A Beautiful White Beach

The dolphins on the PDO beach are friendly and helpful.

They stand with their mouths open and gobble up whatever rubbish you pop into them.

Most people use the services of these plastic dolphins who keep the beach clean.

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Nancy, a staff-member at the Club said, “Recently a member of the club sent a picture to the Club Office showing hundreds of cigarette butts in a small area on the beach. We have designated areas for smokers but we still see this happen. That’s why we decided to have a Beach-cleaning Day to create awareness among the community.”

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The first thing we found in the children’s play area as we started off with a black garbage bag was an ear-bud. We were amused by its appearance as it seemed so out of place. As we went along, we collected ring pulls, bits of plastic and Styrofoam, bottle caps, and lots of cigarette butts.

 

A heavily-pregnant lady bent down to pick up a ring pull half-hidden in the sand. Her husband raked the beach to expose more non-biodegradable objects. Toddlers picnicking on the beach loved to feel the wet freshly-raked sand with their soft tickly feet.

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An Omani father had come with his five young children. He said that he wanted his children to realise the importance of keeping our environment clean. “PDO beach”, he said, “is a private beach and not so dirty. The organisers should have asked the OIG or the men in blue not to clean the beach for a week before launching this awareness campaign”, he laughed.

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Jacqueline, our school PTA chairperson, has lived in Singapore before. She said that Singapore has a reputation as one of the cleanest places in the world. Yet her children, who saw Singapore with their “Omani eyes” thought that Oman was a cleaner place because the men in blue are always seen cleaning up the roads and public places in Muscat.
However, sometime back their family had gone camping to the Khalouf beach near Masirah and found a lot of waste there. It seemed like somebody had dropped truckloads of garbage, she said. It would be appropriate to launch a beach-cleaning drive in a place like that, she added.

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The weather was lovely and the sea was a marvellous colour. With such beauty around, the beach-cleaners certainly went home with a good feeling of having done their bit for the environment.

The children – Marieke, Fadhil, Anna, Rafif, Aya, among others – carried the memory of a beautiful white beach.

 

 

 
(On PDO Beach Cleaning Day, 7 December 2013)