Mexican Fishing Short Story

It was predawn, after a rainy, foggy car ride through the humid Panamanian countryside,we landed in the Comarca of the Guna Yala Indians. An archipelago of over 300 islands just offthe north coast of Panama in the Caribbean Sea where the land is bathed in azure blue, whitesands, palm trees and little huts made of bits and pieces of island debris. We would spend theentire day picking up garbage, dirty diapers, medical devices, styrofoam and junk that wereinvading the most beautiful beaches I have ever laid my eyes on. My friends and fellow studentsof the eco-bio club at my high school were in for a long and tiring day. However, we would notbe intimidated! We were preparing for our long-term project that would ultimately take us toMonterrey,
This iswhere most of the garbage is on every island in the archipelago because all of the trash getscarried by the currents and end up here. We put on our gloves, got our shovels and were each putinto groups: plastic, glass or styrofoam, which had different garbage bags depending on whichyou were assigned. We collected 200 bags completely full of pollution. The amount of waste wasunbelieveable. We spent hours cleaning up. I was feelings quite anxious and very bewilderedtrying to understand how the beauty here was being compromised by fellow human beingsthousands of miles away.Over one million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals are killed by pollution every year.The only thought going through my mind while picking up garbage was, if only people knewwhat kind of destruction they were causing. I could see signs of relief on the native faces withthe knowledge their homes were important to us. One Guna woman even said, “My family and Icannot even stand to look at that side of the island without feeling sick.” The impact of herstatement was intense. I was putting it all together. Everything and all matter is interconnected.After a long and tiring day we decided to prepare a late lunch as a thank you for letting usprovide for them. We made a typical Panamanian dish, arroz con pollo and sweet plantains.Because the sunset was amongst us, we determined that it was time to set sail back to the dock.A sunset boat ride was exactly what we all needed.A few months later at the GIN conference in Mexico, we presented our video and retoldof our experience with the Guna Yala island people. Sharing this with students from many partsof the world was exactly what we needed to allow this day to live on, understanding and capturing the interconnectivity of our actions each day in light of our environmentally fragile andbeautiful