Garbage

Today I witnessed a rare occasion. I saw a Jordanian get up from his chair next to his shop in Wast al-Balad, walk over to one of the small garbage cans welded onto the power pole and throw some garbage inside. Throw garbage inside a garbage bin? Who just does that? Not many people here in Jordan. A few days ago I was even shocked to watch a Jordanian youth who was walking by one of the big dumpsters throw some garbage in the dumpster as he walked past. It seems like people are much too busy or tired or something to take the time to find a garbage bin of any shape or size. If there is any natural or unnatural hole or divot in the road or sidewalk, that is a good enough garbage can. Heck, the road is a good enough garbage can. What usually happens when someone finishes with a wrapper or a plastic bag or a paper cup is that they simply toss it out into the street. When I first arrived in Jordan, I was a bit shocked at how dirty everything seemed to be. There was garbage in every street. It wasn't small amounts of garbage either. There would be entire piles of garbage sitting the road. It would get really funny when the pile was sitting next to an empty garbage bin. Sure there are some people who take the time to throw the garbage in the bins, but the mindset is that it's so much easier to just drop a single wrapper on the ground than to take the time to walk over to the garbage bin and dump it in. I mean that's a lot of work for one wrapper. There are also people who have a job specifically to pick up the garbage in the street. However, they don't get everything or even close to everything. I have also learned that fences and any shrub or small bush are excellent garbage catchers. The wind grabs the garbage laying on the ground and moved it along until it happens to pass by a fence or other object that is permeable to wind but not plastic bags. The wind is therefore allowed to pass through, but the bag or other garbage is caught.

I have never been part of an official highway patrol, but I have participated in picking up the garbage that was around the school grounds or on the ground close to the landfill just outside on town. I was always amazed at how clean our school grounds would look and yet we would pick up so much trash. At least it looked like a lot of trash. Cleaning up the garbage on the roads next to the landfill just felt like a waste of time. In my mind, more garbage would just come and replace it anyway. I would still help and participate because I couldn't leave a job half-done. Maybe that is the mindset that a lot of the garbage guys have in Jordan. They are getting paid to pick of the trash in the streets of Amman, but they know that as they pick it up, more will come to replace it. I think that would make doing a good job difficult at the very least and the job wouldn't feel very fulfilling. It's one thing to be in charge of cleaning the streets in America where you can look at them at the end of the day and everything looks cleaner and like a nicer, newer place. It's quite another thing to be in charge of cleaning the streets in Amman where you can look at them at the end of the day and nothing looks different. Ten minutes ago, you picked up the trash along the street, and now another pile is waiting for you. What difference does it make? This is a mindset that is in the whole country. Will it change? It could, but it would take a catalyst and a lot of time.

=)