¿Adónde?

Only a short article before I’ll leave to the Putumayo River tomorrow, as I’m very busy now and a bit sick. After my trip I’ll explain everything about what we have done there, so I can concentrate now on a short overview of the activities last week. We had a lot of meetings, as both Ellen, the president of Putumayo Belgium, and the lawyers of Solsticio Perú came to Iquitos. Last weekend our partner organization organized a workshop about the Indigenous rights and petroleum exploitation. For this we had invited two leaders of the indigenous organization, one Kichwa and one Secoya, to travel to Iquitos to attend the workshop. So during our travel to the communities we can reproduce the workshop with their help. Also, it’s very probable that we’ll be changing office again very soon. The people of Solsticio are staying at an apartment with three rooms and place for an office, so if we share this place it will be a lot cheaper than paying for both a room and an office. And as the price is the most important reason to chance, it’s also nice that the new place is a lot more comfortable and a bit further from the noisy centre.

Starting from June I’ll also be able to help another organization in Iquitos. A project called Hogar Arco Iris, which is started by Dutch people, has a house for children in the city. It’s mostly children from single parents that can’t look after their children. So they stay there from Monday till Saturday. During the morning Dutch volunteers go to school together with the children to support the often poorly educated teachers. In the afternoon they help with homework and afterwards play some games. It’s during Tuesday and Thursday afternoon that I’ll be going to lend a hand, so I will have more variation in my activities here without neglecting all the work I have for my organization as well.

And now back to preparing my trip. You’ll hear all about it in three weeks!

Jero