On Trash

Trash. Trash. Trash is EVERYWHERE and it drives me absolutely batty. I'm
looking out my bedroom window right now, and the ground is literally
littered with trash. But there's really not much to be done about it.

When I first got here I got all up in arms about it, and walked around my
yard picking up every scrap. Once bagged, it goes where the trash from our
house goes...in a hole in the back yard. Not two days later, half of what I
picked up was back blowing around the yard again. See there are a few
factors working against trash collection here - namely dogs, goats and wind.
My housemates don't help - if they're finishing their beer while walking
from the gate to the door, it's dropped mid-step. If they happen to be near
a window and finish a bag of chips, out the window the bag goes. At first,
this infuriated me. All of my trash of course goes into my plastic grocery
bag, which is later emptied into the hole in the back. But again, within a
day or two I see my trash around the yard too.

This culture, like many others, is very prideful, but there seems to be
little to no pride in ones surroundings. I made the mistake of giving out
candies with wrappers a few times in class. The wrappers went either to the
floor or out the window. I tell the kids to pick them up, so fine, they get
dropped in the pile accumulating in the corner...which at odd times gets
taken to trash bins...which sometimes get emptied and burned...but most
times end up just blowing in the wind.

But what does anyone DOOO??? There's no central 'waste management'
authority, there's no reliable transportation, hell there weren't even bins
until a Peace Corps guy managed to deliver a few in the area. Even if you
could stop people from littering, which would mean undoing X years of habit,
where does the trash go and how does it get there?

This has also made me painfully aware of how much waste I'm personally
generating. See I don't eat boiled goat and porridge every day. Nope, I
eat pasta, tuna, tuna helper, egg sandwiches, fruit chutney nik naks (the
best chips in the world) - all of which have one thing in common -
packaging. I probably generate twice the waste that my housemates do, and
it makes me ill. I reuse all that I can, but eesh.

Burn scars cover this landscape, quite literally. I guess I prefer that
than trash strewn about. But I can't help but thinking of all the plastics
and fumes and CO2.

Those of you who know me know what recycling nazi I am. Here, beyond
reusing stuff, there's no such thing as recycling. Apparently there's a
recycling center in Windhoek, so someone in this country is thinking about
it, but that's a heckofalongway from here.

What to do???!!!