Diary & Travel Reports from the saddle

NZ grant & Mex Pacific Coast to Oaxaca - 13 de Noviembre 2002

The New Zealand Embassy made a grant of US$4,700 so that Health for All could organize training called Health Services in the Perspectives of Gender and Human Rights. Taking place on a remote Indonesian island, the ground breaking initiative was a big success.

In Flores motorcycles are making a noticeable difference to rural health. Extract of Wili's report Oct 2002: "A health worker in Riang Puho health center branch said that within 3 months there is a drastic decrease of malnourished children namely from 57 out of 100 children in 2 villages in the previous year to 14 this year."

The report below was written a few days ago. Since then I have had one of the best rides of my life on 200km of mountain twisties to Oaxaca ('Wah-haka') city. Oaxaca state is one of the poorest remotest states of Mexico in the central south. This city is known as a focal point for artists. Indeed every night there are free concerts in the main Cathedral square.

I paid for one night in the cheapest hotel I could find here, the nice Trebol Hotel has given me two for free (www.oaxaca-mio.com/trebol.htm), and Mike from Switzerland (who decided to live here after seeing all the world) offered his house. So next week I learn Spanish for free with Solexico.com (muchas gracias).

Tonight I am meeting with the local bike club (Legionarios) and they are helping to organize a meeting with the State Secretary of Health in the coming days.

I ate some small wasp-like insect last night, I chose the ones with chili just in case! They are very light and crispy, quite nice really. I'm sure I could eat a bagful without throwing up, but not this week thanks!

Dear Everyone

This morning I changed my front wheel bearings here in the small town of Puerto Escondido on the south west (Pacific) coast of Mexico. I rode here from Acuplco, 500km north, two days ago. There are 200 ´topes´ on this stretch. Topes are concrete speed bumps in villages to slow the traffic. Many of them are unsigned so often I was launched into mid air as I rode on at about 90km/h. The first victims are my wheel bearings. I've spent a few days swimming, trying to learn some more Spanish, and chatting to the locals. The Mayflower Hotel is putting me up for free.

At the completion of my second week in Guadalajara the Spanish Language School rated my performance at A+ for all areas studied in the 50 hours. Sometimes I find myself happily chatting away with locals in Spanish. (Well at least I can tell them what I am doing!) I'm amazed. I have a Spanish grammer book and try to fit in at least an hour of study each day and I tape vocabularly to my windshield and try to compose sentences as I ride along. Perhaps that is why the topes have been such a problem...!

The most important development in Guadalajara was confirmation by Felipe Cortes, President of Motoclubes Nacionales de Turismo (www.motosmnt.org), that MNT would take the responsibility of promoting the rights of motorcyclists in Mexico. I am hopeful that this will result in some concrete action.

From there I rode a day south to the coast, and then another day on to Acapulco. This day hosted the 52nd tropical storm which caused widespread flooding and it rained hard all day. I managed to aquaplane on my bike too but thankfully didn't fall off. I enjoyed Acapulco immensely. Beni and Philipp of www.swissdivers.com gave me a free half day diving and it was great to be back in that dimension. At the start of my trip in early 2000 I gained my Padi certification in the Red Sea in Egypt just for this purpose. I met the members of ClubAca Riders and told them what my ride is all about. Ernesto Abadi, a truly international character, kindly had me stay at his ´penthouse´ suite for a few days. I wanted to stay longer.

Acapulco is a big sheltered bay, very picturesque particularly in the old part of town Caleta. Under Spanish rule the port was the European gateway to the valuable spices of Asia. This was at the time when great British explorer Sir Francis Drake attacked settlements killing and stealing. The Acapulco museum called him one of the worst pirates! The places is precisely how you imagine it from the TV films. Palm trees intersperse with hotels where lazy jazz-like music tells to sit down, relax, talk to friends, drink another tequila. Of course that's the tourist side. The real Acapulco vibrantly bustles with life.

Today I'll ride to Oaxaca city and check it out for a few days. It is nestled in some mountains 5 hours ride away. Then I plan to ride West to the Yukatan Peninsular, see some of the Mayan Ruins and check out possible ferries to Cuba. If ferrys run I'll probably go there before heading further south.

FUNDRAISING

I can feel myself getting drawn to try some real fundraising here in Mexico. Unfortunately the President of Acapulco was out of town when I was there. But I get the feeling that it would be much effort spent for little in the way of results. I had enough of that sort of thing in certain parts of Asia. Anyway it is the other end of the issue that needs addressing here - they need the system.

Gene Braaksma, from Linnville, Iowa USA bought the first of the Millennium Ride quilts made by seamstress extraordinaire Lu and her tream which includes Judy Frimml. Then quilts are made from T shirts donated on my USA tour. They raised $330 at Iowa Steam and feature the Millennium Ride logo. We want to get the second Millennium Ride quilt on Ebay. Thank you everyone concerned with that.

FLORES

Health for All is pioneering health education in yet another way. See Wili Bala's report below about Health Services in the Perspectives of Gender and Human Rights. I am constantly impressed with Wili's work. Wili's full latest financial and activity reports are being put on www.millennium-ride.com. You will see that the motorcycles are making a significant improve in health of people in out of reach communities.

Bye for now,
Simon

Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2002 18:09:37 +0700

Dear Simon,

The training on Health Services in the Perspectives of Gender and Human Rights was a big success. We had 3 well-known facilitators who could onduct the training very nicely. The participants were very happy having the opportunity to join and learn valuable inputs. According to Dr. Adi Sasongko, a facilitator from University of Indonesia, Jakarta, such a training is one of the kind being the first pioneered by HfA in Indonesia. It becomes more special because the participants were health workers who are government employees. They were very open during the discussions telling the irregularities connected to gender and human rights when comes to health services. In the last 2 hours of the training they made plan of actions in order to promote health services with client-oriented in their working areas.

We hope starting from East Flores, client-oriented health services loaded with gender and human rights perspectives will spread to other areas of Indonesia.

Take care and God bless,
Wili Kupang,
Indonesia

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