Cancun Dispatch: 9/5

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CANCUN CITY, MEXICO -- I wake up determined not to spend the day in meetings but to actually do something. I finish writing up some of the explanations for our permaculture project and e-mailing them to Rodrigo to translate, then head down there for the morning meeting. Everyone has already scattered for work. Most are off getting supplies. Abby is directing Cole and Rio, who are putting in the lines for the sink, made out of simple drip tubing. Without tools or materials, there's not much else to do, so I decide to go work on creating display materials. I could panic -- we're two days away from opening and not much looks done, but I won't. I will trust my teammates, the process, and the universe.

Delight and I go shop for art materials, start laying out photos, and then she takes it all to go look for color xerox options while I succumb to our collective addiction and drop into the direct action meeting, which starts an hour late, and goes in detail over all the pros and cons of all our options. More cons than pros for each, but hey, we didn't choose this site, the WTO did. At any rate, I'm starting to think of this as a very intensive Spanish immersion program. Hearing the same discussions over and over again in both languages, I'm really getting the vocabulary down. And the intensity of the situation, the potential consequences of our decisions, the heat and humidity, make for a whole new language-learning environment. Spanish 3 was never quite like this!

After the meeting Delight comes back with beautiful enlargements and we start to design displays. Then I join Scotty, who is carrying pipe and a metal bin back to the eco-village site in a taxi. At last, we're making progress! The sinks for handwashing, made of orange funnels, are up. The bio-filter cells, made of the metal barrels that will be filled with gravel, are installed in a descending curve down the slope behind the washing station. Erik is on a ladder fitting a gutter to the edge of the canopy to collect rainwater. The punks have arrived and are explaining the whole system to some young boys who have gathered. Rodrigo is talking to the press. It's happening! I am incredibly excited and relieved and moved to see this vision start to come to life, and to see how interested and excited people are by it.

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