Kenyan Journal #6: Wesu and the Garbage Dump
Habari yako?
Every morning I climb the stairs to the third floor of the Teachers Co-operative building where I work. My lungs don't burn at the top anymore now that I'm used to the altitude, and I turn around and look out from the verandah, across Wundanyi, to the towering peak of Wesu (WAY-sue). The side of Wesu that faces Wundanyi is a sheer granite cliff, a single, massive slab of stone. It's so big that it messes up my depth perception and I think it must be closer and hence smaller than it is. Then I look at the tiny huts at its base and the size jumps right back.
Hiding behind Wesu, is the barely visible peak of Iyale (ee-YAH-lay). It's bare top, at over 2000m above sea level, has a fantastic view of the Taita Hills and surrounding plains. When the air is still from there you can hear all the sounds of Taita floating up to you: church music, bleating sheep and mooing cows.
Tony and Erin, two Peace Corps Volunteers I've become friends with here, both enjoy hiking, and we spent a night on top of Iyale. The fog rolled in below us until it looked like a sea of white at our feet. We woke up early for the sunrise and in the clear air of the morning Kilima Njaro appeared out of the clouds to our west.
Iyale is a ridge with cliffs on three sides, almost like a pier sticking out into the air above Taita. On one side the cliff drops over 200m straight down. From the bottom it's reminiscent of looking up at the CN Tower, big, grey and up, way up.
But on a regular morning from the Teacher's Co-operative building Iyale is just a small ridge of rock poking out from behind the mass of Wesu. In the mornings, with the sun behind me, it's a profoundly peaceful view.
But in the afternoons Wesu disappears. As the sun starts downwards in the sky a haze forms over the hills and Wesu slowly fades to grey. I'm not sure what causes the haze, but I have some guesses.
All garbage here is burnt, and almost everyone cooks over a paraffin or coal barbecue. It's normal for me to walk through two or three clouds of smoke on the way home.
The worst ones are the garbage fires because there isn't much regard for the potential toxicity of the trash. The smell is often that of burning plastic, and can linger for hours. I've seen burnt plastic bags, water bottles and even batteries.
People just seem to walk a few metres from their house, put pile their garbage, light it and forget about it. Partially burnt litter gets strewn everywhere by the wind. It's ugly, at least to my culturally influenced aesthetic, and can't be good for the health of the people or animals.
The strangest part about it is that the city council has big garbage bins, like concrete dumpsters, all around the town, and they pick up garbage on a schedule that would be regarded enviously by North American city dwellers: daily.
There is a garbage dump on the edge of town, not far from the Teachers' Co-operative building and out on the verandah you can smell the burnt plastics when the wind is from the southwest.
Erin suggested another possibility for the haze. During the dry season, the dust here is pervasive. It stirs up with the slightest movement and hangs in air for several minutes before dissipating.
Neither the dust nor the smoke can be much good for local lungs, but with Kenya's life expectancy falling so quickly due to HIV/AIDS, I don't think their lungs are most people's primary worry.
Despite being a rural area, Taita's population density is quite high, with a house every 50 metres or so in most places. Almost everyone has a shamba, too big to be called a garden, too small to be called a farm. Even in the duplex suburbia of Mbela Estates many of my neighbours have a chicken coop next to their houses, and the crowing of roosters is as normal as the rumble of motors would be in a Canadian city.
Fortunately for my hiking habit, people here are even more comfortable with strangers walking across their land than people in rural Northern Ontario. We three North Americans, stuck on our notion of private property, still felt slightly uneasy, no matter how many pleasant hellos we'd had in the past, especially when the paths led through a yard, not two metres from the front door.
I remarked on how silly our worry was, since the path had obviously been made by the feet of many people who had gone before us. "Yeah" said Erin "but I keep worrying that I'll get shot."
"Me too." chimed in Tony.
"What?!" I said "Shot? Like from a gun?"
"Yeah, you know it happens back home sometimes."
Suddenly the half-burnt garbage didn't seem like such a big deal.
Tutasema baadaye, (Talk to you later)
Yaacov
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