Civic responsibility in action: Three individuals mark Independence clearing garbage all day

Thisara Prabash and Hansani celebrate Independence Day by going above and beyond for a garbage-free country

By the Harmony Page team

If you travelled in the district of Matale on 4 February, the day we commemorate each year a purported freedom, you would have seen this unique sight.

Three individuals on two motorcycles were commemorating Sri Lanka’s Independence Day in a manner the entire country should emulate.

They were not taking part in parades.

They were collecting bags of roadside rubbish.

After collecting about 5 to 10 bags, they were handing them over to municipal trucks, summoned earlier, and then moving to the next area, hand-picking beer cans, plastic bottles, chocolate and biscuit wrappers, and everything you can imagine. Who organised this? Which NGO, INGO or donor agency provided the funding? Was this initiative organised by the Government? Who arranged for us to appear at the exact spot at the exact time they were hauling rubbish left by a citizenry celebrating a so-called Independence Day? The answers to these questions are as follows: no one.

The organisers were neither the State nor any international or local aid agency. There was no one to fund their petrol, to provide them with snacks or drinks, and certainly there was no PR company to get them into the newspaper.

Yet, the cosmic intelligence is all-encompassing. It knew what these humans, behaving selflessly and expecting nothing, were doing silently and probably knew that they were also very tired. In the afternoon of 4 February, this writer was travelling in a vehicle heading from the Central Province to the East of Sri Lanka. Feeling thirsty and a bit hungry, we stopped at a location in Matale. Chewing on boiled corn bought from a roadside family-run refreshment stall, we suddenly noticed a young woman pushing first one bike and then, after a lapse of 10 minutes, another. Soon, a senior gentleman travelling with us was heard asking jokingly whether she was selling motorbikes. This was when she arrived with the second bike, brushing the sweat from her forehead. We noticed that she was wearing cleaning gloves.

This young woman is 32-year-old Hansani Atauwda. With her were her two neighbours from her village, Henepola in Dombagasdeniya in Matale — Kamni Mangalika and her son, 23-year-old Thisara Prabash. The trio had decided that three rakes, some gloves and plastic bags were the main things they required to clean up much of the district in which they lived. Incidentally, Matale was an area heavily impacted by landslides during the end-November cyclonic disaster Sri Lanka faced. These three worthy citizens of Sri Lanka did not waste their time hankering after support from anyone except their higher selves, which directed them to celebrate the country’s Independence Day not by adding to the rubbish but by ridding the country of it.

The area where we met them was Balakaduwa in the Ukuwela area.

“Look afar and you will see those brown patches on those mountain ranges. This is where the landslides occurred. One such area is Kambi Adiya, a historic tea plantation area where cables were used to transport plucked tea,” points out Hansani, who is a dedicated social worker living her life with an authentic sense of social responsibility. She has two young children and her husband is a labourer at the Ceylon Electricity Board.

Possessing good social interaction skills, she had made friends with a few philanthropic tourists during the natural disaster Sri Lanka faced last year, who had asked her what assistance she needed for her obvious passion to help her community. After assisting several families affected by the recent climate disasters, she contributed her own money, collected through her entrepreneurial activities such as stitching carpets, to be used for initiatives such as this road-cleaning task.

Thisara Prabash Ranasinghe is Hansani’s neighbour and a youth with big dreams linked to travel and tourism, who works hard towards his goals. He loves to travel and believes all humans are linked by the fact that they share the same earth. He is studying further in the area of hospitality and travel, having invested in learning the German language. His immediate ambition is to become a tour guide.

While speaking, he wastes no time but keeps picking up the litter, which is plentiful in the roadside ditches.

“We have been doing this from early morning. It is going to be a long day. We will end our mission only by evening,” he declares. His mother, who remains silent, keeps on working.

“Imagine behaving like this towards the earth that houses us!” exclaims Thisara, who soon after digs out from under a shrub a whole bag full of used diapers.

“This is what we find a lot,” states his mother.

Meanwhile, we take out all the refreshments in the vehicle. Everything is offered to the trio doing their service to the nation.

Before we say goodbye, we ask them to explain their philosophy and why they chose Sri Lanka’s Independence Day to carry out this road cleaning.

“Well, what is the use of commemorating our Independence Day with milk rice and flags if we have for all these years polluted and cluttered our country with garbage so irresponsibly? We felt that we would have a restful slumber if we carried out this task to celebrate a country that is even a fraction cleaner through our endeavour,” states Thisara.

“For genuine freedom, we have to be free of rubbish. We have to be free from mindsets that create such a terrible mess of our roads and public places,” opines Hansani Atauwda. We leave them after thanking them in all three official languages of Sri Lanka. Isthuthi. Nandri. Thank you.

Meanwhile, days later, we pass through several districts where pavement hawkers are being chased away, apparently as part of the Clean Sri Lanka campaign. We are currently researching the basic logic, practical rationale and the human aspects concerning such a move in a bid to create a people-centred discourse on how any Government of this country could be assisted in keeping the earth clean while supporting humans below the poverty line to make a living.