The big clean up!

Written by Helen Osborn, Mysmallhelp Peru, December 2010
                      
On Saturday 18th December Us MysmallHelp volunteers took a day off from the chocolatadas and teamed up with Naturaccion to help them with a cleanup project near the start of the Inca trail where we were told Peru Rail had been dumping all their rubbish. The name of the project is Naturaccion, it was started by a Spaniard named Jose Manuel.  He and his organization had found areas in and around the sacred valley where they proposed setting up Eco campsites. The location we went to with the group to help out was absolutely stunning, and I believe that once the campsite is ready to go it will extremely popular especially because it is so near to the Inca trail. We were all aware before we started the day that it was going to be manual labor and picking up rubbish was unlikely to be a pleasant experience; however when we arrived at the site the sheer amount of rubbish was a lot more than any of us envisaged. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it was literally a sea of rubbish.

At the top of the hill just off from the train tracks there was just sacks and sacks of the stuff as well as individual nappies, sanitary towels, beer bottles, food containers….you name it! The rubbish covered the whole of the top of the hill and continued all the way to the bottom of the site, and awfully the river was laidened with rubbish as well. It really was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen or done, and I was aghast at the lack of conscience on the part of Peru Rail and the others who were dumping the rubbish. So the men set about digging holes for the trees to plant in, and the women dawned gloves and masks and began the clean up. The other volunteers that we were working with were fantastic and extremely hard working. However as I have said there was substantial amount of rubbish, and as it had been there so long it had become mixed in with the earth and so and some points we were having to really dig into the ground with shovels to get the rubbish out. Also a lot of bits start to degrade after so much time being left and so the work could also be quite fiddly. We stayed working there until 4pm.However half way through the day me and Leander did decide to use our female initiative!

There was a local football tournament going on literally next to where we were clearing up, so as we felt slightly disheartened by the sheer amount we had to do and there was some very able body men nearby we decided to go over and ask if they would help! They said yes and duly after they had finished their game about 20 men came over and helped out! It was very much appreciated and definitely helped out the cleanup process.  By this time most of the rubbish had been cleared, and we had roughly 50 sacks of rubbish. Peru rail had agreed as most of this rubbish was there to pick up all the sacks and to donate 500 trees for this particular site. However, not only did the trees arrive very late but instead of 500 we were given 50. Due to this the Naturaccion decide not to go ahead with the planting that day, which of course was a huge disappointed to the guys who had been digging holes all day.

 I spoke to Jose Manuels wife who told me that this rubbish was not all due to Peru Rail, a lot of it was also due to the Muncipilidad failing to provide the local town with a proper rubbish dump so they had joined in with dumping their rubbish in the same place. We did have some people from the nearby village helping us out, and because they too were ashamed and disgusted and how out of
control the rubbish had got. All in all, it was a hard and disgusting work but you could really see the difference, and see the ground!! It had been a good day’s work, and a great team effort!!