In my mind, the recycling project has three main audiences: Students, Shopkeepers/Business owners and the wider public of the community. Knowing that most ideas are the most successful seeds if planted in children, I started with the school-wide bottle collecting competition. Students are competing by grade to see which class can collect the most bottles, and the winning class will be determined at a celebratory recycling Fun Day on May 22nd. The class will win the price the bottles are sold for and many classes are already planning field trips to the beach.
This tactic already feels successful; Beeston Spring has never looked cleaner as the kids comb from hill to gully, from yard to shop searching for bottles. The adults and teens of the community have been watching the school picknie going at it, some perplexed and some satisfied- and I fill them in when they ask: “Wuh yuh mek mi picknie dem do?”.
The next audience to tackle then, my mind assumes, would be the shopkeepers. So I organized a date with my friend at Plastic Recyclers of Jamaica and he agreed to come have a business discussion with our shopkeepers regarding bottle exchange rates, practices and overall recycling education. I made invitations and hand delivered them to most every shopkeeper in the community, explaining the who, what, when and why and answering questions/ educating. I got phone numbers from every person I talked to so that I could send them a reminder text message and I scheduled the meeting tactfully, in the morning, before many of the shops open.
My mind felt good, everyone seemed interested and most people asked questions. Everyone gave me their cell number. I sent a reminder text the evening before the meeting with no problems and in the morning I woke early to sweep the veranda of the meeting place. Meeting time was ten and I sent a second reminder text at 10:30 when not a soul had shown up… no big deal, it’s Jamaica time… 10:35…10:45…11am…still no one. Plastic Recyclers Man (PRM) arrives ten after eleven and my mind is worried, embarrassed and livid- this is the part where I wish I was better at hiding my feelings. Showing disappointment so poignant and being (almost) 24 years old is kind of like that year when you were 7 and you thought for sure you were getting a pony for your birthday. Eliciting “you’re too young to understand reality” responses which, are of course, condescending in nature and not particularly uplifting.
Everyone has this experience, especially in the Peace Corps, call it a coincidence, Murphy’s Law, the nature of development work, whatever. Chances are if you want to make a difference there will be a moment while you do it that you think “WHY do I even bother?” It’s during those times that a supportive project team is imperative. With the arrival of PRM my project team became twice as helpful.
I was in no mood to be a happy and supportive community member at this point, but I knew the only other option was to actually go to every shop and talk to them individually. PRM brought several sandwich bags of shredded bottles and a football jersey to draw the line between the raw and final products, and to explain his role in the process. After going to the first shop, I realized that perhaps this was even a more effective method as community members were around while we gave our shpiel and were so informed of the project and its benefits. I watched PRM give his rap, and had it memorized by the end of the day, and he left me with a shredded bag of bottles. Now I have ammo for the PTA meeting today where I get to explain to everyone “Wuh mi mek ee picknie dem do.” and more importantly, WHY.
So it turns out that seemingly major failures can, in actuality, become a generally regarded success. A lesson learned, life, thanks again.
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answer to last post’s question:
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