I was impressed by the joy, the pride and the fellowship of these people. They are talented musicians and orators. They tell their stories with conviction and they see their library work as vital to community survival and development. We spent some time in Cajamarca to assess the essential elements of literacy in practical terms, set against all the reading we had done in international studies. We also wanted to know whether the Cajamarcan experience is transportable to other situations, especially to Africa.
Literacy is a concept, a process, a set of skills, and a mode of behaviour.
My sense is that we all can learn lessons from our Peruvian colleagues, by recognizing that the oral and the written are different but complementary expressions of communication and by trying to understand that reading is not only a solitary exercise but a communal activity, both in developing societies and in our own. Societies learn and develop as we acknowledge the importance of literacy to our social, economic and spiritual lives. When we discussed the Peruvian experience with African experts, they pointed out the predominance of local languages and different customs, religions and belief systems on that continent. However, we have also learned that we must provide culturally sensitive materials that correspond to the needs of women and children, as well as to those of men. The collaboration of authors, illustrators, publishers, librarians and funding organizations in finding the balance between the choice of useful foreign collections and the stimulation of new local materials is an issue which deserves our attention.