3/22/10 SouqTown Clean-Up

The second activity of Tree Day required rubber gloves, day-glo vests, big woven baskets, and giant smelly truck.

On Sunday, March 21st, the International Day of Trees, a few hundred people got together to plant about 400 trees. But that was only the beginning. After the trees were planted, watered, and protected with rock circles, we moved onto Phase 2: The SouqTown Clean-Up.

Everyone who wanted them was given rubber gloves, and then we began marching through the streets, clearing away trash as we went. Like beneficial locusts, we scoured the landscape, leaving nothing unsightly behind. Here, a boy gathers cigarette butts from the wall in front of a municipal building:

Once we'd gotten the trash off the ground, we dropped it into one of about a dozen baskets, being carried by kids like these:

The kids carried the basket until it got pretty full. Some even stayed excited about lugging litter:

(Those girls kept their huge smiles all day long!) Once a basket filled up, its carriers ran over to the garbage truck, which kept pace with the parade of litter locusts, and emptied it out:

The garbage truck inched through the town surrounded by children, like a cross between a parade float and a robotic Pied Piper. A few bolder kids (and the odd Peace Corps Volunteer) occasionally hopped aboard:

We walked through all the biggest streets of SouqTown, attracting attention and commentary, as well as picking up a few extra litter collectors. :)

When we reached the middle school, it was already an hour or two past lunchtime, so we called a break and everyone dispersed to their homes.

But they reassembled at the Youth Center that afternoon, for Part 3 of Tree Day...