This is South African hospi Kent Smith, on his way west to serve two weeks as hospi at Calzada del Coto. He stopped at Moratinos this week to pick up a bicycle the volunteers can use on grocery runs to Sahagun.
We are delivering books and folding chairs this weekend to two little donativos in Zamora province, courtesy of @CaminoArtes guitar program.
We are small, but we get the work done! Thanks for your ongoing support!
“Some PPI donors never even heard about this project, because it was fully funded within two days of the first announcements, forever amazed at the goodwill and generosity of Santiago pilgrims far and wide. ”
Photos by Paul Garland.
They're packin' them in these days at Albergue de Tabara, a tough little pilgrim shelter on a rugged trail north of Zamora. Paul Garland, the hospitalero for the second half of May, says the new steel bunkbeds are "rock-solid," and have ladders that don't hurt bare, careworn feet. Each bunk has a thick new mattress, too, covered in a heavy-duty zip-on bug-proof protector.
Some PPI donors never even heard about this project, because it was fully funded within two days of the first announcements, forever amazed at the goodwill and generosity of Santiago pilgrims far and wide.
Jose Almeida, the man in charge at Albergue de Tabara, is also overseeing development of several other small, donativo-only pilgrim refuges on the newly re-waymaked Camino Zamorana-Portuguese. Paul the Hospitalero will be the first to serve at the newly inaugurated Albergue Ricobayo, a 6-bed nest built in a re-purposed pigeon loft!
Below: Albergue Ricobayo, in February.
Meet Santiago Seseña Rodriguez, a longtime hospitalero whose lifetime dream of an albergue of his own finally came true in 2018.
Santi runs the Albergue de Peregrinos de Izarra, a 20-bed private operation on the Camino del Norte, just east of Comillas. Santi´s a Madrid native who for years worked alongside Jose Luis, the charismatic hospitalero at Albergue San Francisco Asis in Tosantos. Like his mentor, Santi is a talented host and a quietly spiritual guy.
The Izarra albergue was founded in 2016 by Alex, a former taxi driver turned Camino apostle. He started Albergue Bodenaya, still a landmark of generosity on the Camino Primitivo, as well as a couple of other non-profit pilgrim establishments. If you visit Izarra, you may meet Alex -- he still serves as a volunteer hospitalero there sometimes.
I met Santi a year ago, when Peaceable Projects installed new picnic benches and tables in the garden outside the Tosantos albergue. When I heard that Santi had taken charge at the Izarra albergue, and that he was freezing this winter in its un-heated garret, I got in touch.
“Canadians know about cold, and about keeping warm. They are fabulously generous, and they know how to move fast. It was a perfect match. ”
He´d heard about the pellet stoves at Santa Cruz in Sahagun, he said. He didn´t know a privately owned albergue qualified for Peaceable funds.
Public, private, or parochial – it´s the donativo spirit that makes the difference! Can a pilgrim stay there if he has no money? Is there a genuine need for the prospective project? If the answer is a proven “yes,” then sure! Peaceable donors are here to help!
I asked Santi to get some builders´ estimates. And just about then, a friend at Canadian Company of Pilgrims sent an email. “We have money left from last year,” she said. “It´s burning a hole in our pocket! What´s the next project on the Camino?”
Canadians know about cold, and about keeping warm. They are fabulously generous, and they know how to move fast. It was a perfect match.
Soon as Santi found the right builder and had a figure in hand, I touched the Canadians for a cool 3,000 euros. The British Colombia branch gave 1500 euros, and the national group gave 1,500 euros. Beauty!
The money arrived today. The installation works will begin after Holy Week.
I never even had to pass the hat!
Big thanks to Canada. And for supporters who are not from there, we´ve used funds from our past fundraisers and our monthly donors this winter to buy a washing machine and vacuum cleaner for a pilgrim shelter in the mountains of Leon, some downspouts for a little place on the San Salvador, and maintenance supplies for the Pilgrim Memorial Grove.
More projects, big and small, are afoot. Thanks to YOU, the Camino keeps chugging along.
Peaceable tries to work quietly, behind the scenes. I avoid media attention whenever I can, because that’s not what we’re really about – but I know how powerful a well-placed story can be in getting things moving.
Our first Project for 2019, the Tabara Beds initiative, hit the local newspaper this morning in Zamora, because Jose Almeida does not share my reticence! You the donors to PPI funded this – I handed over 2,000 euros in crisp bills to Jose a week ago, and he phoned up the bunkbed builders right then and there.
So here you go, in black and white!
Jose Almeida is an ambitious guy, but he happens to live in the middle of a great, wide wilderness north of Zamora with not a whole lot going on. He has to make his own action.
After 16 years and thousands of pilgrims, the 14 beds and mattresses at Albergue de Tabara are BUSTED! Help Peaceable Projects raise 2,000 euro to replace them all before the season starts!
Happily, there are caminos passing through his town, and the pilgrims and albergues and trail keep his ideas popping and his friends hopping all through the year.
Sixteen years ago, Jose and his friends opened a humble albergue in Tabara, a town north of Zamora on the Camino Sanabres branch of the Via de la Plata. Jose lives there, very simply, year round. He's gone on to open more albergues, and write books, and he edits a semi-monthly online magazine that keeps all the Spanish camino people connected-up and current. Peaceable has done some fund-raising and liaison work for a few of these projects in the past: the new Albergue de Almendra is set to open in March, with help from several Peaceable allies!
