A Culture of Filth
Image: Baastrop If you follow me on Twitter, you will (probably) notice that every week – and sometimes, almost every day – I talk about people who litter the environment with either their urine, feces or other waste products generated from their daily activities. From my tone, you can always tell that I am constantly angry at the unsightly result of our improper waste disposal and management. I wasn’t always this concerned about the environment. In fact, I used to be a huge part of the problem; okay…maybe ‘huge’ is stressing it too far. What I can admit is that I used to toss trash into the streets, gutters and running water and even burn plastic and other waste materials. Not only was I contributing to the dirt in the streets, I was also polluting the air. It is no surprise that at that time, my bedroom used to look like a tornado was constantly running through it. You wouldn’t call me a ‘clean girl’ for anything. My mother would fuss, and discipline, and it never seemed to work. As I got older, I got better…but not by much. Then in 2006, something happened to change my entire outlook on waste disposal. I was fresh out of secondary school and looking forward to a life as an undergraduate. I applied to Ahmadu Bello University for my first and second choice and when it was time for the Post Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, or what we simply called Post UME, I was excited to go for the test, and prove why I should get into the school. After a really stressful day of getting lost, struggling to find myself in a sea of people, writing the exam and wondering how I was going to get back home, I decided to have a snack; I had not eaten all day. I bought a sausage roll – Gala – and a drink and sat down at the Social Center to eat. When I was done, I picked up my empty bottle and sausage wrap and crossed the road towards Amina Hostel. As soon as I crossed, I looked around and dropped my empty bottle and wrap on the ground. Just as I did that, my eye connected with a guy who was looking directly at me. I stopped. You know how they say you can shoot darts with your eyes? Well, this guy was shooting grenades! Without one word uttered, I could feel his disapproval, disappointment and anger at my littering. It was in that moment that I really took in my surroundings. There were waste bin every 100 metres and the school environment was clean and the lawn perfected mowed. In fact, there was one waste bin right in front of me. But I hadn’t seen it. I want to blame the stress I had been under but in all honesty, I may not have used it regardless. Remember that I have established that I was the type of person to toss things out into the street, right? Well, my bottle of fizzy drink – and its accompanying sausage wrap – was the aberration to what was a well maintained, really clean environment. It felt like I had insulted the ground – and faculty – of the school. I was awash with embarrassment. Why did I have to openly disregard this beauty that was so carefully put together? Why did I have to show myself like this?! I imagined what the guy must have been thinking about me. I need to put out a caveat though; I wasn’t attracted to the guy. I didn’t want to be liked by the guy. It wasn’t like I wanted to impress him. But the look which he shot me was rife with silent disapproval and judgement. I felt that he had seen into my soul and concluded that I was destructive to the earth. I imagined him thinking me ‘local’, ‘unsophisticated’ and maybe even a ‘village girl’. I was ashamed of myself for not being a better a person. And because of the insecurities I had already been feeling in the new…different environment, I wished I could go back in time and undo my act of sacrilege to the hallowed grounds of the university. To salvage the situation, I acted like I had dropped the trash on purpose. I opened my bag, pretending to look for something and then, bent down to pick them up and toss them into the trash can. With that, I walked away with my shoulders squared, head held high and lips in a defiant pout. But…not before I stole a glance at the guy and saw the beginnings of a smile on his face. That day, I made the choice to stop indiscriminately disposing waste. If I cannot dispose my waste in a proper way, I put it in my bag until I can. The ripple effects of that stink look stayed a long time with me and made me want to be a better person; first to myself and then to my community. I started to clean my house more, keep the ‘tornado’ at bay and generally, act better. As expected, the more concerned I was about my environment, the less tolerant I was of people who littered and worse, peed and pooped in public spaces. Having mentioned that, I have a confession to make. Sometime in 2013, a friend and I went out on a date. I remember drinking from a packet juice and taking some water with the snacks I had. When we returned to his house and I was about to set out for mine, he asked if we could extend the night by taking a stroll. I agreed. Before we left however, I asked for some water and I downed the 60cl sachet that he brought. I felt like peeing, but the pressure wasn’t much. So, I ignored the call and we went out. We took a stroll through the neighborhood and talked and
Unsung Heroes: Trash Collectors
