One Man's Trash...

Every Saturday night when living down-country (that is, among the Gmz), we have a family tradition of "fire night." The typical routine is cooking and eating our dinner, roasting and eating S'mores and then the burning of that week's trash. Whereas, for the most part, we are left pretty well alone during this time, I remember one particular evening when a Gmz man walked by as I was beginning to burn some trash. At first he was a casual observer, but as soon as I threw the first piece of trash in, he began his protest "Hey, what are you doing burning all of those (used) match sticks? Those are still good!" Good for what? I have no idea, but it dawned on me very quickly that the white man's trash has the potential of being a Gmz treasure. Please hear me correctly when I say that, I mean that not in a disrespectful way toward Gmz. If anything I mean it as a put down to our home culture. Gmz people, and actually, many other Ethiopians have incredible creativity and ingenuity when it comes to reusing and recycling just about everything. Torn mosquito nets become very strong ropes, oil jugs are used for carrying water (or beer), torn clothes become patches for other torn clothes, nails become arrow heads, scraps of rebar are pounded into knives, old plastic pieces become straps for sandals, hard plastic is melted down for blunting the tip of bird-shooting arrows, just about every piece of "garbage" has value to someone. When an old grain sack has too many holes for fixing, its threads are unwound, then twisted together into multi-strand cords then used for hauling firewood and water.

First the grain sack need to be unwound

 Littering is common practice in this country, and yet we aren't walking around in a trash heap. Why not? Because the next guy who comes along may wonder why in the world anybody would throw away such a treasure. In addition, in many parts of the country, the fields are burned once a year between harvest and planting. And the fire has a way of cleaning up whatever real trash was rejected by all. Bones go to the dogs, husks are gobbled up by goats, and any scraps of food-like-substances are pecked out of the dirt by the scavenging chickens. Even in Addis Ababa, just this morning I saw a dog gnawing at a cow skull which had been thrown outside into the street. One man's scraps meant prime rib for the canine outside his gate.

Yum...yum...

 I remember a movie (a movie about "oil") in which the US was accused of something like "having 5% of the world's population and producing 95% of the world's trash." Which sounded to me like an exaggeration until I stopped to think about it. In the States, how many huge trash bags does a family of 4 put out every week? Compare that to how we could easily fit our typical week's trash, uncompressed, into a 5-gallon pail. 

Fire night in the rain...you can see one of our two garbage baskets next to me. That is the extent of our week's garbage.

And yet, every Saturday night's trash burn reveals out wastefulness in light of that of our Gmz neighbors. It's not a problem that anyone can really solve. Our food comes in packages within packages within packages, Gmz food comes on plants. Back in the States, our clothes may come with tags, pins, cardboard, tissue paper, receipts and bags required in order to carry merchandise out of a store. Gmz buy from street venders or small stores where there are no receipts and asking for a bag will cost you extra. Sadly, our consumer-driven culture has created an economy where things depreciate in value so quickly that it becomes cheaper to replace something old with something brand new, than it is to fix that which was broken. Back in 2006, I sold my 11-year-old car for something ridiculous like $750 because it had a short list of fixable problems. Yet the cost of fixing it was more than double what the car was worth! This past week, while doing the annual safety inspection with my truck, the guys at the inspection place were salivating over my "beautiful" and "strong" truck – that is a 15-year-old Toyota Hilux. When I took it to the mechanic last March, I overheard him saying that trucks like mine were selling for 800,000 birr, that's more than what I paid for it 5 years ago! Things don't necessarily depreciate over here, some things appreciate! Why, because the Ethiopian culture hasn't yet come to value the "single use only" mentality that we've swallowed hook, line, and sinker. In due time, I suspect, consumerism is coming this direction, but for now, it is somewhat refreshing to see resources used and reused in very creative ways.