“Lovely, isn’t it?” the guide said with a dreamy look in his eyes.“Well, yes,” I replied. “Apart from the rubbish,” because unfortunately it looked as if every picnicker who had preceded us had returned home again leaving their bottles and sandwich packets behind them.
The guide looked dumbstruck. Then he jumped into the stream and started scooping up the litter.
“I didn’t mean that you should clear it up,” I stammered, mortified.
“No, but it’s all our responsibility, isn’t it?” he replied.
It was in that same spirit that last Friday saw Göreme celebrate Children and National Sovereignty Day with a new “clean up the valleys” campaign. The idea was to take the local school children on a walk into the surrounding countryside during which we would collect the rubbish along the way. Hopefully this would seed a realization that dropped chocolate wrappers don’t magically pick themselves up again in the minds of the next generation.
The local municipality provided minibuses to drop us off, as well as rubbish bags and latex gloves. Kids being kids, however, the doors of the minibuses had no sooner opened than they were halfway back to Göreme, eyes blind to the rubbish winking up at them from the ditches. Still it was a fine sunny day and I followed behind them, picking up what they’d missed and using their carelessness as an excuse to linger and soak up the views. All around me wild flowers cast a purple and yellow sheen over the fields, while the stubby remains of the vines jutted up from freshly raked soil, defying a late cold snap to do its worst. Over it all, Mount Erciyes beamed benevolently from distant Kayseri, its peak still crusty with snow.
Returning to school in the minibus, the children moaned about their legs and quizzed me loudly about where I came from and how many cats I had (11 at the last count, and all finally neutered in case you’re interested). Luckily resuscitation in the form of sponge cakes and boxed fruit drinks awaited them in the playground. At once the aches and pains were forgotten and they were racing away again, this time in the direction of home.
Following them to the rear again, I couldn’t help remembering a young man telling me how he’d watched in horror as a river full of rubbish swept past Bitlis a few weeks ago. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought, if we could harness all the wonderful pride in the country into an official Clean Up Turkey Day? They do it in Australia, after all, so why not here too?
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
