Ideals

I did it: my first car driving lesson finished half an hour ago. Here in Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico - Isaid´s hometown. Where I do not even manage to think clearly without the ventilator on (35 degrees in the shadow and this isn´t the hottest month of the year)...
Ok it was an automatic car and on the parking place there was little movement of other cars, but I drove, turned, accelerated, reversed for nearly an hour. It`s a start.
I think of many conversations with Irna: about our fears to leave behind our ecological, left-wing ¨ideals¨ when growing up, becoming ¨mainstream¨ over the years. My defense was that you do not leave them behind, but think of other ways to practise them... Will I one day turn into a joy-rider or change train, bike and bus for a comfortable car, because of this first step? And does it matter that I say I will need a car sometimes to support one of my ideals: because working with farmers, will signify going to places that are difficult to reach with public transport? Is it less bad too fly to a Climate Conference than to a beach holiday?

We just came back from the Zoo where I finally met the Tepescuintle eye to eye. She was shy and preferred to avoid the hot sun, in her dog-style home of American trade. I imagined her unhappy, far away from her Selva and her mates... She reminded me of why I had not gone to Zoos for years.

While writing this little piece, I leave two eggs (I don´t want to know how they were produced, I am hungry, there is little other option and I am finally gaining some weight and more of this kind of excuses...) boiling dry. Third time in two weeks that I have to scrap out a black pan.

Learning life

Something small I forgot to tell, but for me a huge victory: I vaccinated a chicken!!
I had already asisted catching chicken and holding them while someone else vaccinated them, but this time I gave one the ´shot´ myself. It was not at all that bad as I thought, but I have not asked the chicken for her opinion. May many more follow! And I want to learn also how to vaccinate cows... and not just the easy subcuteanos, but also intramuscular and intraveneous.
And now that we talk about it:
I want to learn drive a car (finally I am convinced that it might come in use when outside of the Netherlands)
I want to learn drive a tractor well and I want to learn how to plough.
I want to learn how to milk a cow and a goat.
I want to learn much more about how to transplant vegetables, because many of the ones we transplanted the past weeks died :-(
I want to learn to work with Dutch farmers aswell.
I want to learn tsotsil, italian, french, catalan and tibetan.
I want to learn to sing all the songs of Pedro Infante (Mexican musical movies of the fifties) and so many other songs... in two voices and more or less with the right rhytm, so that I can sing together with someone else.
I want to learn how to play folk songs on the violin and play in a band.
I want to learn how it is to have what they call a ´relationship´ with someone closeby.
I want to learn how to fix the light, how to connect electricity, water and gas in a squated house.
I want to learn how to build solar cookers, how to build a wind mill, how to build a grey water system.
I want to learn dancing flamenco. I want to learn disco dancing like Pieter and Anouk.
I want to learn to not to get irritated/angry/desperate with anyone not doing things the way I feel is right.
I want to learn not to be soooo self-centred and to take care a bit more for the people around me, especially my family instead of them always taking care of me.
I want to learn patience.
I want to learn how my dad manages to take life in such an admirable tranquil way.

I guess that the day I do not want to learn anymore, is the day I´ll die.

The princess and the ocean

Having a long weekend, we decide to go to sea. Me, Isaid and Manuel. The last one 15 years old having been put to work in the Fundacion Leon XIII after having been dismissed in three youth rehabilitation centres and after troubles with a gang in Mexico City: a quiet, lovely adolescent.

The day before, I receive a love poem from Isaid for the ¨woman of his dreams¨. I spent all day thinking of a reply that is not blunt, but adequate though. I have had enough drama for a while, so decide to give it a hint of humor. Anyhow, I end the evening, with a crying boy in my arms - saying words that probably do not help.
I remember a conversation nearly two years ago, with Rafa talking about a high school love: ¨The whole thing of falling in love is not easy. A likes B, but B likes C and C probably likes A.¨ It makes me smile and I confess Isaid my secret affection for our ´boss´ Marcelino. A very convenient platonic love: married and showing no interest in me whatsoever. It does not matter to me, I am happily enjoying sitting next to him in the car and his jokes and songs for Juanita. When this paints a little smile on Isaid´s face, I confess my other platonic ¨loves¨ as well: Jacintho, Sebastian, Maria and Susanna ... so many beautiful people in this world, but sometimes loving them silently is more than enough for me.

We still go to the sea. The ocean. The Pacific ocean.
Six hours away, but then you got loads of palms, waves, sunshine (a little too much), hammocks, sleeping under the stars, pelicans flying around...
Boca del Cielo, Hemelmond.
I am excited to finally see the Pacific. In my head songs of the Beach Boys. My eyes staring over the water. The same water that touches Japan, China, India? Other lands far away, other dreams... where will my travels end one day?

After one day we are already fed up with the food: fish, fish, fish.
I am fed up with Isaid over caring me. ¨You treat me like I´m a princess. I am not used to liking that.¨ (Who sang that?). I am starting to get sick with this sweet machismo . It is nice when they carry the 50 kg sorgho bags, it is not nice when they do not even let you carry your own back pack. It is nice to have your meal paid once, but if they always pay it is annoying. You get the feeling you are ´indebted´. When you are immediately given their coat if you are cold (they proudly withstanding the cold night for you), while you carried around three sweaters in your own bag. That even though they have more trouble climbing over a slippery path than you do, they stop to give you a hand... Grrrrrrrr, yes I am a woman, but I am not a baby!!!!! Please...

