From Maria Glauser, Paraguay

Today is Christmas and I am in India where nobody celebrates it. And this is probably one of the best Christmas in my life because I feel free. I do not have to be happy and cheerful today as I am supposed to be in my culture, even if I don’t feel so. I enjoy this feeling of freedom and I am not sad being away from home at this time. One of the things I learned during the conference is how to enjoy this feeling.

 The conference was quite shocking for me at the beginning. It  was on my very first days in India and I was still not feeling well in its culture. I felt a bit lonely at the beginning and also very anxious knowing that I was going to stay in this unknown country with unknown people for more than two months after the conference. A mix of feelings made me look at this enormous experience before me as a giant wave coming towards me. All this seemed to be reflected in my organism; I felt weak, ill, had painful stomachaches and I even got to think I could never eat Indian food. But what I realized later was that this difficult process was going on only inside me. The conference and its process were going on simultaneously out there.

 Little by little I could see things clearer. I learned to enjoy open spaces during the conference as well. It was in Brazil the fist time I participated in an open space and it had been very confusing to me, I did not understand it. I believe that many people are not used to participate actively in conferences and need to experiment open spaces and once they understand its nature and rhythm they discover how rich real dialogues can be.

 Perhaps the more meaningful thing I hold in my hands after the conference is the significance of my personal experience, my thoughts, my ideas, my knowledge and my intuition. I appreciate how some people there gave so much power to their own feelings and ideas, and that was very contagious. I learned to value what is personal, in me and in other people, and to value what goes to the human being beyond theories and paradigms.

 In this aspect, spending time with Satish and Munir was very meaningful to me. Satish and I decided to sit together without talking for a while, “without consistency” as he used to say. After listening and watching a group of people discussing a great person’s ideas we had a conversation and I realized how people feel a kind of security when talking about someone else’s ideas, when belonging to an institution or organization, when dealing with things that leave the “self” out. Why do we find it so easy to defend or attack or simply talk about other’s ideas? Why is it more demanding to share our own beliefs and doubts? Why are we avoiding ourselves? The funny thing is that when reflecting about this none of us referred to any of our own experiences since we were so busy talking about others.

 Talking, and above all the eye contact with Munir during and after the conference reinforced my thoughts and feelings towards this aspect I started being aware of. There is a wonderful feeling in being young and fresh in life. I feel so lucky and concious of this point I am now in my personal development. And I value it a lot because I am afraid that it won’t last forever and I don’t want to lose it. I think that once I cross the “border”, belonging to an organization or project and giving so much from me there, it will be gone. I ask myself how can I learn more without losing this freshness in life? How can I protect myself from rigid mental structures? How can I protect myself from this fake security that organizations and other people’s ideas seem to offer?  Saying this I don’t deny the power and beauty of teamwork. I believe the most beautiful things can be achieved when learning, working and growing together.

 Listening to some people’s experiences and dreams many ideas came to my mind. There are many important things I would like to work on going back to Paraguay. Organic farming is something I would like do in my country; my family owns some land outside the city, my brothers are interested as well and I am glad that staying in Udaipur together with the fantastic people that work at Shikshantar l have the chance to learn more about it. But why did I need to come so far away to learn something that is right there as well?

 But there are other things that I find not only important but urgent for me to work on. I need to know my people better. I feel very ashamed of myself not speaking guarani, our native language spoken by 90% of the population in Paraguay, properly. I recognize I belong to the little group of people in the city that has food every day and can choose to get a higher education or is able to travel to India. I owe my people too much, not only because I have so many privileges at their expenses but because I love them so much. In this sense, I must be closer to them, even though I know I will never be one of them.

I need to open my eyes soon and look at the beautiful things that are so close around me.

 My initial questions for the conference were not approached and I did not work to have them answered. I wanted to discuss about other people’s ideas on neutrality and education, if there is a relation between the two.  I also wanted to share ideas about the process of accompanying learning processes related to individuals or communities, and the role of the individual in this process without interfering or imposing.

 I know these questions will walk with me for some time and I feel good about it. The most meaningful and beautiful things seem to appear when you forget about your objectives and questions and you allow yourself to see what life is offering you at that moment.

 I asked myself during the conference what actually a learning society is and if we would ever talk about it. I now think that it was good that we did not discuss it then and that it was held with a sort of hidden presence, but I am very interested in knowing what the others understand by the term “Learning Societies”.

 In my opinion, there should be no definition of it. Each person has a different idea of it and only taking all opinions into account we will have an idea of what a learning society is. I feel I belong to a beautiful learning community which met for 5 days in Udaipur, and I hope that it was its fist meeting.  I also feel I belong to many other learning communities in Paraguay and none of them could be compared to the others. I am an active member of my neighborhood’s learning community. I believe my family is the richest learning community I could belong to. I feel myself very close to an indigenous community where we found a way to learn together without one becoming like the other. And I am also part of sometimes learning / mostly unlearning societies like the school where I work and the university where I study something called  “Sciences of Education” as a subject. In these two communities is where I have to be very, very careful to have the harm they do to me under some control.

 The best way to nurture the learning community we are part of is by sharing our ideas and reflections.  So please send them to the others, I am very interested in knowing what is troubling you now and in the future.  My email address until March is mglauser@hotmail.com.

 The conference was a “pre-conference” for my own learning experience in India.