As I write this bins in my street have been sitting there since Tuesday with no garbage truck in sight. But for perhaps a year now, not only is the garbage collection irregular, but I cannot recall the last time of an early morning. Sometime ago, early last year and a few years before that when garbage collection was regular, I recall hearing the garbage truck sometimes around 5am and sometimes even before that.
#The garbage truck full#
Is it impossible for our garbage collectors to do their work before dawn? Or are we asking too much by robbing hardworking men of a full night’s rest?
Strong men they are and perhaps immune to the odours. I have often asked – must the garbage be picked up in the middle of the day? Why not in the quiet of the morn before bird’s wife wakes so that the flow of traffic will not be disturbed, and people will not be polluted by the stench? But it must be noted that the garbage collectors are grappling with the stench all day. The need to escape is urgent and I question again if it must be the way it is.
I dread it and every time it happens some small feeling of anxiety and disgust overcomes me. I often ask myself whenever I am stuck behind a garbage truck if things must be the way they are. In the season of development for the ones whose dreams and hopes end with oil, the neglect of the once garden city and the inadequate measures around solid waste disposal, does not seem to concern enough of us. How did we become like this? Were we always like this? Trained to disregard our environment? Trained to not care? Trained to accept things just the way they are and showing no spirit of fight? There are leaders we cannot even look to and have confidence that they will lead us to glory. The fires in our people are slowly extinguishing. Not only the ones deceased, but under the spell of the world where evil seems good and good seems evil, the principled ones are often prosecuted and silenced. There are blocked waterways with plastic and other waste and wild bush growing where the water should flow freely.īut the smell of decay is also the people. From baby diapers to fast food boxes, furniture and old household appliances, clothes and shoes sometimes gathered by the homeless or mentally ill, there is no limit to what we see in the garbage piles. It seems like most of our people were not trained to keep the environment clean. The smell of decay is not only the aftermath of the garbage trucks, but the piles around the country. Rodents are not seen sniffing after the garbage trucks in the middle of the day, but I am sure they crawl from their dark places under the veil of night because the smell of decay never really leaves our streets. We watch the hardworking men, drenched in sweat rolling the garbage bins and the truck swallowing the contents as the garbage juice escapes from its creases. In the middle of the day, the traffic often stops because the garbage trucks are being filled.
#The garbage truck skin#
Leachate drips unto the streets already dirty – disturbing to think that it could cling to our skin and dreadful that the roads are not power washed after the garbage trucks would have passed. Often, in the middle of the day, the garbage trucks sound, and unpleasant odours permeate the air. The issue with garbage is a constant one.
#The garbage truck driver#
“Why we can’t learn from other countries?” the driver continued. And with that perhaps I should excuse the turning of the eye for those afraid of the consequences they may face for demanding better. Often amused because to not be amused one may be filled with dread and completely immersed in reminders about the massive parts of us that are broken. But when one examines the stories that make the news, how the affairs of our country are managed and our daily interactions with our fellow Guyanese perhaps we are quicker on frivolous matters and many of the more serious ones we turn a blind eye to or quickly forget. Without pause and often without thought we are quick to express ourselves. I am often amused by the raw and valid emotions of our people. I thought, there are things that we do correctly, right? Guyana is not just a hopeless place where an ounce of morality or advancement does not exist, correct? But where is the evidence of our evolution? Are the children unscathed and therefore pure manifestations of what we are, can and will be? Giving into his frustrations, expletives followed in a colourful fashion as he questioned the errors in our ways, “Why we can’t do anything right in this country?” Stuck behind a garbage truck late one morning this week, a driver exclaimed.
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