Project Clean Up part one

The three R's, one of the most important principles in today's commercialised and convenience driven life, Reduce, reuse and recycle!

In recent years the "Go Green" movement has taken the world by storm, celebrities everywhere are promoting green living, sustainable energy and everything that comes with it. All this via the glitz and glamour of the silver screen, social media and very publicised platforms. Its not often you'd catch one of the top speakers for this movement knee deep in in the very problem they are talking about, much less if there are no cameras involved.

They spew "facts" and data and scientific findings, all which are great and need to be shared, but have they ever been on the ground, seen with their own eyes and helped with their own hands to do anything about it. Yes the argument can be made that they have changed their lifestyles and influenced others to follow suite, that they have donated or raised large amounts of much needed funding towards these "save the world" causes, but it that enough?

At least they are talking about it, right?

Let's get into the nitty gritty of it, what things are really like in the depths of 3rd world Africa where the "Go Green" funding and silver tongues from foreign lands don't reach, of have very much effect.

First we need to understand where and why the problem comes from, the causes are many. Africa is a continent ripe with scars and history of colonisation by countries all over the world. Netherlands, England, Spain, France and many others all sent their ships over the years to claim and colonise land in Africa. This resulted in the rich and sometimes confused cultures which have developed over time. Cultures which to this day still believe in the traditions of old, which are as alive today as they were in the 1600's, and also flourish with new beliefs and traditions as influenced by the relative country of colonisation of a specific area. The people have merged, creating the need for a completely new method of communication to convey messages about global warming, recycling etc. In these cultures you find groups who do not believe in today's education, and refuse to educate their children in "Western" schools, believing in having many uneducated children, so if one or more were to die there would always be some left to care for them in their old age, rather than having one well educated child who would be able to care for them for a much longer period of time. Yet all these same people will have the latest smartphones, Dstv, laptops at their disposal. The difficulty in Africa, is the African mindset, the biggest communication barrier faced by educators and conservationists on a daily basis, making it extremely difficult to get the message across about why conservation, anti-poaching and RECYCLING are so vitally important.

The next most prominent cause is the poor developed social understanding or acceptance of the need to reduce, reuse and recycle. This world has become consumed in a lifestyle of ease and accessibility, cheap foods, cheap products all available as easily as possible and kept cheap with cheap packaging. Non recyclable, toxic and non biodegradable packaging. In a world filled with "want want want" and "need need need" no time is given for the consumer to contemplate the repercussions of this 1 second decision they have been so colourfully led to with song and dance on the silver screen.

Beautiful women caressing an ice-cream with their tongues and giving full visual explanation of what to do with said ice-cream yet it's never shown what is done with the wrapper. The human condition is bent and shaped by big companies who just want to sell sell sell and manipulate the people with their instinctive needs of sexual gratification, and need for food to create a super product that seemingly satisfies all needs and shows absolute disregard to the reality of the world we actually live in in which ice-creams do not come attached to a nearly naked woman but are in fact wrapped in a tiny piece of seemingly insignificant plastic which is flung out the car window as the consumer searches for his creamy lady on a stick. No lady to be found. The wrapper, however, is found. Countless animals not only dying due to the ingestion of plastic and non recyclables but suffering. Not only the animals but the earth as well. Rivers choking on waste dumped down their banks, oceans smothered in plastic, suffocating each and every living organism under the surface.

So it's clear to see how through media and commercialisation, partnered with the "Hollywood" idealisation and 3rd world uneducated reality creates quite a significant problem in the attempt to fight pollution and waste dumping in Africa. 

As conservationists we do what we can to curb this problem. To educate, to clean, to reduce, reuse and recycle what we can in and with our local communities. We try to show them that there is money to be made from recycling, often the best way to get them to start, but the effort in collecting becomes too much for some and they soon give up. Its a never ending cycle, educate the people, get then excited and incentivised to start, try keep them going, once they've given up, group the next lot and do it all again.

Two years ago, we started project clean up at Nimeng. This was a project where myself and the rangers divided the land up into a number of zones and over the next three months would move through these sections and remove any and all waste from the ranch.

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The WOMA Scholarship : Conservationista by Bianca Botha

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