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