Trashcan Environmentalism

Living in a country other than one’s own, some cultural differences stand out more than others.

Lately, these differences have led to me to spend a lot of time thinking about trash. The streets of Lilongwe are fairly clean compared with Kinshasa or Nairobi - or even New York when I was growing up. But every time I’m on a field trip, driving though Malawi’s beautiful savanna countryside, someone in the vehicle rolls down the window to toss a piece of garbage out. Even my gardener leaves a pile of trash in the back corner of the garden despite the presence of a trash bin not 50 feet away.

I grew up in the coming of age of environmentalism in the US, when global warming still had to be proven and Tom Selleck did primetime specials on using fluorescent lightbulbs. My family had blue recycling bins for newspaper, cans and bottles. We insulated our windows in winter to conserve heat and re-used plastic containers. I cut up soda can ties so when the landfill got washed into the ocean, fish wouldn’t get caught in the plastic. I was green.

Now I live in a country where the principles of environmentalism follow different rules. There is no recycling center in a 500-miles radius but the useful life of any object far exceeds that which is expected in America. Shoes are repaired endlessly and anything that’s not already totally dilapidated is reused. In the case of dilapidation, the parts are consumed for integration into the reuse of other things.

And my carbon footprint? Even harder to say. While the average American’s food travels about 2500 miles from source to table, mine doesn’t come from much farther than a few hundred kilometers - but then I’m on enough long haul flights a year to get shunned by GreenPeace for all eternity.

So what now? I’m turning old wine bottles into glasses and vases. We have a lively vegetable garden. But when I go back to the US, I forget the milk carton doesn’t get lumped in with the rest of the trash. For the moment, I’m going to focus on stopping my teammates from rolling down the window of our gas-guzzling Land Cruiser and tossing their trash onto Malawi’s undeveloped grasslands.

Vanity Fair does the Congo

Reading Vanity Fair’s July article Congo’s Battered Cockpits brought back to life Congo’s chaotic beauty for me. …Though perhaps beauty is not something most people would take away from an article about Congo’s frighteningly unregulated airline industry. The anecdote whose punchline is a plane bellyflopping on Brazza’s runway only to fly again no doubt will bring a nostalgic smile to any ironic soul who’s spent time in the Congo. (I keep my own air travel stories to myself if only to avoid being grounded by mother who occasionally reads this blog.)

But then, Vanity Fair’s article succeeds where most others fail: it creates an realistic image of the Congo without the pity party in tow. From the pillages of the 1990’s to the diamond smuggling back and forth across the Angolan border, one can begin to imagine how things work and don’t work in the Congo. The sense of complete freedom that only comes with the absence of government mixed with the destruction that decades without governance has intertwined itself with each story told.

For my own part, this article reminded me that living in the Congo, however briefly or long, gives one a sense that anything is possible in this world — no matter how outrageous, forgiving, or impossible. The Congo is filled with extremes: riches and poverty, opportunity matched with risk, and hope facing down desolation. Go out and read this one, folks; it’s well worth your time.

As for myself, I’ve been bumming around the US for the last month and am having a pretty good time of it. I’ll be heading to Costa Rica this weekend for a bit of holiday so stay tuned for the tales of woe as I discover that the phrase ‘Donde esta la cerveza?” is not a good substitute for actually speaking Spanish.