International Coastal Cleanup | 2011

“Please do not throw anything into the sea. We have dustbins all over the ship. Please put things in those. Save our sea from being polluted”-the announcer was repeating this again and again in the middle of his speech on Saint Martin’s Island. He said that we could easily go to Myanmar from the jetty and it will cost
only 1700 taka for the visa and the passport.

He talked about the resorts around, the hills and other sites to visit. People were listening and planning where to go next. The mesmerizing blue sea made people feel like they want to spend their whole life near this “Daruchini Deep”. Endless blue sky reflecting on the endless blue sea and green hills crowned with white clouds were making people nostalgic. Every single people were dreaming under the broad daylight. The trip was successful. Every heart was saturated, every sound of nature was filling it more and more, every word said by the announcer was giving birth to a
new dream of a new trip.

But among all these only one thing was missing. Every ear carefully skipped one sentence to listen “Please do not throw anything into the sea. We have dustbins all over the ship. Please put things in those. Save our sea from being polluted”. We were standing at the left end of “Keari Sindbad” and saw people throwing cigarette butts, packets, juice bottles, chips packs and what not.

I felt hopeless, just hopeless. What are we going to do! Coastal clean-up! Who will clean the ocean? Such pathetic! Every year whole world celebrates the world’s biggest volunteering event, International Coastal Cleanup. An organization named Ocean Conservancy organizes the event. Different countries have different representatives for organizing the event locally. In Bangladesh, Kewkradong Bangladesh (KB) represents Ocean Conservancy and every year in September they organize Coastal Cleanup in Cox’s Bazar. In this year, 2011, KB had decided to clean twice, first in Cox’s Bazar and then in Saint Martin’s. But we didn’t have any idea what would happen there. We were expecting at least 200 local volunteer from the schools. We were 40 from Dhaka. So hope was of 250 to 300 volunteers. We had enough t-shirts, poly bags, dumping bags and gloves. To treat and encourage the local volunteers KB arranged for a “Mezban”.  “Mezban” is a favourite event in Chittagong’s local tradition.

We were excited; we reached Saint Martin’s on 6 October, 2011. Rooms were booked in Hotel Abaksh. We rushed to the rooms. After 17 hours journey we all grew tired and I was dishearten! In my  reams Saint Martin’s was surrounded with beautiful eco resorts and blue ocean with golden beach. But oh my poor dreams! The reality was way too far from them. It was muddy dirty stinky grey sea and beach. Narrow village roads lead to different resorts (!!!) and hotels. I saw a complete disaster. Another ruined natural gift.

I understood the necessity of coastal cleanup and awareness campaign here. After lunch we went out in small groups. We discovered it’s a beautiful place, a piece of heaven. But the future is dark, local people and tourists are turning this heaven into a hell. The beach is full of derbies. Not only inorganic materials but also human waste, people made the beach a public toilet. I bet you cannot walk for 1 full minute without seeing one master piece of human waste! Muntasir bhai found out the biggest derby, an  abandoned plastic fibre boat on the beach that came from Sri Lanka! The sun said goodbye and stars were there to say hello. Oh my God! How can night be so beautiful! Suddenly it was exactly everything what I dreamt of. Speechless!

Next morning we were ready, excited and busy. With all our things we were waiting for the volunteers. Chanchal, Monju bhai and Raihan bhai were looking after the Mezban arrangements. After half an hour our most expected volunteers came – only 20 to 25 students!!! What! Is this true! Is this what we are here for! We were kind of lost. We tried to make them understand what we want, what’s our motto of coming so far and asked them to encourage their friends and family to join us. We gave them half an hour more to bring more people to clean the coast and so we had 50 more people. But noble work can never go down. We started getting volunteers. They were not the school going children, they were not from the privileged group of the society, they were the kids who roam around the island and work for their livelihood. They all came and join us to clean their playground – the sea beach. We found out lots and lots of beverage packets, bottles, cans and what not! They were taken to be burned. It was not exactly what we expected but it was successful. We hope soon Saint Martin’s will have waste baskets on the beach and people will use them. Hope there will be enough toilets to use around. Expect the sea will be what we dreamt of while coming to the island.

All the volunteers went for Mezban. There were few of us to look after them and rest of us started for Chera Deep, for our next cleanup. It was another experience. We board on a fishing boat. Blue blueblue, it was only blue all over, mesmerising! But people please carry an umbrella in Saint Martin’s, otherwise you can eat yourself as grilled you!

But we couldn’t get down at Chera Deep. Fishing boats cannot reach to the island shore. It’s full of Coral and will destroy the boat. There were not enough small boats to carry us to the island. It would take 2 hours to reach the island. So we came back to Saint Martin’s. Last night! We had bar-b-q setup. Grilled beef with parata and Chammak Challo music made the night memorable forever.

We left Saint Martin’s on Saturday, 8 October, 2011. Goodbye Daruchini Deep, take care, don’t let people destroy you. We will be back and one day everybody will take care of you.
Promise!

Nahid sharmin with her experience of icc 2011.