10 November 2007

Dear Friends,

Mark Hare on his front porch with friends. The trash bags had already gone to the great hole.

Have you ever contemplated where the “out” is, in “throwing out the trash?” It may come as no surprise to you that, living in a country such as Haiti, where over 55 percent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day and where the government is struggling just to make the national highways passable (“paved” being a still distant, elusive dream), there is no garbage collection service in the small rural community of Papaye where I live. That means that each household is responsible for disposing of its trash as best they can.

When I moved to Haiti in May 2004, I didn’t ask my neighbors what they did with their trash. I assumed I already had all the skills, information, and technology to deal with the problem. Fairly soon after settling in, I paid a local man to dig two holes in my yard—one a compost pit and the other for burning combustibles. I also planted a tough, scratchy grass called Vetiver around the two holes. I’m not sure now why I thought the grass would be a good idea. Perhaps I thought it would make the holes less unsightly.

Both pits worked, sort of. Silvini, the woman who cooks and organizes the house, learned to throw the stuff that rots in the compost pit and the stuff that doesn’t in the other. Moccène, who lived in the house with me for two years while going to school down the road in Hinche, helped me out by burning the trash in the trash hole periodically. There were problems with this system, though. Not all of the trash burned. Tomato paste cans, for example, don’t burn. Coconut hulls don’t burn very well, either nor does broken glass or plastic sandals. These items weren’t a huge problem at first, because my household didn’t produce a lot of any of them. But these things don’t hang around for a few months and then miraculously melt into the ground. Cans from 2004 became part of the cans from 2005 which became part of the cans from 2006.

Now, back to the Vetiver grass and the fact that I’d never bothered to check out how my neighbors disposed of their solid waste. Every day, women in Papaye take their brooms and vigorously sweep their yards. All trash is then put in whatever spot that’s handy and out of sight. This is where the Vetiver grass comes in. It’s a tall, aggressive plant that bulks out as it develops. Thus, the whole area of my yard covered by the grass, including both the trash pit and the compost pit, became an ideal place for other folks to leave their leaves, plastic bags, cans, and old bits of clothing. I tripled my trash disposal problem by creating a natural environment for local trash disposal.

It took me about two and a half years to come to grips with this reality. By then, I had an amazing collection of half-burnt plastic bottles and black plastic bags, rusty cans, and rags of synthetic fibers scattered all through my side yard. It was a real mess. The next best thing that occurred to me was to buy trash bags. So I did, the next time I was in Port au Prince. We collected all the trash in the yard and bagged it. And there that trash sat on our front porch, neatly assembled in large, black trash bags.

Then one day I was at the MPP office, about a quarter of a mile down the road, when I noticed a large hole in the ground, back behind the buildings, with quite a bit of trash in it. That pit was part of a failed solution for a problem with the sewage from the series of houses that make up the office complex. It was ten feet wide by fifteen feet long by 15 feet deep.

I spoke with Charite Jean, the administrator for the main office, and excitedly asked him if I could make a few deposits. He laughed at me and said, “Of course.” And thus, finally, I had an “out” where I could throw my trash. Except, it isn’t really an “out,” but an “in.” For example, when I tell Dugenson, my neighbor’s son, “Go throw those bags of trash in the hole at the MPP offices for me, please.” I have also removed the Vetiver grass from my yard and filled in the former trash hole, mostly eliminating folks’ tendency to dump their stuff in my yard. That does not mean that the neighbors have found good places to put their trash, but they do put it where I can’t see it, just like I put mine where they don’t have to see mine. It’s a much more workable situation than it was.

But it doesn’t really answer the question of where exactly the “out” is in “throwing out the trash.”

May God bless all your efforts in caring for this incredible creation we share.

In Christ,

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 49