felt a lot of fear, but I was also sure that I would have enough support and help because the people closest to me are good people.

The same day I received encouraging messages from Alfredo, Karina, Rumi, Mara, Zelma, Helen, Nathalia, Gaby, Sara, Abel, Nancy, Angela, Jorge… just to mention a few names from this extensive family of Rural Libraries. I also received oils and other necessary ingredients, from Rita and Karin, to get out of the situation soon.

It is incredible, really, the speed with which friends, brothers and sisters of so many years and places run to help. Instantly I knew that market baskets, healing herbs, recipes for infusions and other medicines learned through experience were arriving at my house. In times of so much uncertainty and fear, it was very nice to know that so many people care about you. I cannot complain about the care I received from the medical staff, but it is very gratifying to receive so much attention from those who are not.

And then I thought of all the people who go through this alone, or are so far away that we can't even run to get them something, like many of our brothers and sisters from communities far from the towns. How will they spend their days of quarantine without having the necessary food, disinfectants or medicines, without a pulse oximeter to control their saturation or a simple thermometer, without adequate environments to isolate themselves and avoid infecting the rest of the family, without help caring for children. So, I appreciate my fortune much more, but the positive is passing me by. I am thinking: how long will we continue to live in this unfair situation?

Lola Paredes

Sensory Integration Workshop

At the beginning of May, through the Basic Special Education Resource Center (CREBE), our sister Rita Mocker offered a virtual workshop to teachers, therapists and parents. The topic was Sensory integration: evidence, difficulties, physiology, diagnosis and therapeutic process.

Sensory integration is an innate and complex process that allows our brain to organize and interpret the information we receive from our senses and the external world.

A child with sensory integration dysfunction has difficulty “filtering” this information, consequently, she cannot decide which stimuli to respond to and which stimuli to ignore and appears disorganized and out of sync with her environment.

At the beginning of the last century, Dr. Jean Ayres researched and developed different exercises and therapy techniques that help overcome these difficulties. Although it is true that the professional application of sensory integration therapies requires a lot of professional experience, a daily and familiar routine of small exercises significantly alleviates the symptoms. Learning these strategies was the intention of this workshop.

Education and frustrations

School work with young children always requires having some resources that allow us to capture their attention and interest, even more so, in the virtual environment that is much more tiring, exhausting and distant.

Personally, I like to read or tell them stories before starting my daily activities, I also like to tell riddles, learn rhymes, among other things. To my surprise, the remote system prevents me from carrying out these activities with the naturalness and spirit with which I do it when I am in front of them. And it is not the same as reading or telling a story walking between the tables, where the children listen attentively, changing the tone of my voice, moving my arms, pretending to run, jump - even shouting together, if necessary, than to do it through a tiny screen where we hardly see heads. We have been experiencing this situation since last year, so it is felt more every day. It is not something that “the body gets used to”, as we say.

It is even worse, because we do not have enough trust with the family member who accompanies the child at home; few families do it in silence, only listening to be attentive to the materials they need or the tasks in which their help is required. In many cases, and this is seen more and more, the companion tends to intervene, draw the child's attention away, make unnecessary comments, or tease.

Once a child's mother called me to tell me to avoid sad stories because her son can't handle them. She advised me to put a happy ending on every story to prevent the children from feeling bad, so as not to hurt them. In more than thirty years of service, I had never heard anything like it. At first I thought that perhaps this mother did it because we are in permanent tension due to the pandemic, but no, the lady explained to me that she never tells sad things to her son, since he was born, she told me. In fact, she has been forced to change the plot and ending of many classic stories to prevent her child from hearing sad words.

Imagine, then, the frustration I feel now, not being able to be as spontaneous as I would like. Not being able to explain to children, taking advantage of a story, that there are people who suffer, that there is death, pain, fighting, envy. That the world is not a completely happy place. That stories are fantasy, imagination, but they are also very close to real life. They serve to explain what happens in people's minds and hearts. For a few weeks now, I've been spending more time telling riddles, rhymes and jokes for children. Until I find a way to overcome these frustrations.

Commoners of the world

 


On behalf of our entire community of the Network, on 31st March we made our little offering to the earth, the sacred mountains and the deceased, at the top of Apu Qayaqpuma, in Cajamarca.

And in various parts of the world, other community members made their offerings simultaneously.

Some brothers and sisters managed to take photos or record videos; others could not have a record, but they were.

Here we share a first installment of this ceremony of ours:

https://youtu.be/rF2eaVfknFI

Those who are yet to make their offer, we would appreciate sending us your photos and videos to join us and continue sharing.

Our channel

On 31st March a new way of communicating with family and friends was launched. Here is our channel, which tells a little about us and because, in addition, its presence encourages and strengthens us in these difficult times:

Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTg8LyGETtYzYhNkO_GraiQ

Writing our history - Cajamarca Rural Libraries Network:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIuvaD924Yc

Writing our history - Cajamarca Rural Libraries Network / sub. English: https://youtu.be/hP2IzzC8Iyw

Writing our history - Cajamarca Rural Libraries Network / sub. deutsch: https://youtu.be/58NmZuObLAM

Alfredo Mires Ortiz - Conversation: Community and Pandemics:

https://youtu.be/wdmR5v_XVxQ

We Are Us - Community Program: https://youtu.be/1dJMw-_jGJc

The Courage to Read - Part 1: https://youtu.be/LcSPUzi3Aiw

The Mountain of the Soul - part 1: https://youtu.be/txlQyGX1sxg

Another voice sings - song / tribute. Rural Libraries of Cajamarca:

https://youtu.be/iLSJkq-Ohwk

50 years of the Network: Offering to the earth from the Apu Qayaqpuma:

https://youtu.be/3Wi5KPEFzx

1971-2021: Tribute to our Network - 4

Everything about her is celebration and reverence. Our Network is the nest and ferment of the ancient and primal sacred vision of the world and existence. Through her we have learned, remembered and never stopped making offerings, cultivating and maintaining altars to our deceased, venerating and thanking the earth for the essential presence of our elders, of our wise women and men who have known how to forge the memory of our Andean people.

The Network is herself the center and point of extension of each practice, each act, each task in the countryside, each reading, each voice and each book as a ceremony, a ritual, a full encounter of all with all.

Tribute to courage and drive - 4

This time a recognition and tribute to our veteran Quechua librarian José Isabel Ayay Valdez and his children, as well as his brothers and the Chilimpampa community. They, from the memory of Mrs. María Santos Valdez, the yach’aqmama of the community, have accompanied with their integrity and courage the journey of the Network; they have offered their immense wisdom and firm presence.

All our thanks and love.