The Future's Library: 40 SOLELabs around Colombia

We got up strong and after breakfast we started the expedition: we wanted Elainer to tell us where we could build the SOLE Lab. 

We started off with a wonderful lot, in Palaima, on the other side of the sand sleeve. It is a magical place, National Park and Nature Reserve. A settlement where most of the people live from fishing. A place where there is no running water or electricity, but there are chickens running around, trees like the divi divi, mangrove or slime, a desalination plant that doesn't work because the solar panel it needs had a breakdown, some people who rent spaces in their houses for tourists to live the experience of getting away from everything, lares in the houses and hammocks. We see a kiosk that belongs to Colombia’s National Parks. The land that Elainer shows us is next to the kiosk and another old construction that looks like a house… there is a bathroom next to it. It used to be Sugelis, Elainer’s mum's home. We measure, take photos, feel the wind on our faces and make our own map of emotions.

The second location is next to Elainer's mom's kiosk, the one on the road to Boca de Camarones. Elainer's mom's kiosk is called God's Blessing. It is a smaller piece of land and perhaps less beautiful because it is less virgin... although, thinking about it, this makes it a clear advantage in this experience of setting up the SOLE Lab: we can count on electricity, running water (from jagüey), account with Elainer's mom's shop on the next lot and it seems much easier to create the flooring plate to mount the structure of the building. Here we also measure, we make the map, and the corresponding daydreaming, knowing that we still do not have any response from the community and we do not know very well how the times work.

In the afternoon we invite the Community to do SOLE... not everyone knows how the methodology works. Not everyone knows what Elainer has been doing for so long and today we are going to show off. 

Once again, people begin to arrive slowly... although they already know that Elainer's mother has prepared some of her own delicacies and, like the day before, she will be distributing them. The Great Question that the Community voted on was: Why in dry streams, puddles or places not connected to the sea or river, after the rain, do little fish or living beings appear moving in the water? Big question! and everyone (when I say everyone, it means everyone) starts searching. Some already know the way to ask. internet for things… although it seems like they never have, at least in the context of learning new things. The younger ones have fun and make jokes... It seems that they are in a game, but they all want to give an original and elaborated answer. The harvest of this SOLE is marvelous: adults, children, and young people participate with determination and fun in equal parts. 

We end with "The System Game" where we all realize that "the flight of a butterfly can cause a typhoon in another part of the world" and that we are ALL connected.

At the end of the day, the SOLE Ambassadors have been self proclaimed: Elainer, Jhoyllys, Caril, Óscar and Marcelo. Isela and Sugelis are the guardian angels of this SOLE. Excited by the appointment and eager to start working, we closed the day with the Community and received our families to spend a dream weekend, getting to know the Wayuu culture and this wonderful enclave... although one more night, we are leaving to bed without knowing what decision they have made.

Links:

• Our proposal for BOLT, call of the Internet Society Foundation