Cleaning Up a Village Creek
By Frank Hennick
On the beautiful spring morning of April 3rd, I found myself standing in a brackish, trash-choked stream, with an armful of decomposing diapers and old plastic
bags. I felt pretty rotten (more on that below), and with only a quick survey of all
the mess, I wondered how on earth--or why--all this had been dumped down here
in the water. All up and down the steam and along the embankments, Peace Corps
volunteers were hard at work, filling their trash bags with old ropes, couch cushions, tires, soda bottles, beer cans, boxes--the archeologists of the future could
learn a lot about our society with a Dihovo dig.
The problem had arisen mostly from the high price of garbage collection,
which is calculated by a village’s square meters. Dihovo had been unable to pay
the expense, so villagers had been jettisoning almost all garbage into this ravine.
Even with 34 PCVs, Lion’s Club volunteers, and a good number of citizens helping out, it didn’t look like one day would be enough to dredge all this out. From
where I stood, the size of the task was one thing, and it didn’t help that a Dihovo
family had offered to host me and had put me through the full na gosti gauntlet the
night before: as most PCVs know, this means all sorts of homemade wine, meze,
and other curiosities. So I was polite, and indulgent, and by the time I crawled
under my heavy shag carpet to go to sleep, the cleanup seemed somehow faraway and
impossible.
But sure enough, I got going in the morning, and so did everyone else, and by the
time lunchtime rolled around we’d seen some decent progress. We felt perfectly fine
taking a three hour loll on the village green. A football came out and I helped PCVs
Jordan Calhoun and Jerry Wang explain gridiron basics to village children, some hungry
PCVs braved the hot dogs, which had been grilled in their plastic wrappings. Weirdest
of all was the Roma dance troupe that appeared from nowhere and began performing at
out picnic, twirling around the tables with tambourines and castanets. They even tried
their hand at throwing the pigskin, which was a surreal sight, given their sequined skirts
and dance leggings.
In the end, I’m told, PCVs helped remove over 30 tons of garbage from Dihovo.
As I understand, arrangements have been made to facilitate better trash disposal in the
village. And the trash wasn’t ordinary litter thrown over a Skopje bridge by passers-by;
it had an obvious source and clear solution. The cleanup’s success seems all the more
gratifying to me because in Dihovo, we had a chance to make a difference which, it
seems, will be a sustainable one.
Bitola Mayor & Patrice K.
Rachel W. disguised as PET bag & Michael F.
Jordan C. & part of his
fan club.
Our host in Dihovo, Pece.
Erin G. and a whole lot of garbag