mpg123
Registered: June 2008
City/Town/Province: Gainesville
Posts: 1
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Alright, I’ll admit it. I went to Thailand for the scuba diving, not the beach clean ups.
When I joined the Projects Abroad marine conservation and diving program in Thailand for two months I knew that I was accepting the whole package though. This included not only diving for trash plus coral and fish monitoring, but also mangrove planting and beach cleaning. On a hot and sunny day, I think that it is understandable that I preferred going on a dive to pick up discarded soda cans under water rather than walk along a blinding white beach unearthing scraps of rusted metal.
A typical beach clean up day usually involved all the Project Abroad volunteers walking up and down a beach for hours with a black trash bag in hand and about an inch of sunscreen on our face. Of course, sometimes we would find some very interesting objects, such as a tire or a guitar. We would also have a delicious Thai lunch packed for us, and we could usually go for a swim afterwards. So perhaps the clean ups weren’t torturous, but compared to the diving they were hardly exciting.
Perhaps that is why, looking back now, it surprises me that there was one beach clean up which I rank right up there with the best of the salvage dives.
To be fair, perhaps I should say that this wasn’t just a beach clean up. It was actually a presentation for a local Thai school. We prepped for it a week beforehand, making posters and organizing skits. Our goal was to help explain to them the importance of the environment and how they could protect and care for it. When we got to the Ban Klongmoung School, all the children filed out in lines to greet us. They were surprisingly well behaved and incredibly smart for their young ages.
Then began the unforgettable beach clean up.
We were large in number so we spread out about a mile along the shore. For once I was successfully distracted from the scorching sun as I tried instead to keep an eye on the children. They were amazingly eager to help, and would run up to me every other second with a new sand covered object asking me if it was a piece of trash or gathering in groups to try and tackle a half buried fishing net.
As fun as it was, we were exhausted after a few hours. The students went back to their classrooms and us volunteers ate lunch. We then prepared for the second part of our presentation which consisted of animal matching games for the children, slide shows with information about the coral reef, and a small creative skit portraying the dangers of littering.
In the end though, this one day had a major impact on my entire stay in the project. It was the proof I needed that we actually were making a change. No longer were we just cleaning up a plot of land for someone else. Now I realized that our actions served as an example for all who witnessed us. Sure, we picked up and recorded kilograms of garbage, but we also became teachers, showing others how to protect the land which they loved.
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