The Transkei can be a frustratingly dirty place at times; I bought a 'coke' for a senior member of staff the other day and he had no qualms whatsoever about winding down the car window and throwing the empty can into the ungergrowth. I slammed on the brakes, reversed the car and asked him retrieve the can as if he were my child rather than my boss. Luckily he took it in good spirit and was actually embarassed by his actions but many other people see no problem whatsoever with this kind of behaviour.
The concepts of re-use and repair are part of Xhosa lifestyle but care for the beauty of the environment is not and recycling is a largely novel concept. You see re-use all the time, be it plastic shopping bags or bricks from broken down houses. There is also a culture of repair with many items of clothing being constantly mended until there seems to be more patching than original material. The cars on the roads and particularly their tyres are technically well beyound their usable time but people seem to keep them going. But at the same time people are very happy to discard anything which seems to have no further use or monetary value even if it causes a dreadful eyesore.
This is where the corney title of 'Madwaleni can do it' comes in. Drinking from cans has been faily unusual up to now but is on the increase and at the moment cans go the same ways as everything else with no percieved value- into a rubbish bin if you are lucky or to the side of the road if you are not. Cans in South Africa are mostly made of steel rather than aluminium and have a recycling value of approximately 2.5 cents per can (that's South African cents not US cents). It's not much and transport costs would essentially reduce the value below zero. However, staff frequently make trips to Durban in large and fairly empty cars which means transport at close to zero cost is feasible.
The trick now is to collect the cans efficiently. This is easier said than done when the value to the individual is so small and only a community effort will be worthwhile. My plan is to collect around 40,000 cans which would be worth R1,000 and be enough to buy something useful for the community like a small childrens playgound. So far my efforts have been lame and commical. Whenever I am near the rubbish bins outside the shops I sift through for the cans and show people the large empty water container that we have set aside for collection. Needless to say the site of the doctor going through the bins only makes people think we are even more crazy than they already thought. My next plan is to build some kind of 'tree' with magnets hanging from chains and somehow try to pursuade people that the thing you do with cans is not put them in the rubbish bins or discard them but acutually they need to be hung from the tree on a magnet. We can then collect them daily for safe storage. Wish me luck with that one but whatever happens we will have fun trying and we might even end up with a new swing and a see-saw for the kids in the end.
Sunday 21 February 2010
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2 comments:
I can totally relate to this post, I am living in Thembalethu, an informal settlement in South Africa's Western Cape province. I am a Canadian so I was born into a culture where littering is highly frowned upon. Here however everything turns into litter, it drives me crazy to see the garbage everywhere. This year the government started a community garbage collection service, every Tuesday the government collects our garbage and leaves behind new garbage bags for next week. Despite this people still throw their garbage on the ground. I saw this in Eastern Cape as well when I visited. In a place so beautiful it broke my heart to see the garbage slowly piling up. I think that it comes down to education, these are the first generations to deal with items such as plastics etc, their ancestors used to throw away everything too but the items were organic then.
I am trying to educate this community on the perils of littering but it is a slow process for sure!!
By the way, where in the Eastern Cape are you? My boyfriend's family is in Nqiningana, near Lady Frere, that is where I visited last month.
Hi Tom
I'd like to get in touch with you. Are you still at Madwaleni? I'm a journalist, raised in SA, but living in UK, over here on a writing fellowship to travel around the old Transkei and record how life has changed (or not) since 1994. I'm keeping this blog: http://rainbowhomecoming.blogspot.com/
Planning a trip to your part of the Transkei for last week of March/beg April. Will you still be there?
You can contact me at madamecloche@btinternet.com.
Best,
Claire Bell
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