Garbage

Haunting, haunting
images of waste.

Of plastic bags
strewn out of car windows
speeding away
a part of me cringes
to watch a cookie wrapper
tousle in the dust
behind our vehicle.

At first
there is outrage
inside of me
one who has been raised
to refuse waste
to find a way
to make it no longer useless
to make it something else
less disgusting.

But here
we consume
we ingest
we take everything
out of everything
until it is gone
and but a hollow shell
remains,
to be buried
with the other
empty remnants
of something that
once served us
some purpose.

So is it waste
is it trash,
is this garbage
that is thrown out
our car window
or is it

totally used.



Author's Note*** This speaks to one of those oddities that occur to travellers of the developing world, we become entirely accustomed to things like a lack of proper garbage disposal. In Kenya, most people simply round up their trash and burn it once or twice a week, be it on the side of the road or in their front yard, it is just another chore of the week. The smell is intense but somehow over the matter of a month it becomes commonplace to your senses. The thick smoke with a strong scent of burning rubber becomes somehow bizarrely acceptable. One of the first days we were in Kenya, Morgan and I were shocked by our translator, Priscilla's, method of dealing with refuse. She was eating a milk biscuit (commonly used in Kenya as a sort of 'energy boosting' supplement and sold individually in little wrappers, really it's just a shortbread of sorts) and when she was finished with it, she simply rolled down the window and tossed it out. Out flew the wrapper on a hot updraft and I watched it roll behind us in the dust for a few seconds before it disappeared out of site. Walking around town became a good lesson in what people bought the most. Milk biscuit wrappers, chewing gum wrappers, mixed tea packets and engine oil bottles would form a sort of little circle expanding out from the entrance to tiny shops or convenience stores. The moment someone would buy something, they would seem to consume it immediately, no one ever seemed to buy anything in advance of the just now. I admit, I kind of enjoyed this. I was funny to me, as we always seem to be making lists of things we need when we go out to shop in North America, making sure we never run out of anything or have to go back throughout the week to complete our list. Witnessing this kind of thing gave me a view into another way of tackling such a simple part of our day to day lives and it made me wonder if we all implemented this kind of strategy, would we waste less? While I see garbage in Kenya everywhere I look, is it in someway less wasted and more used because it wasn't bought until directly needed, was immediately devoured and then left in the dirt. It wasn't bought, sat on a shelf, forgotten about and replaced, used up simply to get ride of it and then thrown out. It's abstract yes, but it does give you something to think about. We as North Americans are so quick to judge the massive amounts of garbage we are presented with when we are traveling through a developing country. It's hard not to be mildly outraged or appalled when you first see someone toss something out a car window, but over time, you can become capable of seeing something beyond the trash and this makes it easier to understand, it even leaves room for it to become, completely normal.
-Jen


Images:
Masai Boy in Garbage- taken outside the gate to Masai Mara, a world class Game Park in southern Kenya
Goat in Garbage- taken in a village outside of Nairobi (look to the middle right of the photo to see the solo sheep)
Dog in Garbage- taken in a rural Kenya village amongst a strip of local shops between two of our farm sites.