Those Hands of Theirs
By Beatriz Monje Barón
February 2016 — I was delighted to return to Illimani, Bolivia, a place that embraces us with cold, high up in the Andean mountains. For years the ATD Fourth World team in Bolivia has been working alongside families in the Senkata district, in the city of El Alto. Now the Volunteer Corps team members live in the same neighbourhood as these families. Together they have developed a whole new way of tackling the challenges of everyday life in poverty, a whole new way of creating projects for change.
Fifteen days spent in the heart of this community, which inspires us to build the world we dream of, have filled my awayo — my carrying cloth — with enough for a year. It is loaded with local sajraña hairbrushes and kantutas — a flower sacred to the Incas — which mark the importance of what I carry on my shoulders, of what we choose to carry, of what travels with us. Amid all the planning, projects, evaluations, and the decisions to be made, in the midst of it all, my hands, capable of manual work and useful also to help us think, reached always for my awayo.
While we discussed our next projects, Doña Lucía spun yarn. She created thread with what appeared to be a multitude of hands, and all our ideas seemed to come together on her spindle. As we spoke together, Emma unpicked stitches gone wrong, Doña Agustina prepared the sajraña with sun-dried thistle roots, Doña Primitiva gutted a lamb, Juan Carlos aligned stones on the floor, Sandra prepared potatoes, and Miguel looked for food for the cow and played with the calf. On one day we prepared the clay oven, on another we rearranged the furniture, the next day we cleaned the kitchen; and as we carried out these tasks, our hands would brim with ideas and words.
A little further away, in the community of Hornuni, Agustina gathered us round the table and told us, “In the fields, these hands of ours work very hard.” When we got there, I was able to make my hands useful as well, as I became familiar with the techniques and worked alongside the others. Our hands get tired working in the fields. At the end of the day, the apthapi — a traditional pot-luck meal — and a girl singing in the Aymara language satisfied our hunger and brought a smile to our lips.
Just as I had experienced in Senegal two years ago, this trip to Bolivia has raised my concerns about city life and its development. It makes me ask more questions about the division of labor, the way in which certain practices disappear, and the way people are subtly, persistently organised into two groups: those who use their minds and those who use their hands. I need to go back. On this trip, I carry an invitation with me in my awayo, along with the sajraña and the kantutas that I also carry — a voluminous bundle, like the fullness of a skirt — alongside the beauty of Illimani, which embraces us with its cold.
Displayed on my awayo cloth: the sajraña that Emma and Dona Agustina prepared to brush my hair, and sacred kantutas blossoms.
