Trash Woes

 We have written before about the trash woes on Clove Island. It has been a big problem for years. When we first got here the problem was that everyone threw their trash in the ocean or the rivers, making our hearts break at the environmental impact and sad to see the island’s natural beauty marred by garbage.

Trash thrown on the beach

Then, the island government cracked down on putting trash in ocean or rivers.  They forbid it and charged large fines if you got caught.  But the problem was that they didn’t provide a trash solution, so people would just do it at night under the cover of darkness.

Skip ahead and the government designated certain areas for trash. In some places they set up small dumpsters and told people to throw their trash there. A truck would come periodically and pick up the trash and take it away.  This seemed to work well for a time, But then the problem became that the truck didn’t come often enough. The government wasn’t paying the trash truck drivers, so they stopped coming.  The piles of trash went beyond the confines of the bins and dumpsters and piled and stank and spread into the streets.

A trash dump corner

During this time period, we sent our older son (12 years old) to dump a smelly dead rat that we found in the back courtyard of our house to the trash pile on the street corner. It should have been a task that took a few minutes, but our son didn’t come back. We checked the house and down at the neighbors to make sure that our son hadn’t slipped back home without our noticing, but he wasn’t there. Someone came to say that someone had been bothering our son about throwing out trash away during the day. Tom went to look for him and found out that our son had been taken into custody (without us being informed) and was at the mayor’s office waiting for his parents to come and pay a big fine. Apparently they had decided the unsightly accumulating trash that had been collecting for many, many days would be solved by telling people to only throw their trash away in the evening. Unfortunately for our son, they had decided to start enforcing this rule that very day. Tom went to the Mayor’s office and then called some friends and got the fine reduced significantly and our son came home excited that he could now say he had been arrested!

The limited hours for throwing out trash did nothing to relieve the problem. So eventually they got rid of the roadside trash areas all together. Instead they hired a truck to drive around the capital, blowing a horn (one of those plastic trumpets outlawed at international sporting events), and people would throw their trash in the back as it passed. For a month, this worked well. It came every couple days and we had our trash bags ready to throw in the back.

The elusive trash truck

But the trash truck stopped coming. The government said people needed to start paying to be able to throw their trash in the back. We’ve paid. The truck came last weekend, over a week ago now, but it hasn’t returned. Trash is accumulating in people’s houses. We had it all bagged on our porch because we had been told the trash truck was going to come, but then it didn’t come and the next morning we found that cats had gotten into our trash bags and tore them open strewing garbage and food waste around our entrance-way.

We’re not sure what to do. We’ve heard that some people have snuck out at night and thrown it back in the ocean (like old times). We don’t plan to do this.  Instead, we pray. May there be good governance and management of money.  May the trash collectors be paid and come regularly.  May the trash truck run well and not break down.  May we make less trash and may it not be too smelly.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our new family had a good homestay experience.  It was not easy for them, but the family that they stayed with were very kind and took good care of them.  They enjoyed the cooler weather up on the plateau.  After the homestay they moved into their new home.  They are really excited to have a place of their own after months of transition.  We are feeling more settled now that they are in their new home and had our first team day as a team this past week.  Our visitor on a vision trip arrived today and seems in good spirits.  One of our teammates had an attempted break-in at their house.  We are thankful that the thief was not successful and that the landlord helped to increase security on the door.


PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for the trash truck to start coming around again!  Pray for the rains to come.  It is still very hot, making everything from walking to working to sleeping harder to do.  Pray for a change to what seems to be a rising problem of crime.  Keep praying for our new family as they now get into regular routines of language learning and life.  Pray for our visitor to have an encouraging time with us and for us to be encouraged by her visit as well. Several on our team have been hit by a tummy bug that seems to linger for several days— pray for all those still have symptoms that they would make full and quick recoveries! Pray for our island sister and her husband as they face new demands from their community that aren’t consistent with their current beliefs. Pray that they would have wisdom in how they respond.