Garbage

After living in Lusaka for almost two months, I’ve become quite familiar with the smell of burning garbage. Take a drive at night, and you’re bound to see groupings of small fires set in fields, along the side of the road, dry brush burning, fueling the attempted disposal of cardboard containers, plastic bottles and bags. Sometimes we’ll pass small fires early in the morning, while we’re out running, and I curse it for the oxygen it deprives of my hardworking lungs.
Occasionally the fire will grace us a flurry of ashen snowflakes. Even in our living room at night, if the wind blows just right, we’ll get a whiff of that tangy, almost suffocating, thick smoke.
Part of the problem is the lack of municipal garbage collection. Garbage pickup is handled by private companies. If you can’t afford it, then another option is to burn it. Or dump it. Empty pieces of land, and by empty I mean land that doesn’t have a house sitting on top of it, tend to accumulate vast carpets of wrappers and bottles. From the office to the Arcades Shopping Center, there is a dirt pathway cut perfectly through a field of the last vestiges of long ago enjoyed Orange Fantas and Eet-Sum-Mores biscuits. It’s hard to tell if the garbage, or the path, came first.
Today at lunchtime, I took an uneventful walk over to Arcades along that very path. When I returned, I saw thick smoke from across the main road. In the short time I was gone, somebody had set the largest garbage fire I’ve seen so far in the field across from CIDRZ. Under the heat and haze of the midday sun, the smoke burned especially thick and black, and the dark red flames jumped up what seemed to be several feet in the air.
I cringe every time I am not able to recycle a glass jar, a plastic bottle, a tin can. I want to yell every time an old minibus goes by coughing massive amounts of black exhaust into the air, but I’m too busy choking. On a regular basis, we open our front door, and even early in the morning, the smog and haze have already descended. It’s sort of like those pictures of LA at the height of its air pollution, only worse.
Lusaka has been growing by leaps and bounds. I’ve heard that even in the past year, the number of vehicles has exploded and traffic has visibly worsened. Roads are being paved. Intersections will back up for blocks, especially during rush hour. Buildings, houses and shopping centers are under construction in every corner of the city. But all that growth and development come at a price. It seems that it’s growing too fast for its own good. The battles that have already begun to be fought at home have not yet begun here.
I’m reminded of that Shel Silverstein poem “Sarah Synthia Sylvia Stout, Would Not Take the Garbage Out,” which he wrote way back in 1974…

Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Would not take the garbage out!
She'd scour the pots and scrape the pans,
Candy the yams and spice the hams,
And though her daddy would scream and shout,
She simply would not take the garbage out.
And so it piled up to the ceilings:
Coffee grounds, potato peelings,
Brown bananas, rotten peas,
Chunks of sour cottage cheese.
It filled the can, it covered the floor,
It cracked the window and blocked the door
With bacon rinds and chicken bones,
Drippy ends of ice cream cones,
Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel,
Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal,
Pizza crusts and withered greens,
Soggy beans and tangerines,
Crusts of black burned buttered toast,
Gristly bits of beefy roasts. . .
The garbage rolled on down the hall,
It raised the roof, it broke the wall. . .
Greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,
Globs of gooey bubble gum,
Cellophane from green baloney,
Rubbery blubbery macaroni,
Peanut butter, caked and dry,
Curdled milk and crusts of pie,
Moldy melons, dried-up mustard,
Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,
Cold french fried and rancid meat,
Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.
At last the garbage reached so high
That it finally touched the sky.
And all the neighbors moved away,
And none of her friends would come to play.
And finally Sarah Cynthia Stout said,
"OK, I'll take the garbage out!"
But then, of course, it was too late. . .
The garbage reached across the state,
From New York to the Golden Gate.
And there, in the garbage she did hate,
Poor Sarah met an awful fate,
That I cannot now relate
Because the hour is much too late.
But children, remember Sarah Stout
And always take the garbage out!

There are murmurs of conservation efforts here, but only if you go looking for them. They’re directed more towards preservation and the national parks. I wonder if that type of thinking is somewhat bewildering to people here. After all, there are villages bordering on, in the middle of, national parks. So what really is the difference between one person’s little piece of land, and the land across the road, which, though it looks exactly the same, is actually a piece of land to be preserved and protected.
I wonder how long the garbage will have to pile up before they decide to really do something about it. With all the other issues the government has to worry about right now, sanitation does not seem to be priority.