Fujairah: They left their mark all right — literally and distastefully.
The only natural waterfalls in the UAE, located inside the Wadi Wurayah Natural Park in Fujairah, is covered with graffiti. Top to bottom, inside and out, everywhere you look, there are scribbles and markings on its rocks.
This was the result of the audacity and lack of respect of some of the people who visited the national park for a swim or a picnic for around 10 years until 2013.
The national park was closed to the public in December 2013 because of this damage until infrastructure can be established to protect wildlife and public safety in the park.
A team of professional cleaners sent as volunteers by their company, Dulsco, has been helping the park’s management team to clean the graffiti every week.
“This area used to be covered with graffiti. It took us three months just to clear this side. Now, we started on the other side but it’s very difficult as well because the water is deep there,” Maral Chreiki, Conservation and Operation Manager of Wadi Wurayah National Park, told Gulf News during a visit.
“We put this network of rocks and ropes to help us to apply the pressure that we need because we’re using non-hazardous material, and we need to press it on the rocks strongly. It’s a very long and tiring process,” Chreiki said. “You can still see some graffiti, but to reach this status, it took us a lot of work.”
The part Chreiki was talking about bore faint scribbles, especially in the crevices where paint seeped through. It had been cleaned twice but will probably needs two more cleanings.
Asked what the graffiti meant, mostly written in Arabic, Chreiki said they were just names and phone numbers of the people who came to visit the park.
“At one stage, we had one interesting graffiti from a nearby facility here, whose name I will not mention. They wrote their names [on the rocks] and the name of the company where they worked for.”
“So we took a photo and we sent it to the institution and we said, ‘These are your employees.’ And the company sent them all back the next week to clean and remove the graffiti.”
Chreiki said these vandals “came prepared” when they visited the park. To them it was a game, the higher the graffiti and the more difficult to reach, the better.
The highest point of the graffiti is about 15 metres. Chreiki said they would need help from professional mountain climbers just to clean that area.
“To others it’s fun, to us it’s a nightmare. And we don’t understand why they do this.”
Chreiki said the lack of awareness and lack of a proper management system in the past might be the reason. But he expects that in the future, now that they are putting everything in place, “these activities will not take place any more”.
