Trash in Mex

I write this with only six weeks to go in Mexico.

:(

...and then,


:)

!!

So, I should take full advantage of my time here, and share some blog experiences while they are still interesting. After all, when would you see a parade of Lucha Libre wrestlers, the Virgen of Guadalupe and the Tasmanian Devil at the same time?


...wtf?


Anyway, with that, I would like to choose a topic of the day and write a little of it. Today´s shall be...


Mexican Garbage.

One surprising aspect of Mexican Garbage, or more specifically, Xalapan Garbage, is that it´s free to dump it. Every night except Sunday a truck passes our house, grinding it´s gears to the max and pumping out large clouds of black exhaust as we live on a steep hill, and collects a mountain of garbage, some in bags and some not, that get piled near a multilevel hospital parking garage. What you can find in the garbage differs from American garbage, as it contains 1. more fruit peelings and 2. used toilet paper that is unable to be flushed. As a whole, Mexicans waste less than Americans, or rather, -every one- wastes less than Americans. You go into a house and the furniture is old and smelly, the tiling ridiculously outdated, the fridge propped up by bricks as the pegs have broken off, the living room TV 13 inches and 20 years old. But it functions and there´s no real need to replace it. Obviously this is a much poorer country than mine, but as a whole I think there is more respect for the material, the people are less materialistic and it is not as important to have new things to impress others. There is at least one exception, however: cell phones. Many Mexicans, even the poor ones, often have nice cell phones, and are always sending text messages. To make a call in this country is absurd. It costs at least 3 pesos - 30 cents - per minute, even from a cell phone, and pay phones are even more. I think one big reason is due to the telecommunication monopoly, which is owned by the world´s third richest man, Carlos Slim.

Anyway, garbage. You also find a lot of it on the street. I´m referring specifically to Xalapa. Some places are disgusting. In the mornings, at dawn, you see workers out on the streets, using big brooms, the bristles made of sticks or flexible tree bark, sweeping away the accumulated rubbish, making the city clean for the next few hours, but later the litter comes back with the hustle and bustle. But it is irritating that there are very few trashcans. With good reason the trash is tossed on the street - the bins are inconveniently located and they always seem to be full. When I went to Costa Rica there were trash cans every where, many of them with beautiful painted designs. But in Xalapa such is not the case.


Another thing that irks me is the lack of recycling. I know of one recycling place, which is far from the center, and the garbage truck doesn´t carry seperate bins for the reusables. One good thing, however, is that plastic bottles and beer containers are almost always returnable for cash or more beverages. You are obligated to recycle when you drink beer or Coke.

The four of us (Stacy, Carlo, Ahmed and I) who live in this house have a small garden , or rather a large cement trough filled with dirt, where we throw all the fruit peelings and seeds instead of in the trash. The bad thing is, it attracts lots of insects, so the mosquitos get into the house and remind us that garbage is never free.


--Pic of the day--






Two lovers - or rather, one lover and one surprised woman - share an intense, romantically confused moment overlooking Teotihuacan´s Pyramid of the Moon, north of Mexico City one cloudy afternoon.