Trash

One thing that we noticed right away when we went home to the states, was how clean it was!  When we were on walks in suburban neighborhoods, the kids and I had to look really hard to find trash.  Every now and then I'd hear the kids say, "Look mom.  There's a piece of trash!"  And even in cities it was difficult to find more than a random piece of trash here or there.  In Luanda however, the game to finding trash works the other way around.  The challenge is to try and find a piece of sidewalk or street that doesn't have trash on it.  :)  Managing the garbage collecting here in Luanda has got to be overwhelming in such a large and populated city.  And sadly, the people litter freely as they walk around, dropping their food wrappers, drink bottles, etc.  We're not quite sure what the system is or if there is a system of garbage collecting.  From week to week there doesn't seem to be any predictability or rhyme or reason to when or how they pick up the trash.  So the sidewalks are clogged much of the time with large piles of trash that are covered in literally hundreds of flies.  We walk around the piles and hold our breath.  Unfortunately, on windy days like today, you can't possibly hold your breath for as long as you need to with the breeze carrying the stench right to you, whether you're nearing trash or not.  And on days like today as it's starting to warm up for spring/summer, I'm reminded that I've had it pretty good the last few weeks with the trash not smoldering in the heat day after day.

Our walk to work every day, note the chunks of sidewalk missing.  If you're not looking down to watch where you're walking, you'll end up on the ground.  One of the many reasons this is not a city of bicyclists, skateboarders, or roller skaters!

Here's the pile above, being picked up on another day, by tractors.  Not sure where the garbage truck is or whatever they're going to dump it into.  I'm not sure I want to know where the dump is nor do I want to know what standards or requirements they have, if any, for the maintenence and upkeep of it.  :)

With the layer of dirt that constantly covers the street as well (see pic above), it is no surprise that our car looks like this after only driving it a few times and it remains parked in a parking structure.  We wash it, but it's hardly worth doing.  Nothing really to complain about though--Angola wouldn't be nearly as "exotic" or have the character that it has without the dirt and trash everywhere.  It's something we'll probably actually miss!