While fighting my current bout with strep throat, I woke up gasping for air. It isn’t the fact that my throat was swollen so large that I could not swallow my own saliva, thanks to zithromax that has subsided so it couldn’t possibly be that. I open my eyes, glance up, and see the room is filled with smoke. Nothing to worry about then, this is completely normal.
Smoke fills our room twice daily from our neighbors meticulously sweeping every particle of unwanted matter (household garbage, plastics, glasses, yard waste, etc) directly beneath our window and igniting this. As I have today learned, it is not just one culprit. We have two main windows and 3 neighbors whose property we see from these 2 windows. They all burn, as does our household as this is just the way that things are done here. We are attacked on all fronts.
But wait… there’s more!!! We also get the twice a year harvest of our local sugar cane, which surrounds our little housing complex. After they harvest the cane, all of the leaves are cut off and left on the field to dry out. After a few days the entire field is torched leaving a lovely orange glow to the night sky of Kabankalan. Last harvest season it left me not being able to get a full lung full of air for 3 days and then finally decided to get an inhaler only to find out that the 3 closest brands to the type that I wanted were sold out.
The good news is that any type of burning is ILLEGAL in the Philippines under Republic Act 9003. The bad news is that this is not enforced; nobody really thinks anything bad of burning since it has worked for them for as long as they can remember. What is worse is that there are few alternatives to burning. There technically is garbage pickup but that is really only along the main strip of town. Our little cluster of houses doesn’t even have a proper road for a truck to fit on, it is nothing more than a dirt and rock strip.
But alas, solid waste management is not a truly that important to people here. I admit, I didn’t care about it before I came here but that was always because I didn’t NEED to worry about it. In Manhattan, every building has their label trash bins to segregate the trash and I always abided, to even think of burning something in New York is simply absurd, talk about a fire hazard!
I’m sure eventually things will change in the Philippines. More information will get out to the general public, better infrastructure will be established regarding solid waste management. I guess in a way, my experiencing the burning of trash is a good thing, it opened my eyes to how things were done before the dept of sanitation came into being. I look forward to the time when I once again can leave my windows open without worrying about the smoke from the burning piles of trash and the malaria carrying mosquitos, and when I can drink the water without worrying about cholera, typhoid, dysentery, etc.
