Clean-up Day

On saturday we had a mini area cleanup. Our burn pit was finished and folks had been throwing stuff in it for the whole week.

We had a little trouble over the week and i had to go around and explain a few times what exactly could be dumped into it, what could burn and what could not, what i was taking separately and burying and what was to be dumped on the ground as regular organic stuff. Ash is no good, dirt is no good, food stuff is a no, metal cannot burn, a whole lot of explaining.

Then saturday didnt start out so great. It was kinda just me picking up trash and a few random kids were either not really helping or where trying to help but then getting distracted with other stuff. I didnt really care that it was not a big fancy get everybody together and clean up. I had kinda liked the idea of just doing it small at first, starting with the kids and then the adults get interested when they see results and the kids grow up with the interest.

The afternoon was much better, i went and got my brothers and sisters together and some other kids came too cause they were so helpful and it turned into a pretty good afternoon clean up thing. In fact the kids had way more energy at it then i did and when the sun was about to set and i had to go pull water, they still wanted to find more trash and i had to stop them and tell them we could get more next time.

We first went to some spots where they knew they couldnt play cause of all the broken glass. I picked up all that and put it into my trashcan thing, along with lots of metal and lots of batteries. Everything else we gathered and dumped into the hole. Lots of fabric, broken shoes, plastic bags, candy wrappers, and other bits of things that people had thrown out.

We got a good amount of stuff from near the school. We didnt really focus on the school and next time we can get that cleaned up better. We got most of all the stuff from around that little intersection just outside of my compound and the surounding area. It turned out to be a whole lot of trash. The area really does look a lot better and the kids can run around, at least in a limited area, without a nonsensicle amount of broken glass to worry about.

That evening I burned what we had collected. It went up pretty easily and did not take long to die down. I will prolly go in now and take out the metal bits that didnt burn and then we can repeat the process again next week.

And I took pictures!