.... But whilst slinging concrete and bricks and verbs for everyone else, Jose has let a few things slip at home.
After 16 years and about 2,000 pilgrims, a third of the 14 beds at albergue de Tabara are not useable any more. The welds on the aluminum joints are worn out, re-welded, and broken apart yet again. Wobbly legs are duct-taped together. The mattresses are also 16 years old.
Jose's got some money put aside, but not nearly enough to do an entire replacement job.
If we can raise 2,000 euro, he can open this season with bright new bunkbeds and fresh mattresses! Anything we raise over that amount can go to put bedbug-proof covers on the mattresses.
If you want to help out, please make your donation via our Paypal account in the link below. And thank you for being a part of ongoing good things over in the western end of Castilla y Leon!
Dear friends,
The weather is cooling, but things are warming up at Peaceable Kingdom in Spain.
The pellet stoves are being installed next week at Monasterio Santa Cruz in Sahagun. Your on-the-spot generosity has the Marist Fathers' project a full six months ahead of schedule, and will endow the Benedictine monastery with a notable infrastructure upgrade.
Up next: Portugal! I am traveling to Albergheria a Velha next weekend to give a talk about Camino Hospitality, and while there I hope to sell the Portuguese on Ditch-Pig style cleanup operations! The Camino Portguese is experiencing a great boom just now, and the people "on the ground" are a bit overwhelmed by it all... no one has ever done a comprehensive cleanup on this camino.
So on Nov. 25, Ditch Pig volunteers will gather in Oporto and set off on the trash trail, armed with shovels and bags and a map of the "black spots" between that city and the Spanish border. We'll clear up the worst of it, and if time allows we'll double back and sweep south to clean up the space between. I hope to have some local volunteers join us!
Meanwhile, just outside Astorga, PPI has installed two new memorial stones at the Pilgrim Memorial Grove. We're shifting all but the Denise Theim stone to a vertical placement along a wall in the park, so maintenance workers can better care for the trees. (our concrete placements were damaging their roots!) Sometime in late August or September, another stone appeared in the park, memorializing a Greek-American pilgrim who cleared up trash along The Way. We do not know who put the stone there, and we don't know if the pilgrim died on the Camino, but we're mounting the stone on the wall alongside the others. We obviously need to mark the site and better explain how it functions... a project for 2019?
Thanks to all of you, it's working!
The novice wing at Holy Cross Benedictine monastery in Sahagun is an albergue these days... help us warm the place this winter with two new pellet stoves!
The Benedictine Monastery in Sahagun has been sheltering Santiago pilgrims for a thousand years. In 2017, Marist Fathers stepped in to take on the hosting duties, offering a traditional communal dinner, pilgrim Mass, and low-cost shelter for any pilgrim in need.
But centuries-old convents are not noted for coziness. In winter, even indoors, you often can see your breath hanging in the air. Not a lot of pilgrims pass by this way in the dead of winter, and the ones who do are usually chilled to the bone on arrival. The welcome is very warm, the food is hot, the pilgrim blessings rich and fine. But the ceilings are high, the walls are stony. It’s cold in there.
The three missionary priests took over this place last March, and switched on the old gas boiler soon as they moved in. The heating bill for two weeks came to 1,000 Euro!
“And now, with another Castilian winter bearing down, the fathers are getting ready.”
And now, with another Castilian winter bearing down, the fathers are getting ready. They’re installing insulation and heavy doors on one small corner of the convent, reducing down the sleeping space to 13 beds, a dining area, and a small chapel for the evening Mass and blessing. They’ve shopped around and consulted with the experts, and plan to install two pellet-burning stoves to warm the novitiate wing through the cold, lonesome days of winter as it comes in and goes out. (they return to the motherhouse mid-December to March.) Or as Fr. Daniel puts it himself:
“We have thought to keep 14 beds available for pilgrims, in 3 rooms… The municipal albergue is open the whole year, but last March pilgrims complaint that there was no heating... The amount money saved would be huge: the man of the heating said that we would spend in 6 months (with the heating 15 hours/day on) 800€, and we spent in half month last March 1000€. So, we could save up to 4000€ next winter (thinking that we'll be open until end of November or mid December and from beginning of March onwards), which it will be a similar quantity to the intial investment.”
Father Daniel Fernandez, the priest who heads up this initiative, is an old friend of Peaceable. He served in Carrion de los Condes and Terradillos as part of the Camino Chaplaincy program, and has walked the Camino de Santiago himself. Sahagun has for years been a less-than spiritual stopping place for pilgrims, and when Daniel saw the opening, the Marists joined with the Madres Benedictinas in Sahagun to fill the gap. We support their efforts, and always recommend Albergue Santa Cruz to pilgrims who plan to stop in Sahagun.
Peaceable Projects helps to fund just this kind of pilgrim-centered non-profit infrastructure improvement… and Peaceable Projects is YOU.
The fathers need 2,000 euro to buy the stoves, and at least that much more for the chimneys, installation, and enough pellets to last November through March. Peaceable has already committed 1,000 euro to this project, and we’d like to at least pay for the stoves… So if you are looking for a way to support the pilgrim path, to “give back” via a certified non-profit, make your donation now via Peaceable Projects Inc. Your donation is tax-deductible in some parts of the world.
If you live in Europe and would like to make a Euro donation direct to the Marist Fathers, please send a note and I will forward bank deposit information.