If you clean it, they will come

By Jayne Flores

The flight from Korea on March 9 was barely half-full. Even though it was 40 degrees in Seoul, Guam could not attract a full plane of tourists eager to escape to our beautiful tropical island. Coming home from a three-day excursion to Myeongdong with friends, it’s easy to see why.

Things are far more expensive here in our little corner of paradise. For example, it cost each of us only $25 for a round trip between Incheon airport and our hotel in Myeongdong, a one-hour trip both ways.

On Guam, a shuttle from the airport to Tumon costs an average of $20 to $25 per person round trip based on my calls to several hotels. A taxi ride may be slightly more expensive, but on average the cost is about the same as the shuttle from Incheon to Myeongdong. Except for one thing: the trip from Guam’s airport to a Tumon hotel takes less than 10 minutes. That makes Guam’s airport shuttles and taxis far more expensive by comparison. If I were a tourist from Korea, I’d be miffed about spending that much for an eight-minute ride to my hotel. Not a good first impression.   

The cost of gas (especially now) and currency exchange rates are beyond our control. But there are two things within our control to make a three-day excursion to Guam a lot more attractive: our cleanliness and our attitude.

Cleanliness is a challenge that has unfortunately plagued us for decades. Our public restrooms are often disgusting. Many residents dump their trash in random places or leave it on the beach for someone else to pick up.

I don’t think cleanliness is specific to any culture. I’ve been in stateside neighborhoods where one family’s home and yard are neat and tidy, while another’s could be a candidate for a “Hoarders” episode. The same is true for Guam and our neighboring islands.

But in Korea and Japan, you get the sense that it is a matter of pride to leave a public place clean for the next person. It’s admirable how people clean up after themselves. There is no garbage on the ground, especially in areas frequented by tourists. If there is no trash receptacle nearby, people take their trash with them and dispose of in the next one they find.

You would never catch a Korean or Japanese public restroom in a tourist district smelling to high heaven, with toilet paper strewn every which way, dirty sinks, garbage piled up.

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The Guam Visitors Bureau is preparing to spend about $30,000 a month, according to media reports, to clean the five most frequented park restrooms on the island: Ypao Beach and Matapang Beach parks in Tumon, Latte Stone Park in Hagåtña, Fort Apugan in Agana Heights and Fort Soledad in Humåtak.

Perhaps it is budgetary concerns, or the government’s ever-frustrating procurement quagmire that prevents the Department of Parks and Recreation from handling the job. Nevertheless, GVB is stepping up to tackle the issue.

 But GVB and the government of Guam should not have to tackle the trash  problem at public parks, save for collecting it from designated trash containers. That responsibility belongs to us.

If you go somewhere—the beach, a park, the mall—for heaven’s sake, please clean up after yourself. Those who leave their trash indiscriminately for someone else to deal with reflect a baffling sense of entitlement. That attitude says to others, “I couldn’t care less about you.”

I want to attribute this attitude to being American, but that wouldn’t be entirely fair. Many of us clean up after ourselves. It’s not difficult. It’s the proverbial low-hanging fruit that we all can do to make our island more attractive to visitors. We just need to teach everyone who lives here that it is part of our collective responsibility as residents to keep our island clean, not only for our visitors, but for ourselves as well.

After all, our crystal-blue waters and beaches are the island’s main attraction for tourists from colder climates in the region.

Keeping them clean is well within the reach of each of us and costs nothing but a little civic responsibility.

Jayne Flores recently retired after serving as director of the Bureau of Women's Affairs for the Government of Guam for seven years. Before that, she served as director of communications for Guam Community College for nine years. She has been a journalist in various capacities in television and print since 1982. Send jayneflores59@gmail.com.