Litter picking day at Shimoni Academy is a huge success!
Garbage. At
home you don’t even think about it. You put it in the trash bin, the garbage
man picks it up and it just disappears. There are trash bins pretty much everywhere
and therefore the streets are fairly clean. Here in Shimoni it’s a bit
different. There is no garbage system whatsoever, so what do you do when you
have a plastic bottle or a paper bag that you don’t use anymore? You just throw
it on the ground. Most local people burn their trash, but there is still a lot
of it everywhere in the village.
We arrive at Base Academy and take standard 3 up till standard 7 outside. We brought
gloves for everyone to keep their hands clean and disinfectant to clean their
hands afterwards, and every class gets a trash bag. The students are all very
excited and eagerly start picking up trash around the school. Students walk
around with hands full of trash and the trash bags are quickly filling up. It
doesn’t take long for the first student to come to me asking for a new trash
bag. The sun is bright, it’s a very hot day, but the kids work hard and in just
an hour we manage to cover a very big area. In total we fill up about 12 bags
full of garbage! If it wasn’t for me not bringing enough trash bags, the
students would probably have filled up a lot more.
We walk back to the school and one of the Kenyan teachers gives a speech about
how important it is to keep your environment clean and that today is just the
beginning of it. I thank the students for their amazing effort and for the
great day. We explain to them that we will take the trash bags home to get rid
of the garbage, but the students don’t agree with this. They want to help
carrying the bags to our house! So off we go, a whole group of kids carrying
trash bags, walking through the streets of Shimoni village. We get a lot of
attention as the students loudly sing the wildlife club song.
Step 5: Take filled rubbish bags to a place of disposal whilst singing appropriate songs |
After we say goodbye to the kids, I can’t help but feeling so happy for the
rest of the day. It was such a great day. The kids were all working very hard
and it was great to do something with them outside of class. Bring on the next
litter picking day!
Step 6: Squeeze over 30 children into small area to dispose of rubbish |
Step 7: Sanitize your hands! |
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