A LONG Friday

At work we are in the middle of planning and doing all the logsitics for the Reuninón Nacional de Ordenamiento Ecológico Territorial y Por Riesgo a Desastre. To explain a a little, in Mexico they use the process of Ordenamiento as a tool for land use planning and management. Boundaries for the areas under particular ordenamientos may correspond with watersheds, area under risk of volcanic activity, political boundaries like states or counties, or natural reserves. While I haven’t ever really talked that much about work, my main responsibilities are helping out with our current ongoing ordenamientos in the state of Puebla. Our main focuses right now are the Tuxpan Watershed (states of Puebla, Veracruz, and Hidalgo) and the Necaxa-Laxaxalpan watershed (Puebla, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, and Hidalgo). So, we have this big 2 day meeting planned for the 30 and 31st of October and are pretty much fully occupied with getting everything ready for the meeting. So far it looks like participation should be good as we have people confirmed from 11 different state delegations for SEMARNAT as well as universities, directors of various national parks, consulters, and other heads of state and federal offices.

So anyway, on Friday we had 2 tasks to try and accomplish. (1) Pick up a display to be used for the meeting and the press breakfast in Pachuca, Hidalgo (2 hours from Puebla). (2) Go to a meeting at SEMARNAT central offices in Mexico City for the Ordenamiento of the Tuxpan watershed. So trying get both done, we drove to Pachuca, then went to Mexico City with the rep from the Hidalgo SEMARNAT office that also needed to go to the meeting in Mexico City. We even got to take the chauffeur from the delegation that that to deliver some important papers. He was a taxi driver in Mexico City for 16, so at 11 we were feeling pretty good as we left Pachuca.

That feel quickly dissipated as we first hit miserable traffic and then road closings for a demonstration. After getting a nice tour of some previously unknown parts of the city, we arrived an hour late for our meeting at central offices. That meeting ended up only lasting 30 minutes, but with our tardy start, there were still things to be delivered for the delegado on the other side of the city. So after another hour and a half in the car, we finally arrived. Normally when we have papers to deliver, we take them to an office, the secretary signs for them and signs a receipt and we are on our way again. However this time, our driver returned and said he had to wait til the person he had to deliver the papers too got back from lunch (5:30). Strange, but we were starving so decided to eat while we waited.

It was not until we were seated in a restaurant that the driver decided to reveal what he was actually delivering. He pulled a gold medal out of his pocket. The delegado (the boss of each state semarnat office) of Hidalgo was a former Olympian in speed walking and was donating his gold medal for the 1977 National Sport Award for Mexico to a museum, hence why the medal couldn’t just be left with anyone.

With more heavy traffic we finally made it back to Pachuca at 9:15 and Puebla at 11:30 and meant that in 1 day we visited 4 states, Mexico city, delivered a gold medal, had a 30 min meeting, and spent a good 6 hours in traffic.

Monday morning we had the press breakfast for the event which had a fairly good turn out of media. Here is a pict of the restaurant where the event was and then my boss carrying the display down the street.