The participants' impressions

The fresh and clean air of Baikal breezes around our noses. Some people just make fire and prepare lunch in our camp above a sandy beach of Olkhon Island, from where we can watch the western shore of Lake Baikal. Our three teams, each consisting of about 12 people, are out to collect garbage: cans, plastic and beer bottles, broken engines and debris from house construction - that's what we find in the nearby forests and at the beaches around Huzir, the only big village on Olkhon. The about 1200 people of Huzhir (of about 1500 altogether on Olkhon) don't have any garbage collection facilities and the only waste pressing machine is not working since it lacks of money and will to repair it. Additionally tourists from Russia and all over the world seem not to care about the sensitive environment of Baikal and leave their trash on camp sites, beaches and beside the roads. Thus our garbage collection activities are sometimes frustrating and might appear useless when we stand in front of meadows full of glass and cans. But the beautiful nature of Baikal compensates for the 8 hours each day collecting waste.

For a simple camp at least one luxury tries to remind us that this is holidays for most of us: after work, in the evenings we can enjoy a self-built Banya, a Russian sauna, which warms heart and soul and the body, too, after swimming in the cold water of the lake. Also we did already some excursions to learn about Olkhon and Baikal. At the second day of the camp we hiked to the Shaman rock, a holy place of the Buryat people, which settled on Olkhon 500-600 years ago.

At the 6th day we got a windy ride on a soviet-time truck to the northern tip of the island - a gorgeous rocky cape from where one can only assume the far north rim of the Baikal. Later we were picked up by a boat in a small village's natural harbour and sailed back and around that northern cape of the island and then into the so-called 'small sea' between Olkhon and the mainland. Our captain was a real Buryat, living in Huzhir, and a giant of man, dark sun-burned skin and face and snow-white hairs. He told us a lot about the living circumstances, the crew's work as fishermen and when - in the middle of the lake - we met an other ship with an old friend of him onboard he could not say 'no' to some glasses of vodka together with his friend. Thus we had an adventurous boat trip, reaching Huzhir at sunset.

Yesterday, the 10^th of August, we had a small action with local people, many kids, tourists and a local shaman. Together we cleaned the Shaman rock from garbage and Yuri and myself climbed on top of the rock to remove any bottles and cans from there. Hopefully this action will move both local people and tourists towards a more environmental-friendly treatment of Baikal and will show the officials in Irkutsk that it's worth to keep the nature clean.

Hi,
My name is Irene Mittrop, I'm from Hamburg, Germany, and I am a participant in the Greenpeace Lake Baikal Work Camp 2002. We are here to clean up trashed areas of the island and to improve the situation on the island concerning trash handling by the inhabitants, reached by negotiations with the local authorities, press representants and educational activities for the inhabitants of Olkhon Island.

Here my first impressions after two days. Today is 5.8.2002, 3pm local time Irkutsk. Here are about 45 people from Greenpeace Russia (Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and Irkutsk), Italy, the Netherlands and from Germany.

The participants booked their traveling on their own, so we arrived all with different transportations. Most of us came to Irkutsk by plane, but some even used the Transsib. The transportation to the island of course only worked by car, which means a powerful jeep. All together, the journey was very exhausting for everybody because it was not only about switching planes and airports but also because of traveling through several time zones with significant time shift. Irkutsk time is 7h+ compared to Berlin time.

When we finally arrived at the camp site on Olhon Island we realized that Volodja did a great job with the camp preparations. It's a beautiful choice of location as we can see directly on the waters of Lake Baikal, we are protected by Mediterranean looking trees, and it was easy to prepare the tent setting because it is all sand here which makes us sleep comfortably.

When everybody had been arrived we had our first camp meeting, and all participants were divided in three working brigades, depending on their language skills. As I do not speak any Russian, I am together with the Dutch and Italians in brigade #3 (I am still irritated by the military term 'brigade', and would have found it more appropriate to let us be 'groups').

For the 1st day, for me that was it; I set my tent and went immediately to sleep. Some of us did the same, some had a nice evening at the camp fire, the ones having arrived by Transsib even had the possibility to use the hand-craft-sauna.

The first working day revealed the bad trash situation this island is in. Alongside of miles of the tracks through the woods and even at the beachsites there is trash just being thrown there without any consideration: glass, plastic, metal cans, motor spare parts, clothes, plastic lamination material, roof covering material, short: everything trashable we could find there. Equipped with special team jackets, pants and working gloves (provided by Greenpeace - thanx!) protecting our personal clothes from the dirt we would be sitting in we started to collect the trash, already separating it by recyclability of the material (glass bottles, plastic bottles, cans, metal parts, and non-recyclable trash -which unfortunately makes the biggest part of it). The groups' work turned out very effective as we could clean in only one day a whole passage of a long forest track which looked horrifying at the beginning, as if it were impossible to clean up so much trash even in weeks - team working is a great thing! The work itself is enormously straneous as you are always declined with your back to pick up single items, or sitting on the ground with your knees to collect whole piles of shmudder. The sacks we use to put everything in there get heavy in no time, and you always have to drag them with you to put the trash in. For me as a plain office worker these days will be a real challenge for my body!

We were all too happy when it was time for lunch, and as the weather is fantastic today - worm, sunny, cloudless - some of us took the opportunity to take a bath in the Lake Baikal. Even if 'taking a bath' is absolutely exaggerated because the weather shows ca. 6 centigrades of temperature and lets every civilized muscle freeze in ca. 5 seconds. The ones who didn't strain their bodies in the cold took a sun bath or just took a little walk at the beach. Altogether, it is really beautiful here, and the group members together with all the participants are super-nice people, interesting to talk to, it is a great atmosphere!