ayni: working for the common good

Ayni (pronounced: i-nee) is a core concept within the Aymaran culture in which people work together for the common good, helping one another to accomplish a task.

I have come to understand Ayni as good karma--the belief that if you do something for someone else, the favor will be returned, in some way, in the future. And it's not just good karma between people, explained my co-worker and UAC-CP graduate Carlos Vergara. It can also be between people and animals and the Earth. "If we want to be treated well by people or animals or the Pachamama, we have to treat those things well." We can't expect more from other people or things than we would expect of ourselves, Carlos explained.

Doña Sonia and her neighbor Don José spend a good portion of their Sunday off from their regular work to help Carmen Pampa community members maintain a local trail.

In the spirit of Ayni, Carmen Pampa Fund is hosting its annual fundraiser La Fiesta de Ayni on May 7th in Minneapolis. La Fiesta de Ayni will be a celebration of working for the common good.

The event will be a gathering of the many generous and loving people who work tirelessly to provide our students with access to higher education. People like Sr. Damon Nolan, UAC-CP founder, and Dr. Hugh Smeltekop, UAC-CP Vice Director--who have, with the support of generous donors, unselfishly dedicated their lives to fulfilling the mission of the College. Together, they will be joined by UAC-CP Education student Gonzalo Zambrana.

La Fiesta de Ayni is also the opportunity for people who are unfamiliar with our work to learn more about the College--our students, our graduates, our academic areas, our community extension projects, and our research work. It's the chance to learn why the United Nations has named the College one of the most successful models worldwide for the eradication of poverty!

Carmen Pampa community members take a break from working a day of Ayni. After their break they reconstructed a falling bridge over a nearby stream.

La Fiesta de Ayni, complete with Latin American food and dancing, will be held next Thursday, May 7th, from 6-9pm at the Foss Atrium and Chapel at Augsburg College, Minneapolis. The official program will begin at 7pm. People interested in attending should contact Carmen Pampa Fund at 651/641-1588.

An official invitation for the event can be viewed here.

won't you be my neighbor?

As a little girl I was a faithful fan of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. I'd tune in practically every day to hear Mr. Rogers talk about what it means to be a good neighbor.  And whether or not he implicitly taught it, I learned that neighbors were the people who lived in the house or apartment next door or the people who lived down the block or across the street.

Volunteer Prisca Alig, from Germany, lives with women in the Pre-University dorm.  She's learning what it's like to live 40 to a room and start the morning with a cold shower. She's made a big impression on our first-year students--and they on her, from what she says.

In college, I read Reinhold Niebuhr and I came upon a whole new definition of the word "neighbor." Niebuhr caused me to consider a more inclusive meaning, a more worldly view. Really, he made me question the boundaries I had assigned to my "neighborhood."

Here, students often comment that one of the things that makes the College special to them is the fact that it's a place, like most any other college campus, where ideas, cultures, life experiences, etc., are exchanged on a very personal level.  In a country that is quite divided--politically, economically, and socially--the UAC-CP is a place where students who often have very little experience outside of their home communities come to know their Bolivian neighbors--in the Niebuhr sense of the word.

Volunteer Lee Lechtenberg (from Boston) and the Tintaya sisters, Berta and Saida (from Carmen Pampa--Berta is a UAC-CP employee, Saida is a UAC-CP graduate) peel potatoes for an all-college lunch during the annual Inter-Carreras festivities.

And not just getting to know fellow Bolivians. Since it opened its doors 16 years ago, the College has attracted a wide array of foreign visitors and volunteers. We've had people from the U.S., Canada, Italy, Ireland, Australia, Germany, Paraguay, and Peru...to name just a few.  All of us in this little Garrison Keillor-esque community of Carmen Pampa, we've come to know each other not by the sweeping generalities that often accompany one's nationality, but rather by the individual people that we are.

UAC-CP visitor Kimberly Lane visited the home of UAC-CP student Beatrice Mamani in the Altiplano. Kimberly is pictured with Beatrice's three younger sisters and their father.

For example, in La Paz, I often tell our students, I'm just a tourist, a gringa.  But in Carmen Pampa, I'm Sarita.  In this remote little village nestled on the side of a mountain in the magestic Nor Yungas, people know me--the good, the bad, and the big crazy hair!  And, likewise, I know them.

Not to say that we all get along.  Like any family or group of neighbors, we have our disagreements, to be sure.  But the difference is that we recognize these problems as interpersonal; they are not based on language or color or nationality.

In order to love our neighbors (or at least justify a good reason for honestly not liking them), we have to know them. The UAC-CP provides a place for that to happen--something that I don't think was ever part of Sr. Damon's original goals for the College, but it's been a powerful bonus. Because, I think, today we're an example of how we can see the world as one giant neighborhood--Mr. Roger's-style.

leo

Sometimes, the most precious and insightful conversations I have with students are the ones that happen when I least expect them.

Like yesterday morning when I sat waiting (unsuccessfully) for a ride into Coroico to meet a foundation representative.  After 20 minutes and no sign of mobi--and an indication that it was about ready to rain--I was beginning to get a little impatient. And then second-year Veterinary Science major, Leo Zambrana came along.

Leo Francisco Zambrana 

Leo, one of seven children (two of his brothers are UAC-CP students), comes from the town of Ixiamas--it's about a 24-hour bus ride from Carmen Pampa.  His parents farm land, citrus mostly, and have some cattle (Leo showed me the giant scar that runs the length of his upper right arm from a time he was attacked by a bull). 

When I asked him what motivated him to come study at the College, so far away from home, he explained that the UAC-CP was really the only option he had for a higher education...and he knew that a college degree was the key to a better life.  Students from his hometown high school, he said, generally don't go anywhere. "A lot of young people don't have much hope, I think," Leo said.  

He admitted he was inspired to study at College because of his older brother Gonzalo, a UAC-CP Education major who is currently spending a year in St. Paul, Minnesota, as a teaching intern at Adams Immersion School.  It helps to have family here in Carmen Pampa, he explained, because trips home are rare and communication with his parents is difficult.  I asked if cell phone reception can be received and he said it was coming "in three days."  For now, people use a communal phone in town.  Electricity, he said, is a relatively recent arrival, too.

We both acknowledged that while we are fortunate to have many luxuries here in Carmen Pampa (like Internet, for one!) there are still many rural areas of Bolivia, from which our students come, that are essentially cut off from the rest of the world.  "But it is changing...poco a poco," he said.  And the fact that he can recognize that is what, I believe, sets Leo apart from his high school classmates. He has the ability to hope and believe in a better life.  

As the chances of me getting a ride to Coroico dwindled and tiny raindrops began to fall, Leo and I continued our talk, sitting side by side on a stone retaining wall, discussing family, culture, education, poverty, employment, and rural development.  And at some point I felt my impatience subside, realizing that perhaps this was one of those moments--the ones I least expect; the ones that make me happiest when they happen.

In the end, I got an invite to visit the Zambrana house sometime during vacation in July, I found a ride to Coroico, and I went about my day feeling all the more confident in the work we do here in Carmen Pampa.