Throughout my life as a cleanup volunteer (since age 13), I always had the soldier mindset. "All I need to do is turn off my brain and fight." This is where mindsets such as "give it your all," and "fight to the death," are given a chance to be glorified romantically whilst also serving a practical element. As a kid, quite priviliged to have two loving, educated, and economically-okay parents who support what I do both in principle and in execution, I can get away with busting my ass out picking up trash till I'm close to collapsing, because I know that if worse comes to worst, there's always a clean home to return to, a meal on the table, and Mom and Dad to pay for the hospital bills if I ever get sick.
I always overlooked the logistics part of how I can exist as some sort of a superhero vigilante--doing good without being paid or sustained by a corporate or government entity--because Mom and Dad always had me covered in that regard. Not everyone is so lucky to have a nature loving environmental impact assessment consultant dad and and ornithologist + university lecturer mom combo who are just as fanatic about the environment as the amalgamation of those two, me.
I've was raised by David Attenborough VCD documentaries, GreenPeace videos from the 2000s on my dad's laptop (that I watched because the internet wasn't a thing we had easy access to back then, I just repeatedly watched whatever videos were in his files), and a children's cartoon called Alberts Says: Nature Knows Best that Mom bought for me in VCD form back in 2006. A lot of which illustrate or at least hint towards the idea of human's presence in nature as a threat to wildlife and the environment. In some cases, directly pointing towards the thing that drives us the most--money.
"Money = Evil"
Was the mindset I had, and any conversation involving money, I viewed with disdain. I would be absolutely offended if anyone even suggested the idea that I clean up for money/to be paid, for I viewed those working as garbagemen as a job, as being unpure in their intentions; a degree of which I am above, since "I don't get paid to do it, I do it because it's right. Therefore, I am morally superior."
However, this idea was stupid; but more fatally, ignorant.
I ignored the fact that even though I was out there cleaning up hundreds upon hundreds of kilograms ALONE from 2013 (age 15) to this day, I still ate off of Mom and Dad's table. I asked for money when I needed to buy trashbags, My dad drove me to the wood store to buy wood so I can craft my own trashpickers, my orange Black and Decker jigsaw that created most of the wooden tools I used 2015-today, I bought that with money given to me by my Aunts from my Mom's side who gave me money as a gift in Ramadan of 2015. So, I've been recieving so much resources, just not in cash form. Which gave off the illusion that I was doing it purely by my own muscle; heck, even my muscles won't exist if it weren't for the fact that my family could afford us nutritious food.
Since highschool, my friends have always disappointed me with their commitment. They said they were going to come and help me clean up, but they always backed down. I felt like, nobody quite "gets it" like I do. People were motivated by things that, at the time, I could not relate to. It might be social acceptance; which because of the fact I was quite famous at school, people might think associating with me could elevate their own notoriety, only to find that I am quite "difficult to understand" and thus unenjoyable to spend time with. Some people joined me, but I felt a lingering sense that they were expecting handouts, which as kind as I wished to be, I couldn't give people on a regular basis due to my financially unstable nature.
This is why most of the times, you'll find me cleaning up alone, it allows me to feel the activity in its purest form, without all the pesky unwritten social obligations getting in the way.
However recently, with the Ngabubersih Program; which collected funding from donors and participants who wholeheartedly handed out their hard earned cash to support us, a revelation struck. Initially while proposing the program to my followers on an IG Story, My intention was just to find new friends to cleanup with, while being completely transparent that I'd be unable to pay for everyone's meal. I wish I could, but the reality is, all the meals served in the past team-cleanups I've done, were provided by my parents; Which this time, I didn't have the heart to burden them with anymore. So, I proposed for participants to "go dutch" as in, to gather up whatever change we have and buy food with whatever can be afforded with that.
Unexpectedly, so many non-participating people wanted to hand out contributions, basically asking to become donors. This was terrifying, for any attempts to discredit me by labelling me as a beggar (something 13 year old me would definitely kill me for), would now have a basis of argument; which is the fact that I'm accepting donations. The only way I could make it okay, is if I were to conduct meticulous accounting to lay out with complete openness, what the money is being spent on. This would at the very least show to people that I'm not profiting from it personally, which will give me the peace of mind knowing that I didn't accidentally steal anything due to poor acconting thoroughness. So, apart from the 8 wonderfully successful team-cleanups that have been carried out so far this month, I've also been staying up late and losing sleep over inputting reciepts and cross checking account mutations to the balance sheets that I've made viewable to all participants and donors via the WhatsApp group.
The revelation is, despite me being completely outside of my "soldier" habitat (with all the paperwork and admining), I've allowed people to experience the "soldier" habitat that I took oh the most pleasure from when I was young; when my parents were doing all the not-so-elegant officework that put food on the table.
At the end of every Ngabubersih mission, because of all the resources at hand, its impossible to leave the scene with an empty stomach and a filthy body. Food is all prepped, soap and towels all prepped, all of which kept and widened the smiles obtained from the adrenaline rich activity that preceeded it all.
It seems, maturing for me is realizing that its my turn to do the boring logistical stuff, so that the "soldiers" can enjoy being young, dumb, and broke, that have all their love to give.