But the mangrove (manglar) were beautiful after a four hours walk along the waves!! Manuel rescued a young aguilar who had fallen in a water reservoir and could not get out. After having gathered its strength, it first tried to attack its saviour and than flew away. Freedom regained.

And I was happy having time to read the Lessons of Don Juan, a recommendation for everyone interested in magic mushrooms and all the other hallucinogenic (what a word!) plants that the indigenous of Northern Mexico use for their spiritual growth.


Photos: 1 Manuel and Isaid enjoying the coolness after a hot day.
2 Manglar/Mangrove
3 Pelicanos in full flight

A stove for Jolnachoj

Completely covered in dust and mud I´m writing this little piece. To tell you about the Lorena oven/stove (an stove that saves up to half the amount of wood normally used for cooking and with a chimney assures a healthier, less smokey kitchen for the women) we build with Don Sebastian, Don Manuel, Don Agustin in Jolnacho, a community of Los Altos.
Where the women wear yet another beautiful costum, where the first strawberries could be harvested. Where the children just came home from school, running enthusiastically, taking care of the little chicks and the sheep, seemingly unconcious of the beautiful landscape around them.
How heavy work it is to mix the dung, earth, ash, chalk, water to make the ´concrete´ and how many hands make the work lighter...
How black the walls and roof of the kitchen are, which makes you wonder about the colour of the women´s lungs... I start to cough after five minutes in their smokey kitchens, they spend most of their day there. How happy my lungs become just of thinking of the new stove...
How satisfied you feel after having constructed something with your own hands, something concrete. It reminds me of Richard who wrote me: ´After a day of thinking simply in nails and screws, tatada the chicken run was ready. Today was not invane. Today we really existed, here is the evidence.¨
How working together is a way to get to know each other. Sometimes in silence, sometimes joking, smiling, talking even though sometimes limited to the few words in tsotsil we know. Then eating together, tired but satisfied. Lucky me that soup was served as I cannot eat pozol (maiz drink) nor frijoles (black beans) now with my colitis. Talking about the things of every day life, about the sun, the rain, the children that went to school, the crops being grown.
(the pictures will follow)

These are the things that make me happy. So much better than staying in bed with diarrea and constantly being just ´about´ to vomit with every food you see.
So much better also than feeling love sick, with mourning, longing, jealousy or envy in my heart.
Like Stella once explained to me: you know that after the hills follow valleys again, but instead of fearing what is coming you will learn to enjoy the hill!
I am enjoying the hill.

Now I have to hurry up, since I won tickets to see the Mariachis tonight. Besides I have to prepare and eat all the food that is on the diet Isaid (the other volunteer who studied Nutrition) made for me to cure the colitis (opgezette darmen) and maybe even gain some weight...
Hope you are all doing well. Thanks so much for all your love in the hills and valleys.

photos: 1 Mixing the ´concrete´
2 Isaid, Juanita and Don Marcelino with the nearly finished base of the stove.

Chicken for Jaconá

This Saturday we visited Jaconá a community that is working with Fundación Leon XIII for a while now. They have a mushroom house and this time we brought them small chicken and held a workshop about how to take care of them. I prepared the flip-overs copying from a manual. For good eyes, see the nice drawings of the feed that one should give to the chicken. Wish I had made more drawings when I realised that very few of the women can read!!

But ok, we talked with them about how they are used to take care of the chicken and then presented the information on the flip-overs. I thought Alfonso was going to present the workshop, so was a bit surprised when he said: ¨Juanita, is going to do the favour of presenting this part on how to build a good chicken run¨. But it was only one flip-over and I did well. In the end isn´t it my aim to give my own workshops in the future?!! Where-ever on earth that may be... Meanwhile I am learning with the women.

One of the old women asked me where I was from.

¨Oh Holland, is that very far? Ah isn´t that next to that village we once visited, Benjamina? (talking about a village in Chiapas`neighbouring state)¨

¨No Doña Hermina, it is even further away, crossing a big sea (realising that she probably only heard speaking of the sea)¨

Working in the community

photo 1: Alfonso (Poncho) and Marcelino my ´bosses´ (the coordinators of Food Security area) vacunating chicken. I have a lot of fun with them on our long rides to the community or working in our vegetable garden: practising my few tsotsil words, making silly jokes, singing along to the radio songs, with Marcelino dedicating all love songs to Juanita.

photo 2: Sowing eatable mushrooms in a community`s mushroom house: diversificantion of the household`s diet and an extra income. Mushrooms are delicate and easily contaminated with other fungi, so we have to desinfect our hands and wear mouth tappings to produce organically.

The green side of Los Altos de Chiapas

Not everywhere I go, we have these wonderful views. Big parts of Chiapas unfortunately have been deforestated.

San Cristobal de Las Casas

photo 1: Women from Chamula in the market place

photo 2: View at San Cristobal, my ´hometown´