What were we planting again?
On Wednesday several schools took part in a "Let's Plant Campaign" organised by Dubai Municipality. I signed up too, along with some 37 boys from our school, though only 12 turned up (we had to search and persuade half of them). According to the form, each student would place one plant in the ground, at Nad al Sheeba Park, to "help make the environment green". The real thing turned out to be a big joke.
We arrived at the park at 8am, all sleepy and bored but armed with smuggled mp3 players and camera phones. Then we were divided in two groups of six students each, and each group assembled around one solitary young tree brought from a nursery and temporarily planted into the ground with two wooden sticks supporting it. There was a little bit of soil next to the whole arrangment with a shovel in it. Other school parties had also been divided in this way and were standing around the same kind of arrangement, wearing XXL sized "Dubai Municipality" t-shirts and wondering where all the seeds and digging hardware was.
We spent three hours standing there with iPod Nanos, Creative MuVos and Walkman Phones plugged into our ears, wondering why we didn't just put the soil where it was supposed to be put and then go home. After three hours of boredom we finally got the signal to shovel the soil in and start moving. At the end we did get some nice food and juice courtesy of DM, but the whole affair was completely useless. Out of the hundred or so students that might have come about twenty trees may have been replanted. "Let's Plant" turned out to be "Let's replant, eat some free food and go". We did spent some good time staring at girls from other schools though ;-)
I just hope that the sincere DM workers can do a better job than us.
posted by DubaiTeen @ 4:15 PM
1 Comments:
Well at least you tried, and well done for that.
Unfortunately it sounds like a PR set-up to me.
Post a Comment
<< Home