Litter

Ngaoundéré is a clean town, compared to many other places in Africa. You can see rubbish in the streets and ditches, but there is a renovation company that continually cleans the town. The Norwegian camp is tidy too - the maids have one place they always empty our litter bins.

That place happens to be quite near our house, and so I become aware of the fact that throwing my trash in the bin does not make it go away. It is just moved somewhere else, so that my house is clean. But the more I use, the fuller that garbage hole grows. Is that the way it should be? Which right do I have to buy, spend and throw away so much that Mother Earth is afflicted?

Ashamed of being one of the Earth's spoiled litterers, who buys things I could manage without quite problemfree, I decide to try my best to think critically about what I buy and how it is packed.

I am troubled by the fact that I actually am in a position to choose whether I buy environment friendly packed food and other stuff - useful or not. Every afternoon, as they finish school, three or four boys on their way home stop by that rubbish hole. As I sit in my comfortable chair, listening to beautiful music on my Mac or iPod in my clean apartment, they are digging in my dirt. I bet they do not think about whether my litter will vanish in one year or a hundred, or if it will let out poisonous gasses. They jump into the hole with their clean school uniforms, hoping that they will find something of value. Some valuable leftovers from one of the World's fortunate litterers...