We have been introduced to the next trips which will begin tomorrow, Sunday, the 1st of May.

The idea of creating a mobile school on interculturalism is justified as we can take advantage of being in one nation where the places, the cities are not very far apart from each other. In one hour, one can go from one place to another diverse region with diverse people, who have a diverse culture, with whom we can build unity. In these journeys, the most important thing will be to give importance to relationships. During the journey one can deepen the diverse types of relationships that would be established. These are: the relationship with self, the relationship with the other, the relationship with one’s surroundings, nature and objects, and the relationship with the supernatural, that is, the understanding that there is a supreme being which is beyond and which contains all. The purpose of these journeys is to be able to understand these 5 relationships. The essence of being is to be in relationship.

With the help of Sami, a youth of the Kitukara people, we had the opportunity to begin deepening these relationships. We were introduced to the suffering of his people, who, because of their history, have been considered half-breeds, have been driven to the peripheries and forced to hide the riches of their culture, their music, their dance.

The “direct sons and daughters of the Sun,” the Kitukara are a profoundly spiritual people, and this is expressed through their dance and through their community life. “The sharing between us and the people who enter to become part of it,” Sami explains, “is done in a very affectionate way. Being able to recognise oneself in the other, identify with one another, that the other is a reflexion of oneself; being able to love ourselves, that is being able to “be human”. 

At the end, we learnt a few words in Quechua.

In the afternoon, we made a historical journey to understand better the meaning of “mestizaje” or miscegenation. We quickly glimpsed through the story of these aboriginal people, from the Inca empire up to the Spaniards, to arrive at the concept of interculturalism in today’s reality.

We’re leaving tomorrow! First stop, Puvo, a city to the East of Ecuador at the beginning of the Amazon.