Kuwait: Making a Difference
I want to share with you a comment on my environment day post from one of our local bloggers, NicoleB / Rainmountain. She is a professional photographer, and describes below her one-woman (successful!) effort to clean up, and keep clean, the Mangaf beach. Brava, Rainmountain! Because of her example, others are taking their own trash to the trash cans, rather than leaving it, the trash collectors are encouraged, and working harder, and the beach is visibly cleaner. Brava! Brava!
Here is her comment from my environmental blog day post:
I’ve started cleaning our small beach here in Mangaf and now, half a year later, it’s almost clean at any time.
The trash guys are doing more and some people seemed to have picked up and do some cleaning too.
Sad part is to come down there and see that someone had a party and left all their stuff there.
So, you just go and start all over again.
It makes me sometimes wonder if people a) have no common sense and b) no pride in their country.
I had various weird conversations about this topic.
Here’s a copy from my blog of one of them:
Man: Excuse me, do you speak English?
Me: Yes?!
Man: What are you doing there?
Me: Collecting trash….?!
Man: Why are you doing that? They (pointing at that poor guy still waiting) do THAT.
Me: And the beach is still dirty….
Man: But that is the way it is.
Me: No. It’s not.
Man: Since when are you here?
Me: Six weeks and since then the beach is much cleaner, don’t you think?
Man: How do you like it here?
Me: It’s beautiful, if everyone would pick up his trash.
End of conversation. It seems he didn’t know what to answer, or thought it would be useless, but maybe he got the idea
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That is really nice of you.. I always wonder why don’t people just take their trash with them..
🙂 I like her!
Applause
Very cool really, most people don’t realize is that mostly it only really starts with one person.. 🙂
Uh…..thanks….humble……*goes into hiding…..*
🙂
we jumped from middle ages to modernity in less than 100 years. so we are not yet civilized in the modern sense, so to speak!!
we have pride however pride doesnt necessarily involves clean beaches.
thank you for the effort and that you for bringing positive western value
N. – Such small, simple words, and they carry a world of truth. “It starts with me!” It makes all the difference in the world.
Error – My understanding of the early Gulf culture was that it was VERY civilized. A trade hub, bathing long before the Europeans began to understand the merits of cleanliness, practicing advanced medicine, developing algebra, astronomy and navigation, voyaging and writing up the voyages . . .
What we are talking about here is developing increased understanding of our interconnectedness . . . and oh, by the way, my own country has refused to sign the international greenhouse gas agreement – disgustingly uncivilized.
What I like about Rainmountain’s effort is that she didn’t get together a group to discuss it, she didn’t organize a protest against dirty beaches, she went out and cleaned up the beach. She wasn’t too proud to pick up a piece of trash, and then another. She persisted, day after day, and slowly but surely, her efforts resulted in a cleaner beach, and one which her community is NOW helping to maintain. How cool is that?
Well, we brought you Western food, error, and that’s the trash that’s mainly at the beach.
Many people here seem to love it, regarding again to the trash left there.
What does a clean environment have to do with values?
And what does it show me what values people have when they don;’t clean up their own trash?
If your pride doesn’t involve a clean environment than I doubt pretty much that there’s much pride left.
Your ancestors lived from the land. The people nowthesedays don’t do that anymore. They don’t need to, they have the mighty oil.
Maybe you should start looking back to your roots and learn something from the values of your ancestors.
Don’t get me wrong. This is not an attack on Kuwaitis, the Middle East or you.
I have lived through this crap in Europe and in South Korea. All the same.
I just happen to love nature and it hurts me to see all that trash at the beach and in the ocean and all the way around where I live.
Nicole
http://nicoleb.org/b2/
I truly believe that one person can make a difference.
People won’t stop throwing things on the street/beach etc unless they are taught at a young age that the world is not their trash can. Education at school and at home also.
We’ve been taught at a young age about the environment, and it has been drilled into our heads that “cleanliness is part of our faith”.
I was once at the airport going down the escalator and this man infornt of me was drinking pepsi and when he was done he just threw his cup on the floor, i was in SHOCK! Sometimes I talk to these people but other times they look like they will say something rude to me, so I don’t.
Chirp, I agree, we have to be careful about confrontations like that. People can get violent when they are embarrassed.
Once, at a stoplight, I wanted to get out and pick up a tissue someone had thrown out their window and knock on the window and return it to them but my husband wouldn’t let me. *sigh* I know he was right.
What Nicole/Rainmountain does is so non-confrontational, it takes my breath away. She just cleans the beach! And she makes a difference. Total WOW in my book. And I love it that “cleanliness is part of our faith.” We also say “cleanliness is next to Godliness.” It IS a spiritual thing, isn’t it?