Trash talk_Hawassa is a surprisingly and refreshingly clean city
Hawassa is a surprisingly and refreshingly clean city. When we traveled to the south and visited cities of comparable size they more closely resembled my preconceptions of an African city, a bit dirtier than it is here.
There are a few methods of trash disposal here, incineration being the most common. Below is an example from the other day on campus. In this case, we were lucky and the female students were unlucky. On other occasions we are the unlucky ones downwind from the burning trash. Unfortunately, plastic makes up much of what is being incinerated, which makes me cringe a little, but I can also see the lack of alternatives. The good news is that Ethiopians have taboos about wasting food, so prudence is taken to not create food waste and, to my knowledge, most food scraps are kept separate from other trash and ultimately composted.
Female dorm downwind from burning trash
Our trash, along with the trash of the other guesthouse residents, goes in a hole located a short distance from the building entrance. It gets sorted for valuables by children and for edibles by birds and dogs. This seems to keep it to a level that makes incineration unnecessary.
outside of guesthouse trash hole
Though methods of waste disposal are not ideal here, the amount of trash that individuals generate in Ethiopia is a fraction of what we in the U.S. produce. People here do with very little and I am constantly impressed by the resourcefulness that I witness on a daily basis. Broken things are fixed rather than discarded, and objects that are no longer suitable for their original use are repurposed. Living in a place where relationships, good intentions, and good hospitality are more important than consumer goods is a welcome change of pace.
The photo below illustrates my favorite way of disposing of refuse…
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