An important yet unrecognised wildlife corridor exists between Mudumalai and Mukurthi (see the article in Sanctuary Asia for more on this). Yet locally no one (including the forest department) knows anything about this or attaches any conservation importance to the region. In the middle of this corridor is a rather spectacular ‘view point’ that is a huge tourist attraction. While people all enjoy the panoramic views, they know nothing of the larger significance of the region and how it fits into the wider landscape.
This is particularly relevant in terms of the huge amount of plastics that tourists leave there. And on the heels of the successful plastics meeting (held on the 18th) we decided to start with a litter picking session on the 22nd of January, 2011. Vidyodaya was of course first on our list, and we quickly got together a group of kids, including the alumni of the school.
We had about 15 volunteers, and the simple task of cleaning up the area. But the amount of plastics turned out to be quite a challenge! We soon had enough to fill up one jeep, and so had to leave the rest for another day. This inspite of deciding to carry back only the plastics. All the paper based litter were piled up and burned right there.
We had two major challenges:
All the older kids (especially the boys) were mortally afraid of their schoolmates and friends or peers coming to View Point and seeing them picking up plastic! Peer pressure was quite high, and they didn’t want to be seen as crazies picking up other people’s trash. They were all trying very hard to fit into the mainstream school and be cool like everyone else. And so doing uncool things like picking plastics was a definite no no.
We talked about the possibility of calling the local media – the Gudalur TV channel and local newspapers – to cover the issue, but the boys didn’t want local media to carry news of them litter picking.
This is quite a serious issue – that doing something useful is not ‘cool’. We’re looking into how to change this. Gudalur is a small town, and with some effort we think it should be possible to reverse this and make it cool for school kids to be activists.
The other issue was the younger kids (especially the girls!) were quite finicky and didn’t want to touch the plastics or get their hands dirty. They each used little sticks to dig at the plastics, and progress was painfully slow. Gloves seem like quite a simple solution that is standard practice in the developed world. But introducing that here has some complications. First that it is not available in Gudalur, and will need to be bought from one of the cities, and we’ll be introducing something new into the area, which is always warrants extra thought. Second is that we will change the definition of ‘dirt’. The plastics in question are largely biscuit wrappers, disposable plates and glasses and plastic bags, most of which have been lying around for a while and are mud covered. The boys only wanted an assurance of water and soap after they finish to clean the mud of their hands. They didn’t think mud on its own was dirty, only something that needed to be washed off before eating. Any ideas on what we could do about this?
It went quite well on the whole. In keeping with our idea that all activities with children should involve some amount of fun, after an hour and a half of picking plastics, we then did regular tourist things.
Walked around the area and enjoyed the views, with bits of interesting discussion (like what ‘Section 17’ land was all about, and whether the huge corporate tea estates would return to forest cover!).
We ended with lunch (parotas and egg curry!) after which everyone headed back to their homes.
We hope to pressurise the forest department and local government into being more proactive on the issue of litter in this area, and to educate visitor’s about its importance.
