So, when I saw young men one morning, at the time when the women are still sweeping their yards (there ought to be a special name for this time, like mashambanzou’, which in town only means a charitable organisation), clearing an evil-smelling pile, I asked them who had died. “No-one” they replied, “this is our public service”. They certainly deserve all the congratulations passers-by were giving them, and more. But couldn’t we all do more than congratulate them? Couldn’t we help to make their job easier and more useful?
We all throw away a lot of good vegetable waste that would make marvellous compost – and we complain about the price of artificial fertiliser. But we spoil that potential compost by throwing other stuff with it. Just walk around outside the Musika vegetable market and you can smell that what rots there is not good compost. By the time it stinks as if it has been through a pig’s guts, you know it is no good to man nor beast. Why does it stink like that?
The bacteria that help to turn cabbage stalks and all that other stuff into good compost need to breathe, just as we do. If we mix plastic sheets and bags with our vegetable waste, those make pockets in the heap where air can’t reach. That chokes our friendly aerobic’ bacteria. Then a different kind of bacteria, which don’t need oxygen, flourish in those pockets and produce all that vile stinking stuff that poisons the whole heap. All we need to do is to make separate piles of our rubbish:
(1) vegetable waste; maize stalks, grass cuttings, waste cabbage leaves are all good
(2) plastic sheets, bags, bottles etc.
(3) paper (newspaper and cardboard, not plastic paper’)
(4) metal: all those drinks cans and any other metal you’ve no other use for
(5) glass: bottles, jars, broken window panes
That will stop the kind of decay that produces all those unhealthy smells and, quite often, real illnesses. Maybe some graffiti artist could mark out the place for each kind of waste by painting on the wall: compost here; plastic here and so on. Then we can start phoning the firms who collect and recycle glass bottles, tin cans, old newspaper and plastic. They will pay and come to collect if we have enough stuff to attract them. Accumulating that much might take time, but we know that the vegetable stuff is quietly, with a little help (we need to turn it over from time to time) changing itself into something that will make our gardens produce more and better vegetables. Better gardens with our own compost and money for all the other stuff; what are we waiting for? Let’s get started. (This might be a good idea even in Borrowdale)
Post published in: News