Coming home

Yesterday I changed my visa, today my plane ticket and now it is for sure that I will come back to The Netherlands the 16th of July, arriving at 13:20 at Schiphol. I wanted to come back early July, but this was the first option, but I will for sure find a good use for these extra days. Sorry house mates for all the confusion!! And thanks so much for all the trouble you go through to find subrenters !!
But untill I come to my Dutch home, I want to leave something to my new, temporal home Chiapas that is leaving so much in me... (How nice to have homes in at least three parts of the world. How beautiful, how confusing sometimes. Sometimes I wonder at whether the rest of my life I will spend missing one home while feeling at home in yet another part...)

Therefore, I will start my volunteer work in Fundacion Leon XIII (www.fleonxiii.org.mx), even though I am a little scared or nervous to work with the Tsotsil farmers. (Well, let´s call it vertigo/hoogtevrees...)
Besides I am trying to acquire some Dutch funding for CETAMEX, the NGO Carolina is working for in la Selva Lacandona, and is aimed at finding farming ways that are more friendly to the forest.
Lastly, together with the community of Rancho Salvador Allende we defined some projects that interest them. One of them we will try to get funded by Alert:

Two workshops will be organised in the community Salvador Allende on sustainable energy use. Salvador Allende is situated in the Biosfera Montes Azules in the Selva Lacandona, Chiapas, Mexico. It is a very isolated community, not counting with services of electricity or roads and its vegetation is the highly threatened tropical rain forest. The youngsters from this community together with young people from other parts of Mexico and from the Netherlands identified together the following themes/activities as useful and important in safeguarding a sustainable future energy provision:

· The use of non-renewable batteries for flash-lights and radios is wide spread in the community. These batteries are thrown in the environment after use, where they contaminate soil and water. Besides the cost of bying the batteries is a burden on the family´s budget. The project wants to raise awareness on the contaminating nature of the batteries. It also wants to replace the use of non-rechargeable batteries by rechargeable batteries accompanied by solar flashlights and solar battery rechargers. In exchange, the community will commit themselves to collect the old batteries on-site to be brought to a recycle centre in DF or San Cristobal.

· Wood fires are used for preparing the food. Collecting wood means a heavy job for the men, women and children of the community. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find enough good wood for the fires. Besides the open fires generate a lot of smoke, which is affecting badly the health of the young women and children that spend a majority of their days in the kitchen. Respiratory diseases are common place. The project wants to organize a work shop to construct prototypes of two alternative ovens: Lorena oven and solar kitchen. The Lorena oven uses wood, but saves up to 50% in the amount of wood. Besides, through its design, the exposure to smoke is reduced considerably. The solar kitchen are easy designs that have proved their worth in other countries and the community would like to try out their usefulness for this area on sunny days.

I will be giving the workshop on solar kitchens!! Even more vertigo!! And I will have to try out how to make them beforehand, as I am so a-technical, but it will be an endeavour.

The community is also very much in need of solar panels and accus that are designed for the use with solar panels (not car accus, they last much less time). So for all of you: if you hear of any organisation that supports sustainable energy projects in developing countries and can provide us with contacts or even solar panels, please!!!!