The third monthly appointment with the malindian community to educate about cleanliness, recycling and the importance of maintaining a healthy and welcoming neighborhood, proved to be the most important and useful.
The group of responsible citizens (registered under the aegis of Malindi Stakeholders) and environmental associations, including our Malindi GreenandBlue, this time found themselves in Kisumundogo, on the outskirts of the town towards the airport: certainly not a tourist destination but one of the most populous districts and one of the most at risk of disease and inconvenience from the widespread dirt around.
By now the group of residents has broken in, we know each other and we know how to act, but this time in addition to managers, officers and employees of the County of Kilifi and the Municipality of Malindi, have joined the police officers, with the presence of the Chief of Police and many officers.
A very important presence, because beyond putting themselves in the first person, spade in hand, shoveling and collecting waste, have shown the inhabitants of Kisumundogo that the police are here not only to enforce the laws and "punish" those who do not apply them or go against, but especially to give support to the citizen, both in terms of safety and teaching.
"Elimu", awareness raising and civic education, this was done for two hours, along the main road through Kisumundogo.
And the results were immediately seen: crowds of children who asked for gloves and bags to "imitate" adults and collect plastic, glass and other objects left to their fate as polluting elements.
In Leni Frau's beautiful and significant images, we can understand the scale of the operation that has never been more practical than this time, a teamwork to free a shantytown from a patina of waste and to talk to those who live there, explaining that it is not only a problem of sustainability and pollution, but above all of health.
The rubbish in the drains outside of houses and shops has now become a whole with the sludge and you must literally shovel to remove the crap and run the water that this season could reach the edges of the channels and invade the streets and houses, with serious risks of diseases elsewhere are perhaps less dangerous, but here especially for children can be lethal.
During the collection of the monthly "Clean Up Day", great space was given to enter homes and shops, gather people and talk to them.
A confirmation that the "Clean Up Day", although it has not yet found principles of simultaneous imitation in other neighborhoods, as we continue to hope for the future, is much more than an exercise in good will: now it is a way of life, a mission for many citizens of Malindi.