Will Swanson's Blog

The scourge of Africa*

One thing you will notice upon arrival in this beautiful city is the complete and total domination of trash – black plastic bag trash to be specific. Each day vendors of all goods from bread to soft drinks to camel-hide shoes package their goods in these cheaply manufactured black plastic bags. Once torn apart (they’re so weak they’re only good for one use), they are then unceremoniously flung out the door and onto the street for the grazing pleasure of passing donkeys and goats.

But then came some good news- in August of last year the state governor was so apalled and disgusted of the state of his town that he went on the radio to announce a total ban of these black plastic bags, and people found using them would cop a whopping 80 000 SDG (around USD 40 000) fine. This governor was serious about cleanliness, the environment and heck, serious about global warming!

Everyone agreed that this was at least one step in the right direction, until a week later when some enterprising merchant found a loophole in the new decree – he started using orange plastic bags…

*lesser known among other scourges such as HIV, corruption and Gustav the Burundian crocodile

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 14th, 2010 at 9:25 pm. It is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.