Belarusian, Famous For Cleaning Polish Forest: I’m Meeting Mayor This Wednesday

Aliaksandr Hudovich moved to Poland from Brest two months ago.

“I'm in shock now, I didn't even think that this was possible,” says Aliaksandr Hudovich, a Belarusian who became famous after “cleaning” the forest near the Polish town of Zielona Gora. The act of the Belarusian was noticed in the mayor's office, and in the comments, local residents even offered to grant him Polish citizenship, and buy new sneakers that could have deteriorated from glass scattered in the forest. Zerkalo.io contacted the hero of the high-profile story, and spoke with him about his sudden fame and philosophy of life.

Aliaksandr has been in Poland for two months, where he moved from Brest in search of work. The man says that he plans to settle in this country for a long time, but does not yet know how realistic it is. Now he works at one of the local factories that produce lighting equipment.

“At first I worked for a Belarusian, but the conditions were not the best,” the man says. “Sometimes it seems that people abroad are treated even worse by “their” people. I worked 12-16 hours at the lowest wage, no growth prospects, vague promises ... Now I work with Poles - that’s incomparably better.

Aliaksandr started the YouTube channel last year, when he left for the Leningrad region of Russia to build a park for the northern wolves:

- I had a regular job in Brest, but then such an exotic option appeared, and I decided to try it. Getting alone with wolves is cool. I worked seven days a week, and stayed there for about 4 months. The owner of the park hosted his own channel, and users spoke well of me, and I managed one of the channels about wolves myself. As a result, when I left, I decided to start my own video blog. I talk about my life in it, it is called “Life as Life”.

It was the shooting of the video for the blog that led the hero to the place that made him famous.

- I made a video for my subscribers, walked in the woods in Zielona Gora, - Aliaksandr recalls. - I really like it there, the forest is beautiful and clean, it is full of wildlife - I praised it in the video. And then suddenly I came across this garbage. It turned out to be such a disappointment. Then I kept walking and thinking: “If not me, then who?” As a result, after working on the night shift on the way home, I realized that I did not want to sleep. I went straight to the store, bought some bags, and cleaned the mess. However, not completely: there was a lot of garbage.

“After that, they even wrote to me that I did the wrong thing, because in Poland you cannot clean up the garbage yourself,” continues Aliaksandr. - There are special services that collect and sort it correctly for recycling or disposal, and an ordinary person cannot do it right. I don't know if this is true, but I was worried that something would happen and asked for help from the Pole Krzysztof, with whom we work together. He explained that he often cleans the forest himself and never had encountered any problems. So we went there together again to finish what we started.

Aliaksandr is flattered by the attention from the authorities of Zielona Gora and says that he could not even imagine what kind of resonance his video would cause.

- Literally 20 minutes ago, the mayor’s people called me, - says Aliaksandr. - Today they were going to come to my work (laughs). I also asked if the company I work for would mind. The mayor's representatives said they shouldn't (laughs). Now, however, they called back and said that they had rescheduled the meeting for Wednesday - they were inviting me to the mayor's office. I am shocked by everything that is going on. I have no idea how it happened, and what to expect now.

Aliaksandr has not yet set out any other cleaning goals for himself - he says everything is clean and the dump he found in the forest is a rare exception for Zielona Gora. According to Aliaksandr, this is a popular place among local youth for a kind of rest with alcohol - during the second visit, they even met a group of such people. True, when they saw the camera, they turned around and ran away.

- My main dream in life is to buy a mobile home, start traveling with like-minded people, and tell my subscribers about it. But so far this is unattainable, - the man concludes.