Cancun Dispatch: 9/7

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CANCUN CITY, MEXICO -- In the early morning light, the eco-village looks a bit like a child's construction project, with its hanging orange funnels for sinks, its cascade of gray-water barrels now filled with beautiful plants, its bicycle-wheel pump. It's beautiful!

Today we are getting the last systems up and running and hanging our signs, which don't look quite as much like that 10th-grade science project now that they are laminated and out here next to the real examples. Rodrigo and the punks are getting the pump working, fitting the rope which runs over pulleys and carries small rubber pistons through a pipe. The pistons bring up water, which dumps into a spillover that feeds the tank for the sinks. Over on the other side of the Casa, Erik and others have been setting up some showers. The women will shower inside the gymnasium, but there are no other showers for the men on this side of the encampment. We're proud of ourselves. The only cloud on the horizon is the fact that there aren't any -- no rain, and none predicted for seven days. Fortunately, we have some city water as a backup for our rain catchment, but it would be nice to see it work. On the other hand, it will be much nicer for the campers if it doesn't rain!

I've accepted that my contribution will be the educational signs and the documentation -- I'm just in and out of too many places to focus on a specific project.

I run off to the dolphin march. The same group that made the sea turtle costumes for Seattle have made 365 dolphins out of foam for a march that will focus on the environment and on the many places that capture dolphins so that tourists can swim with them. You wear the foam dolphins like a hat, and as we gather and put them on, a school of the wild sea mammals leap out of our heads and begin to cavort. We gather in a circle in the plaza in front of the Palacio Municipal, and some of the local Cancunistas perform a ritual. They are dressed in white, the women in beautiful flounced, embroidered dresses, and begin by sounding the conch shells. The sound reverberates over the plaza, wild and familiar at the same time. They light copal in many chalices and the sweet incense billows over the crowd, taking with it some of our jangledness and stress.

The circle is beautiful, a double-layered reality, for if you squint your eyes and let the humans disappear, it looks as if a school of dolphins was circling. We are all given signs to hold -- "Protect Mother Earth," "Don't swim with slaves!" They invoke the directions in four languages: Mayan, Nahuatl, Spanish and English. The invocations are beautiful and succinct -- both virtues when you are standing in the broiling hot sun wearing a foam dolphin on your head. I'm smelling paint fumes -- look behind me and realize they are boarding up the front of the Palacio Municipal, taking no chances on the coming crowds destroying city property. But there is no police presence for this ceremony and march. Everything is peaceful as we begin to sing and chant in Nahuatl. The drums are going behind the songs, people in the circle shake rattles or clap in rhythm, and energy begins to build. I can feel it working and feel the subtle strength of energy formed and directed with an intention -- going out into the earth, healing and protecting.

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