A while back, I wrote a series of tweets addressed to the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Environment about a refuse dump at a community in Abuja called Karu. The dump site served as the collection point for the communities surrounding it. If the dump site was located anywhere else, I probably wouldn’t have noticed enough to make an issue an about it. But…it was right there on a major road and in between houses, shops, schools, religious centers and banks. Most people have to pass that road to get from Nyanya to Jikwoyi, Kpeyigi, Kurudu and other areas beyond. And because these areas are some of the most populated areas in Abuja, thousands of people ply that road every day and see the refuse dump that kept getting bigger and bigger. Then the dump spilled beyond its boundaries and into the roads. The dirt and decaying substances were everywhere. And because the rains came in, puddles of really dirty water formed mini-lakes on the road. It was an eyesore. But beyond that, it stank to high heavens. Every time I had to pass through that spot, I had to breathe in as much clean air as I could, hold my breath and pray to God the driver of whatever I was in/on sped past as fast as he could. One time, we were caught in a traffic jam right at that spot. We were there for roughly ten minutes. I couldn’t hold my breath for that long. The first time the smell hit my lungs, I couldn’t be more repulsed. I wanted to puke! Desperately! But if I did, it would mean opening my mouth to the foulness that was the stench of that place. When I got home that day, I had to take a long bath to scrub the smell off my body. Yes, the smell was mostly in my head but having been there for so long, I felt like I had a cloak of the disgusting smell all over me. So I wrote a series of tweets asking the Federal Ministry of Environment and the Abuja Council to save us from that nastiness. About a week later, I was off to work when I saw large trucks at the spot with men clearing the refuse dump. I was so elated I forgot to breathe in the clean air I would need to pass through the spot. Because the men were clearing the refuse in batches, the smell was especially ripe that day. I drew in a nasty smell of rot and decay…and gagged. As I quickly covered my nostrils, I noticed that some of the men working at the site didn’t have their noses covered. How the hell were they comfortably breathing in that mass of horridness?! But more than that, why?! It got me thinking of a lot of the trash collectors I have seen in the many places I have been to. These men (and women) have to deal with some of the worst things in people’s garbage bags and cans. From rotten food to improperly disposed sanitary towels, these people come in contact with a lot of disgusting things when they collect trash. And because we don’t separate our trash into biodegradable and non-biodegradable, these people have to sift through all our trash to dispose of them. Most of these people usually have no face masks on when they work. And where they do, it is the flimsy faux surgical masks they use. Those masks in particular may be good for preventing dust particles from going to your lungs but it doesn’t prevent any smell from doing same. So technically, it makes no difference whether they wear a mask or not. Even more deplorable is the state of the local trash collectors who are not employed by the government or trash collection agencies. These are everyday people too poor to do anything else. So they get a wheel barrow or a mini-truck and go from house to house asking people to bring out their trash. These men have no protective uniforms or boots. They don’t have masks or hand gloves. All they have are their dirty clothes and even dirtier slippers. And because they mostly work in the ghettoes and poorer neighborhoods, the kinds of trash they have to deal with is even so much worse. To make matters worse, these trash collectors only earn minimum wage if they work for the government and not much better when they work for private corporations. Those of them who work in the ghettoes collect between ₦10 and ₦50 per house. So not only do they have to do a shitty job, they don’t get enough money to make it worthwhile. They also expose themselves to grave harm from the micro-organism found in and around trash. These micro-organisms can be disease causing or not. They stand in the trash, breathe it in, pick them up with their bare hands, and barely clean up properly before taking in food or water. I remember once when the trash in my house piled up because these guys weren’t working. The trash was an eyesore and the smell, horrible. My housemate and I would wait out for the collectors and even walk as far as our junction to find them. And when for a week we couldn’t have our trash emptied, we were disgusted by the sight that greeted us whenever we got back home from work. The day we finally saw a trash collector, we almost danced in celebration. We paid him way more than was necessary because we were reminded that they were an integral part of our sanitation and sanity. For the most part, we really don’t see these people. As long as we get our trash taken out, we barely recognize that these are people with needs, wants, aspirations, problems and what not. We get so engrossed in our lives that we do not see the danger these people put themselves in to ensure we
