Seattle Rotary Clubs to visit Yuguelito Community in Mexico City

Rick and Stan met with representatives from the Rotary Club of the University District, Seattle and the Rotary Club of Ballard (Susan Sola, Marilee Fuller, Daniel Foe, Chistina Shimizu and Leslie Grace). They are leaving for Mexico City on August 19th to visit the Yuguelito community. This marginalized community in Mexico City is struggling to obtain adequate housing, water and sewage. The Seattle Rotarians will see, first hand, how the Yuguelito community and the Mexico City Rotarians furnished the community center (where children can safely study and play) that the Seattle clubs helped finance. They will also meet the community leaders and learn the details about their future plans. They want to leave with enough information to determine if they want to present proposals to their respective clubs about future projects for this community. Rick and Stan gave them their perspective of the community, its leaders and possibilities after their two visits to the community last month. This may be an excellent opportunity to introduce sustainable housing, rainwater harvesting and/or dry latrine projects to the community. The Rotary Club decisions may determine whether or not Water for Humans gets involved with this community.

United Nations Declares November 19 "World Toilet Day"

Singapore diplomat Mark Neo said he doesn’t care if people laugh about ‘World Toilet Day’ because it spotlights a serious problem: 2.5 billion people worldwide don’t have access to proper sanitation.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/declares-world-toilet-day-article-1.1409180#ixzz2bxgPCMVm

The Cook Stove Workshop Ended Yesterday

Well, we are back in Mexico City, after four days in the Mazateca to finish the cook stove workshop. We arrived in San Jose Tenango the evening of July 24 and started the continuation of the workshop on the 25th. During the two and a half week break in the workshop, detailed lesson plans were made so that we had specific goals for each remaining day of the workshop. Each day was to end with a concrete, mortar or insulation (perlite) pour so that it could harden overnight.

For the most part, we achieved our goals each day. The exception was the final two days. On Saturday, the 27th, we wanted to complete the chimney, but we did not. The final smooth mortar for the stove top was, however, completed and there was plenty of time to install the chimney on the final day. On the last day, we ran out of sand and, therefore, could not do the final mortaring of the interior gas path (takes about one hour). The good news, though, is that Leo Dan who did this on one of the pilot stoves, lives close by and knows exactly what to do.

All in all, the workshop went well. Eighteen promoters (attendees) participated, asked a lot of questions, learned a lot, tried a lot of processes/procedures and are ready to make more stoves to really learn the process well. We are returning to Seattle tomorrow night (Tuesday, 7/30) and plan to come back in September to work with the promoters as they build eighty-eight more stoves. Meanwhile, THP and the communities have an enormous task ahead of them: to finish purchasing all the parts, transporting them to the area, distributing them properly so that each community gets the number needed for its planned stoves and manually moving the parts from the closest road to each community (up to a three hour hike).

On the bus to Haualta

We got the 8:45 bus to Haualta from the south bus station "TAPO". Axel's mom gave us a ride to the station. We drove around a few times as the main entrance was closed. The bummer of the day is we got seats with less leg room. Our knees will be bruised. The ride is a good 6+  hours. The bus stops now and then to pick a up food vendors.  For me bus & plane rides are a chance to do some fun reading. On this ride I am reading "Red' by Terry Tempest Williams. My head is deep in red rock country :)

After we leave Haualta, we will be off line as in Tenango there is only one Internet cafe, with limited hours. We have a satellite phone but it is$1.50 a minute to make a call.

Thus, wish us good luck with our stove building, and we hope to post an update when we have a good connection.

One more night in Mexico City

We finally got the go ahead to go back to San Jose Tenango, but like most things in Mexico we will travel a day later than we thought.  We will take the bus from Mexico City to Haualata a 6+ hour trip. where Roberto will pick us up and take us to San Jose Tenango.

Our plan is to finish the one stove we started before the elections.  If all goes well we will start work - workshop on Thursday morning and we should complete the stove - workshop and light a fire in it, on Sunday afternoon.  But you never know how things will go until it is complete.

We are happy to get back to what we came to do, however the full scale (building the 88 stoves) program will not resume late September.

We will be offline (satellite phone only) until we leave San Jose Tenango and get to Haualta (cell coverage starts- ends there), on our way back to Mexico City (hopefully on Monday morning).

Wish us luck and successful building - cooking.

Metal parts for 89 cookstoves

Evevthough we are going back to San Jose Tenango to finish the first stove we started. We now have all the metal parts for 89 stoves.

Meeting with Enrique from IslaUrbana

We had another subway adventure this morning to meet Enrique and his business partner David. Enrique is an Ashoka fellow, for his work on rain water harvesting at IslaUrbana  We meet with Enrique to talk about a collaboration in the Mazatica, and the new Rotary project.

We met at the famous statue of the Coyotes.