Community Successes in El Libano - Toma Cultural y Turistico

So the weekend has come and gone - what did we get done? Well it sure seems like the culmination of many great things, which I will tell you all some about today, and great successes many days and in some cases years in the making.

Let's start with the "Toma Cultural y Turistico del Libano", which as I mentioned previously was a result of the official event being cancelled just 8 days before it was supposed to happen.

As the Vice-President of the local tourism committee, I had pre-planned an event just four blocks away from the central park of the main event, for local businesses to showcase what they have to offer, including the tourism offerings. It might sound strange, but over the years the main festival of El Libano had devolved to a debaucherous drunken fest where outside parties sold outside liquor and payed outside bands of music to outside people visiting Libano.

Obviously we had as our goal to have a 'family-friendly' space where actual Libano people could showcase their works and entrepreneurship.

And this is exactly what we did do - using some of the pre-planned details and energy, the community was able to - in just 8 days, organize the permissions and legal requirements to pull off a very nice local festival showcasing - local music, local artesans, local food and local tourism attractions.

We were additionally handicapped/helped by the upcoming elections, as we were strictly prohibited from having any sort of political messagings, political participation or political pandering or symbolism. I think in the end this helped more than it hurt.

So early Saturday morning we went to see the results of 8 days of logistics, at this point I was (happily) relegated to just in charge of the tourism sector, where we planned (and pulled off!) a 'Punto de Informacion Turistico' complete with a full color digital guide of all the offerings that Libano has, available through QR code.

There are probably still some missing, but we did the best we could in short time, bolstered by the first edition document we built earlier this year, and will continue to work on it to release the second edition in March - which will include a full-color print run.

I was able to visit some of the other stands in some moments, and I even bought a souveneir for my wife that says I <3 El Libano, made with love by Blanca, a local artesan. If you can imagine this, just 10 short years ago when we had our wedding in this town - my grandmother could not find a single souveneir in the whole town even with our help. So my wife made her one.

Now, it is possible to find many different souveneir options, this is development - one may even call it progress.

My wife is also a member of the local tourism council - she was elected representative by the local tour guides. Over many years of hard work, the community of our small town is getting organized, getting educated and learning to work together to pull off something like this - a 'main event' so to speak.

And here we are in front of Santa Librada's banner, which is a 40 year old project of a livable ecological reserve, which means that its not just a dense forest where no one goes, but an actual project where people work and live that is also a natural ecological reserve.

Here we have another wonderful artesan, who makes earings and other objects out of 'totumo' a local fruit used by indigenous cultures for thousands of years to make different recipients, containers, drinking mugs and other such things.

This is endemic entrepreneurship!

Throughout the day the part seemed to fill more and more, if one person left three more were coming, and it got better and better as we got into the flow. Luckily I had lots of good help from many people, and was able to escape from time to time to visit the other stands, including where they were selling the coffee.

Like this local family who run Zaku cafeteria, they use local single-origin coffees to make a high quality cuppa, and I expended my coffee budget here throughout the day, bringing coffee as well to my wife and the other operants of the tourism stand.

Later, Maria - the wife in this picture - told me that it went very good and that they were able to sell coffee as fast as they could prepare it.

This continued throughout the afternoon and into the night, where at 5pm until 10pm, different local bands from the northern Tolima region were on-hand to pleasure a still growing crowd with truly local music. I think this was one of the best parts, instead of spending big money to bring in outside bands, it seems the people enjoy (or also enjoy) local music that support the local community.

I received a variety of feedback, and most of it at the event was positive. That this is how the local festival(s) should be. Some people later did mention that perhaps some people were 'expecting' something different, something more drunken, but I reminded them that there are any number of bars near and far from the park, and that at least drinking there they are supporting a local businessperson.

We are still anticipating a future 'feedback session' with the participants, but in the end - it was wonderful, and continued on Sunday.

Saturday night and into Sunday morning I participated in a very successful and harmonious healing ceremony, and then spent Sunday morning shopping for all the things the farm needs to be prepared for monday, see my last post for some details.

But at 2pm we were ready, because we had a most important meeting with our local community, this one indeed years in the making.

It went really well, and deserves its own post, perhaps by @ecoinstante, about all that this process has entailed over the last two years.

But long story short, after much running around, paperwork, and social work, we now are officially recognized and 'avalados' to conduct elections for our very own Junta de Accion Comunal, and before the end of the year we will be operating as such.

So the weekend went good, and I happily went to sleep around 6:30pm, and awoke fresh and ready for the week at 5:45 am, ready to conquer all that I set my mind to this week. And since I have been pushing a lot of things off until this week, its more than a few things. Stay tuned to this blog to find out more.

Freedom and Friendship