GRACIAS

 

I would like to thank the staff of Australian Volunteers International, especially Bill Armstrong, Julia Fountain, Gino Tomasich and Alan Jennings, for both the opportunity to live and work in Mexico and the support they gave me upon returning to develop the ideas in this book and help mount a photo exhibition about the people in it.

Thanks to the Victorian Writers’ Centre and berni janssen, for some mentorship time and perspective in the early stages of this material.

Thanks to my family and friends who kept the emails and letters I needed to jog my memory.

Thanks to all the people who told me that reading my mail was like being there, and to all those who wrote back.

Thanks to the other Australian volunteers in Latin America – whose placements and challenges were much, much tougher than ours, and who undertook them with inspired good humour and energy.

Thanks to Phil Larwill, for many years of friendship and shared experiences.

Thanks to David Dore, who always assumed this book would be finished, and has handled my stories of Mexico with a little bit of grace, and something more.

Thanks to Barry Scott, for his generosity, patience and support, and to Peter Bishop, who read an early draft of this manuscript and encouraged me to continue.

And finally thanks most of all to the courageous and optimistic members of the Union Regional de Apoyo Campesino (Regional Union for the Support of Peasant Farmers; URAC), Querétaro, Central Mexico, with love and hope for a better future.
En union hace la fuerza.