Thursday, July 21, 2011

Garbage

In my town there are garbage men who come to pick up trash, usually every week, and usually more than once a week. However, they don't always come on the same day of the week.

In light of how people here rummage through the trash cans and bags of trash which people leave outside their homes, often spilling trash onto the street, I don't leave my trash out in front of my apartment overnight. I don't care whether people know what's in my trash; indeed, there is nothing remarkable or embarrassing about my trash. Rather, I want to do what I can to avoid trash being scattered on the street. I've seen someone on my street sifting through trash, causing it to spill onto the street, even just within the fairly narrow window of time in which the garbage men here in my town usually arrive, between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.

So, I don't even leave it outside in the morning. Instead I wait to hear the garbage truck approaching, usually honking its horn to help announce its presence, then I get up and take the trash outside. However, sometimes they collect all of the garbage on my street before I can make it outside in time to catch them. So it can be a tricky matter, just trying to get rid of garbage!

This morning the garbage men came. They had already left my street by the time I got outside. However, this morning my garbage bag had a lot of food scraps in it, including onion skin, a few bad olives, and residue of pasta sauce, and I didn't want to keep it in my apartment as it would have continued causing odors which likely would have attracted various bugs. So I went off in search of the garbage men. First I walked to the end of my street, and immediately found the garbage men on the street perpendicular to mine, and handed my bag of refuse to them.

I'm certainly thankful that my town has garbage pickup. Not all PCVs in Morocco live in towns where their garbage is picked up. I'm also thankful that my town has garbage pickup given how many Moroccans often deal with trash.

Many Moroccans just drop articles of trash as they are walking outside. For this reason, I am glad that in addition to the pickup of household trash by the men with the garbage truck, there are also municipal employees who walk around the city with wheelbarrows collecting trash.

However, it has also occurred to me that perhaps people drop trash outside since they expect these municipal employees to pick it up. One day I thought that perhaps because the city provides that service, that that is why I once saw a girl discard a juice carton by placing it on top of a small pile of trash by the side of the road. That is, perhaps she left it there because she knew that someone was going to come along and take it away while picking up trash with a wheelbarrow.  

No comments:

Post a Comment