PSHF

December 30th, 2012. I left my house to meet my companions for the environmental clean-up. It was almost 7:30 and I was worried they would not show up so I decided to go from house to house to make sure they had not forgotten their promise. Fortunately, three of my companions, Mutya, Shirlyn and John Carl were already ready to come with me. We did not proceed directly to our prospective area as they suggested we call out more children who might possibly join us. We dropped by four more houses and we were lucky enough to have a new companion named Mark. Other children were not able to join us as they had been given some errands by their parents. At 9:30 we headed to our area.

Our prospective area is a lot near the main road which leads to the towns of Loon, Calape,Tubigon and so forth. It is situated in our barangay and was planted with mahogany trees enabling people to walk under shelter from the sun. Regrettably, it has been littered with plastics which have accumulated over the years. When it was still clean, people took shortcuts through the area but now, sadly, only few dare to pass that way as they are afraid to encounter harmful insects and poisonous snakes.

Together with our sticks, two sacks and a big plastic bag, we picked up plastics. People who passed by and saw us kept on asking what we were doing and why. I explained our endeavour to them in the hope of encouraging them to help us in the future or at least to educate them not to drop litter. We ended our clean-up at 12:30 and we took pictures afterwards together with a two year old child named Hannedane, who lives near the area and is the daughter of one of our recipients. The little girl enjoyed watching us and even did a little picking up herself! Since it was lunch time, we decided to eat together. I bought two cans of food and some soft drinks.

After our lunch, I went back to the area to bring the garbage near to the house of Ekir, a neighbor of mine who works in the municipality as a garbage collector. I asked him to do me a favor by accepting our collected sacks of garbage for disposal the following day. Ekir agreed and was even thankful for the job we had done. I also talked to families in the area and pleaded with them not to litter the area anymore. I am now confident that the people in our place will be glad to take a short cut through the mahogany grove once more. After getting all these things done, I headed home at 3:00 pm.

Analyn T. Gallibot

PSHF Bohol

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