first sunburn

This is in part a response to Taryn's entry:
Last week on Thursday, which is our Saturday, a few of the teachers went with all of the ACCESS students to clean up debris from a bird sanctuary. The reserve is a beach and pond in a rectangular shape maybe a couple acres in size. I'm not sure the history of it, but one end is the airport and one side is a highway. On the other side of the highway is the port and the bird reserve apparently goes dry every summer. So I'm not certain if the highway was built with the intention of creating the reserve, but my guess is that the birds were an afterthought and the road was built during summer. The road is strange to drive on because you're surrounded by water on either side for a mile, and then you reach the airport.
We arrived early on busses and I handed out gloves and garbage bags to my group of around twenty students. Most of the gloves broke instantly because it was already brutally hot and their hands were sweating, and most of the bags broke too because the students (bless their hearts) easily overfilled the bags. The sheer amount of trash was really daunting, it would take days of committed preservationists to clean this beach. There was really just a deluge or rubbish. We couldn't have cleaned this beach if we went at it all month. The students filled up the bags in less than half an hour and the (dis)organizer skirted off to go get more while the rest of us just stood around in the sun and blistered. When the bags were full, most of the students took off their gloves and tossed them onto the recently-not-really-cleaned beach.
The mindset here doesn't really consider garbage, although there are a noticable amount of street cleaners which walk around with buckets and brooms picking up litter. The whole scene was a farce: the country doesn't care about the wildlife on the beach much less a group of teenagers faced with an impossible task and insufficient resources. When I told one student to help another carry a full bag to the road to be picked up by the garbagemen, he looked at me and said, "there is no reason teacher," and then a few minutes later he did go and help.
After standing around for over an hour with my students and talking about soccer and qat and universities, some well dressed men showed up and I was introduced to the governor of Aden. He talked to the students for a few minutes until our (dis)organizer showed back up and the students and I had our picture taken with him which I thought was pretty neat. Maybe if this beach clean up act is publicized it will garner more support and actually be successful in the future. After he left the students told me that he was new, but still a good governor for Aden because he's from here rather than being from the north like most of the politicians, so he's interested in the area and hasn't really had time to get too corrupt yet. I liked him because he shook my hand and then totally ignored me and talked to all of the student in arabic.
With the (dis)organizer back we were given more bags, which again took less than half an hour to fill, and then the students were yelled at. They were threatened with having their scholarships revoked for not working. After her tirade, she then asked us teachers for names of students who weren't working so she could personally chastise them. Clearly, we didn't give her any names, even if we could have. When we left on the bus, I looked back at the beach and saw that we didn't even make a dent in the litter. However, there was a single bird flitting about on the water.
A week later there was an article in an arabic newspaper about the clean up with a picture of Taryn shoving trash into a bag. This was really disheartening, partly because I really wanted my picture with the governer in the paper, but also because I felt that the differences between the two picture options result in differing public opinions of the beach clean up. Showing a white woman engaged in this activity I feel removes the locals from the ethic of preservation which were at least the intentions of the clean up even though the actually task was far from accomplished. Whereas if there were a picture of the governor supporting all these kids cleaning up areas in their home, it might actually resonate with the city and inspire more people to value activities like this. And even though the task didn't really do anything, a story in the paper with a picture inducing relatability would be a start.