Saturday morning, driving down the Academic City Road and watching the wee men in the orange boiler-suits wandering through the sand dunes picking up the rubbish from Friday nights revels. And there sure is a lot of it.
Between Khawaneej and the Awir Road, by the sprawling monstrosity that is Dubai's landfill, the desert around the Academic City Road is criss-crossed with tyre-marks. The boys like to come out here to play, especially in the Winter months, on their quad bikes or in their 4WDs. And they stay out late, lighting camp fires and hanging out - some even pitch semi-permanent tents. Friday night is, of course, the biggest night of the week and the ghaf trees and dunes shake to the constant drone of engines.
Judging from the state of the desert on Saturday morning, there's a whole load of eating and drinking going on, too. We saw six men wandering the dunes, filling up black bin bags and then dumping them at the side of the road. Every few yards along the black-top there was another cluster of bags.
Every weekend, they come up here to clean up after Friday night. And every Friday, the lads gather to tear it up on the sand and drop their papers, cans and containers behind them for the boys in the gitmo suits to clear up.
It's rubbish, isn't it?
11 comments:
Yesterday, I was about to cross the road when the guy next to me casually threw an apple core on to the pavement. I stared at him and made a hand-twisting gesture implying WTF? He spat just where he had thrown the apple and moved on.
Sadly the only answer is for the orange brigade to continue to clear up other people's rubbish. Travel around the region, and further afield, and you see people living amidst rubbish, totally oblivious to it.
PS.
A blog from the UK I enjoy reading has a story on the subject, here.
It's the exact same situation on Emirates Road, every Thursday AND Friday night, between Ajman and Umm al Quwain. Every single sanddune is full of families huddled around a campfire, chatting, eating and drinking. Driving along the highway on Saturday mornings reveals a rubbish dump on every single sanddune. It truly disgusts me, especially when foreigners seem to show more respect than those people do for their very own country. Sad.
It will never change.
Again our dear friends the locals are misunderstood and much maligned by the hissy expats. They clearly do this to create jobs for the garbage pickers, don't you see!
the real nick is funny, but true (the reasoning, not that it excuses anything).
Seabee - thanks for the link to Victor Meldrew's blog!!! >;0)
An enjoyable read!
And these are the same people who whine on about how proud they are of their precious country and culture, but obviously they are also too proud to take care of it. Clearing up their own mess seems to be way beneath them, which probably explains why they don't bother building sewage treatment plants.
The state of the desert is an absolute disgrace and these people should be ashamed of themselves. I was always taught that when you leave a campsite you should leave behind nothing but footprints and take with you nothing but memories .... and of course lots of photos.
Last Friday we went deep into the UAQ desert camping. The next morning we did a sweep through the campsite picking up every little scrap of rubbish. As always when we left the area was pristine.
Both driving in and out we passed mounds of rubbish all over the place where clearly people had pick-nicked or camped.
It really is an utter disgrace and something that I just cannot understand. Surely they are in the desert for its beauty and yet they happily drive away leaving it like a shithole.
HMHB
Ummm, surely they can't be expected to pick the rubbish up themselves? Quick mental vision of such an event has left me with brusies, cos I fell off me perch laughing...............
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