Beach clean up

Saturday 19th September 2009, day 341, 7,194 miles. 12° 05’.46 N, 061° 45’.34 W. Flamingo Bay, Grenada.

September 19th was International Coastal Cleanup Day, and, like all good members of the River Deben Association, we went off to fill black bin liners with rubbish from the waterfront. The scene was just like the ones we’ve known for the past twelve years: keen volunteers stretched in a raggly line along the water’s edge, variously tutting at the stuff that some people seem to think they can just chuck into the sea, and calling their neighbours over to examine at a particularly juicy find – a lump of metal that could once have been a hand-turned Singer sewing machine, or a rusted enamel basin with the faint remains of a pink-petalled flower design.

Lumps of wood, broken glass bottles, a couple of biros, quantities of decomposing polystyrene, a great hank of unravelling nylon rope, a broken plastic beer crate, has anybody got any more bin liners? … plus ça change … several large sheets of rusty corrugated iron, brown glass bottles that once contained Mauby Drink or LLB, more bottles, with the faded labels of Clarke’s Court and Westerhall rum distilleries … the remains of a white plastic bucket that will be good to store the dinner-plate sized white land-crabs before they are cooked … our shoes may be rubbing, but there is no way we can walk barefoot on the burning sand … pausing to wipe the sweat from our faces as the sun beats down on the clear blue water of Flamingo Bay … noisy banter in patois as cane and manchineel trees are hacked back by boys wielding cutlasses … yes, we are a long way from familiar windswept marshes.

The clean-up was scheduled to start at 10, but this is GMT (Grenada Maybe Time), so when we arrive at 10.30, having managed to track down a maxi bus going the right way, things are just about thinking about getting started. A couple of guys from St George’s University and the North West Development Agency are having a last drink of iced water before setting to. Flamingo Bay has not been “picked” since Hurricane Ivan devastated the island in 2004, and there is a bar just above the cliff half way along, so we are expecting plenty to cart away – and there is.

There are sheets and sheets of rusty “galvanise” – that is, corrugated iron – each one formerly the roof of someone’s house or chicken shed or loo. The sewing machine, too, probably got blown over during the hurricane, along with all the other contents of a house; there is no way something as valuable as that would just have been thrown out.

For the rest, well, it’s pretty much what you’d expect when there’s a bar above the beach. The added complication is the dense growth of sugar cane and poisonous manchineel trees all the way up the banks, so the locals set to with their cutlasses (the local machete, vital for anything from gutting fish to clearing undergrowth, and carried as ubiquitously and casually in the countryside as a mobile phone). As they cut, a team carry the debris away, and another rakes the revealed rubbish down onto the beach to be sorted, noted by the visiting academic, and bagged. A snake of porters carries the resulting bin liners along the beach, above their heads, like a convoy of ants.

A host of small children, belonging to the cleaner-uppers, are splashing in the shallows, playing with a rubber tyre and a tired tennis ball we unearthed (and, inevitably, leaving the cleaned beach strewn with straws and cartons from their drinks). Over at the far end of the beach, an octopus has been caught, and is being beaten to death – or perhaps tenderised - on a rock.

Gradually as the day wore on, our trips to the cool box got more and more frequent, and we were all increasingly loath to leave the shade. Was that another couple of empty bottles of rum just appeared? We’ve filled two skips; time for a celebratory party, and a toast to our friends at home walking home in their gumboots to tea.