Trash

In many countries in Africa there is no official trash pick up for the streets. While your home might pay someone to come take the trash away, there is no public trash to put your garbage in. In Burkina, I take my trash out by walking out of the gate of our compound turning right and putting it on the ground, simple as that. Eventually someone will go through it, eat something out of it and then someone else will come and take it away. To have your trash collected costs a total of one dollar every four months, or 7 SEK. When Mirabelle and I walk around town and grabbed a juice, which was contained in a plastic bag, when we were finished she just threw it down on the ground. I have a VERY difficult time doing this, so usually I hide it in my bag till I get home, even though I know inevitably it will end up on the earth somewhere else.

People throw everything on the ground, in front of my house some women sell mangoes and when they are finished they throw the pits straight down, so there is a massive collection of mango seeds outside my door. Its very weird coming from a country that emphasizes and even makes it illegal to litter and here people open plastic bags and throw them right onto the ground. Some people burn their trash, so the smell of burning plastic is quite common. Even in the villages you can see the large fields of dry grass littered with plastic bags flowing in the wind.

I’m not trying to say people are wasteful here, because they are not. The water bottles I use to drink my water out of have been given away to women to clean and re-sell with juice inside of them. Its just there is no money to set up a system to clean the trash so people have nowhere else to put it but let it fall to the groun