My First Beach Cleanup

Somehow, I reached the overcooked age of thirty without ever having cleaned a beach--unless, at some point, in grade school on a compulsory school trip I was prodded along the sand by a fascist, which is possible. But, I don't think that happened. I think, at the precise moment that I turned thirty, it could be said that I had left more trash on beaches, however accidentally (things blow away so quickly!), than I had removed from them.

In one painfully sunny stretch of mid afternoon--captured for posterity by a film crew and a photographer--I completely reversed this statistic and discovered that cleaning beaches is not a burdensome, back-pain inducing chore that robs one of the opportunity to surf empty waves (see photo below of RCW sponsored surfers suffering the distracting spectacle of shipwrecks reeling by unmolested). Instead, on every walk back from a surf session since the beach cleanup, I have gathered as much as I can carry and "chunked it"--to use the Liberian English term.


It's incredible and worrying how quickly trash re-accumulates. The bag I am holding below probably weighs fifty or sixty pounds. In the three weeks between the last cleanup and the one depicted here, well over fifteen bags of this garbage washed up on a stretch of beach that is less than a kilometer long. If we had been patient enough to pick through all the shredded, soft plastic that results from the pinches of oil, kerosene, salt, and everything else that are sold to inhabitants of the poverty line for a few pennies, we could have filled another fifteen--and if we rounded the corner towards town and the armada of fishing boats, ugh, I can't even estimate.

Even the day after the cleanup, a bag or more worth of new large filth pieces was on our small stretch of stewarded beach. Thinking about those giant swirling masses of ocean waste is super depressing. How many bags would that be and then where would we put them?


All photographs courtesy of Sean Brody.

Return of the Image:

Here are a few shots of me surfing Cotton Trees two weeks ago. All photographs are courtesy of Sean Brody.

Aside from its impact on my blogging . . .

The last two weeks were an excellent experiment in combining most of the things that I need and enjoy into an optimized, customized lifestyle and it turns out that I can easily accomplish my computer-based work while surfing great waves for several hours a day and advancing the projects of Robertsport Community Works. Granted, living in a large, stilted, well-furnished safari tent, perched with a commanding view of Liberia's marquis point break will probably not be a constant option; but, it may be a possibility for a few more months--especially since Elie has been making herself so welcome in the hotel's kitchen.

We'd love for this arrangement to continue; but there are management issues and politics to negotiate and everyone at the table has strong feelings; so it's a bit of a longshot. Regardless, it's now apparent that we should be living in Roberstport, that living in Robertsport doesn't detract from my professional life and that we have a lot to offer the tourist industry there.

Whenever there are legitimate photographers around, I don't take photographs. So, my camera has been bagged for a couple of weeks; but, supposedly, I'll soon be in possession of hundreds of high quality, professionally shot images of Roberstport, which I hope to share, if I'm given permission.

Turtle Egg in a Tuna Can

That's what's cooking in the kitchen at Robertsport. The recipe is not endorsed by Robertsport Community Works. Indeed, it was hard enough for Robertsport Community Works to restrain its most famous sponsored surfer from raiding a sea turtle nest during the beach cleanup.

Liberia hosts a majority of the endangered turtle species. Liberians display their hospitality by eating their eggs and carting their bodies around Monrovia in wheelbarrows. I spot sea-turtles in the water from time to time and am always glad that they run away. Others spotted a few near shore whales yesterday morning, which was a surprise to me--especially in such warm water.

This week is an experiment in living full time in Robertsport--it began with a prolonged internet blackout, courtesy of your friendly Israeli cellular network. But, now that their upgrades have gone through, I've got a relatively quick connection from the wooden platform of the executive tent at Nana's lodge, which has a gorgeous view that I'll post later this week.

Not Traveling

At least, it doesn't feel like traveling to be confined by my own better judgment and the UN's safety recommendations to the hotel in which I have been staying for more than a week. And, frankly, it didn't feel like traveling before that. The restraints of finding a hotel with fast wireless internet, a hotel that you can exit and enter in nice clothing without exposing your property to risk, are homogenizing ones.

Violence continues in central Kampala as a result of . . . wait for it . . . tribal politics and the egotism and self-interest of a few powerful men. The last I heard, the king of the Baganda people, after two days of rioting and shooting that caused as many as ten senseless, bystander fatalities, attempted to calm things by postponing his inflammatory visit and making a sort of "be calm" proclamation. My guess is, this just didn't sound sincere to the followers that his radio stations had already whipped into a fury. Or, violence and the opportunities that it can offer to looters and grudge-holders, is just too hard for some people to resist at the moment--not because Ugandans are less rationale than other people; but because rapid, highly visible economic progress that is concentrated in the hands of people who aren't sharing and may even seem to be members of exclusive groups breeds its own instability and fuels this sort of outburst with the provocation of its daily existence. (Cough! Excuse me.)

The worst rumors involve roving groups of Ugandans stopping other Ugandans on the street to ask about their ethnic heritage: Why are you so light skinned? Why are you wearing pants if you are a woman? Nice. Rather than take a bunch of cheap shots at how deeply retarded this is, I suppose, to be even-handed, it must be said that while the king in charge of these exemplars of human behavior is one of the biggest land owners in his country, some of his followers may feel excluded from the alleged nepotism of Musevini, the Ugandan president who comes from a minority ethnic group with a vested interest in undermining the larger kingships.

Both he and Mutebi (the king in question) almost certainly have enough comfort at their disposal to spread the tranquilizing influence of food and employment a little more equitably and farther afield; but, that's true of a lot of people. Hell, it's true of me, which is why I didn't run out of my hotel yesterday and try to smash my way into an electronics store for that new Macintosh computer I've been so craving.

Don't worry. By all accounts this is not a general run-for-cover type scenario, though I'm looking forward to my flight out of here on Monday morning. (Which is sad, because this country is rightly beloved of almost anyone who visits.)

I apologize if any of the information in this post turns out to be less than totally accurate, or if my populist assumptions are in fact out of place. Prove it to me and I'll modify the post.

Traveling

I travel to Nairobi this afternoon, where I will spend a couple of days training schools from the Millennium Villages to join the ongoing Connecting Classrooms program. On Sunday, I'll fly from Nairobi to Kampala and divide a week between similar trainings and consulting on a nationwide (for Uganda) scale-up of Connecting Classrooms.

I'll try to blog while I'm moving around; but it promises to be fairly hectic.

Electrician